Stefano Ghisolfi Projecting the World’s Hardest Route and Boulder

Sending and failure go hand-in-hand in climbing. You fail and fail and fail again until the eventual send. Sometimes this period of failure lasts only one session. Sometimes it persists for weeks or months. Mega-projects can take multiple seasons of failure to finally clip the chains or top out the boulder.

Stefano Ghisolfi has chosen arguably the world’s hardest boulder and world’s hardest sport route as his mega-projects: Burden of Dreams V17 and Silence 5.15d. La Sportiva just released a film (embedded below) detailing Ghisolfi’s time projecting the two climbs while on a trip to Scandinavia in May 2023, a few months after his first ascent of Excalibur 5.15c in Arco. The film has one of the best-ever breakdowns of the V15-ish crux of Silence.

Over the past two years, Ghisolfi has taken multiple trips to Flatanger to try for the second ascent of Adam Ondra’s Silence 5.15d, the world’s first of the grade and perhaps the most coveted second ascent up for grabs on the planet. Nalle Hukkataival’s Burden of Dreams is a newer project for him. After having success on a Burden of Dreams plastic replica, he decided to try out the real thing in May 2023. Not known for his bouldering, Ghisolfi shocked many with his progress on the problem, and he’s vowed to go back for another try.

Ghisolfi is one of the world’s best sport climbers. He has climbed four 5.15c’s: Excalibur in Arco, Perfecto Mundo in Margalef, Change in Flatanger, and Bibliographie in Céüse. In 2022, he repeated Adam Ondra’s Move 5.15b, and put up two 5.15b’s of his own in Italy, The Lonely Mountain and L’arenauta. His 2023 highlights include FAs of Excalibur 5.15c and Il Terzo Occhio 5.14d in Arco, and repeats of Kangaroo’s Limb 5.15a in Flatanger and Action Directe 5.14d in Frankenjura.

Stefano Ghisolfi projects Burden of Dreams V17 and Silence 5.15d