Sung Su Lee ticks Alphane, Makoto Yamauchi sends Burden of Dreams

9A's seem to be going down left, right, and center in Europe at the moment. On 3 April 2026, Sung Su Lee from South Korea repeated Alphane, the leftwards traversing line of crimps first climbed by Shawn Raboutou in 2022. At the time, it was only the third 9A in the world after Burden of Dreams in Finland (Nalle Hukkataival, 2016) and Return of the Sleepwalker at Red Rocks, USA (Daniel Woods, 2021); it was the first 9A to be repeated, by Aiden Roberts in 2022, who confirmed the grade, and given the beauty of the line and its centrality, it quickly became a sought-after testpiece. Will Bosi, Simon Lorenzi, Jakob Schubert and Sean Bailey all followed suit, and on 3 April Sung Su Lee called it his after just 10 sessions spread out over 2 trips. This is the 26-year-old's second 9A, after sending Burden of Dreams a year ago.

Talking of Burden: Makoto Yamauchi from Japan has now made an extremely fast repeat of the world's first 9A. Streaming live directly from Lappnor, the 31-year-old sent the problem after a first trip to Finland in autumn 2025 and after having trained on a replica. This is by far the hardest boulder to date for Yamauchi, who previously had sent 8C, and who now follows in the footsteps of William Bosi (2023), Simon Lorenzi (2023), Elias Iagnemma (2024) and Sung Su Lee (2025).