Iker Pou celebrates 25 years of climbing 9a

Exactly a quarter of a century has passed since the younger of the Pou brothers made history back in 2000 when he made only the third ascent of the world’s most famous and difficult route: Wolfgang Güllich's Action Directe in the Frankenjura, Germany.

To celebrate such a remarkable anniversary, the 48-year-old has now repeated Witch Hunter, a 9a put up by Tom Bolger at Margalef. It is at this crag that Pou sent his first and second 9a+, Demencia Senil in 2010 and Nit de Bruixes in 2012, as well as a flurry of other hard climbs such as Enemigo Público N. 1 (8c+/9a) in 2012. And of course there is also his 2018 masterpiece Artaburu, which he chose not to grade at the time. He felt it was significantly harder than his previous 9a+, and the fact that it is still unrepeated confirms it's no walk in the park.

Very few people in the world can claim to have maintained such a level for the past 25 years - while establishing new routes across the globe on all types of terrain. Pou commented "I’m very happy. I’ve gone through two very complicated personal years that didn’t allow me to perform at my best, but now I can proudly say I’m back. When you’re young, it’s easy to focus 100% on climbing, whereas as you grow older and responsibilities and problems multiply, it becomes much harder to stay up there. But I’ve fought for it, and I feel I’m returning, and that’s very important to me."

Both Iker and his elder brother Eneko have always seen sport climbing as the foundation for all their other activities: "If you stay strong in sport climbing and you’re able to transfer that first to big walls and then to big mountains, you’ll become a great alpinist. However, if you begin to slip in this discipline, it becomes very difficult to maintain a good level to keep achieving major ascents up there" explained Eneko, who for almost 30 years has been regularly ticking 8a's. No slouch either.