Stefano Ghisolfi Sends Alex Megos’ The Full Journey 5.15b
After sending The Journey 5.15a, he kept going through the extension, completing The Full Journey 5.15b as well
Photo by: Sara Grippo
Stefano Ghisolfi is currently on a sport climbing trip in Margalef, Spain. Yesterday he completed one of his two goals for the trip: repeating The Full Journey 5.15b (9b). His second goal, an ascent of Chris Sharma’s Sleeping Lion 5.15b, is yet to be completed.
“The Full Journey went down first!” said Ghisolfi on Instagram. “Actually, I was struggling a bit on the first part of the route (The Journey, 9a+) and I fell few times before the anchor. Yesterday I could finally clip the first anchor and decided to try to keep going for The Full Journey (9b), and surprisingly managed to climb it on the same go! First 9b of the year is done, let’s go for the next one.”
The Full Journey was first climbed by Alex Megos in October 2022. Jorge Díaz-Rullo made the second ascent in March 2023. Ghisolfi’s ascent is the third. The route is 35-metres of classic overhanging Margalef stone, containing two halves of near equal difficulty separated by a jug rest.
British climber Tom Bolger originally bolted The Full Journey. He made the first ascent of the first half of the route in April 2022, naming the 18-metre pitch The Journey and grading it 5.14d/15a. The extension, The Full Journey, adds 17 metres of climbing which according to Megos, could be graded 5.14d alone.
Megos had this to say about the two distinct sections of the route: “The first part is pure power-endurance on mostly two finger pockets with a hard mono move in the middle. The second part is a boulder with a rather violent dead point move to a mono and a few more hard moves after.”
Ghisolfi is one of the best sport climbers in the world. He has four 5.15c routes to his name: Perfecto Mundo, Change, Bibliography, and Excalibur. Although he spent a considerable portion of 2024 projecting Adam Ondra’s Silence 5.15d, from the end of August to the beginning of December, he sent seven 5.14d routes, three of which were first ascents.
Alex Megos’ FA of The Full Journey 5.15b
Feature photo by Sara Grippo
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