Yannick Flohé Climbs No One Mourns the Wicked, Suggests Downgrade to V16
Flohé made the fourth ascent of Nathaniel Coleman's No One Mourns the Wicked and believes it's easier than V17
Yannick Flohé has just announced his ascent of No One Mourns the Wicked. The problem was established by Nathaniel Coleman in December 2024, who proposed V17. The second ascent went to Hamish McArthur, who climbed the problem in a single session lasting 2 hours 17 minutes. 16-year-old crusher Beckett Hsin made the third ascent in February of this year and called it a soft V17. Flohé’s ascent is the fourth, and he is the first to propose a downgrade.
NOMTW is a low start to Daniel Woods’ Defying Gravity V15, a wildly dynamic problem that features one of the single hardest starting moves of any problem anywhere. Clocking in at around V14, Defying Gravity’s first move is a coordinated throw to a glassy rail. A few different methods have been discovered for sticking the rail, but each one is as difficult as the next. After moving to a higher set of edges, a huge, shouldery deadpoint follows – with climbers cutting feet and bending their body into a scorpion-like position to hold the swing.
NOMTW was a long-standing open project and the original vision for the line. The low start sequence is no joke. Coleman used nine hand moves to reach the starting hand positions of Defying Gravity, estimating this sequence to be V13. The nine moves are fingery and require a lot of tension, fatiguing the forearms and zapping power.
“Came to the US for a Red Rocks trip, but had to change my plans due to an unexpected heat wave,” said Flohé on Instagram. “I ended up in Colorado without specific projects on my mind and checked out Defying Gravity on my first day. Took me only a couple of tries to [send] and immediately started playing around on the low start.
“NOMTW ads around [V11] into the stand, but the original beta with a heel far out right felt too reachy so it took me a couple of sessions switching between multiple betas to find the way that suits me best. The main challenge was dry conditions, crazy wind and my dry skin that made climbing on this glassy polished rock very challenging. I’ve had days with 15% humidity and crazy wind where I couldn’t even do the stand moves, and other days with clouds and rain that felt so sticky that I was able to do the Defying move multiple times in a row for warm-up.
“From the first day I was sure that I could [send] NOMTW but in the end it took me 7 sessions. Anyway, I don’t think that this climb is [V17] considering this was more a battle against conditions and dry skin then with the Boulder itself. I’ve sent no [V17] yet but I know what other [V17s] feel like and therefore I suggest [V16]. For sure, a magical place and one of the best boulders in the world. Thanks for everybody who made sessioning this climb so fun.”
Flohé is an incredibly well-rounded climber who excels in comp climbing and on rock as a boulderer and sport climber. He made history last year in July when he became the first climber to flash V15 with his ascent of Foundation’s Edge V15 in Fionnay, Switzerland. The following month, he made the second ascent of Alex Megos’ Ratstaman Vibrations in Céüse, suggesting an upgrade from 5.15b to 5.15b/c. It was his first of the grade. In December, he made the fourth ascent of Stefano Ghisolfi’s Excalibur 5.15c in Drena, near Arco, Italy.
Flohé has completed many hard classics in Switzerland and France over the past few years. In February 2025, he made the third ascent of Story of 3 Worlds V16. In 2023, he sent two V16s and two V15s: Return of the Dreamtime V16, Ephyra V16, La Force Tranquille V15, and From Dirt Grows the Flowers V15. In 2022, he repeated the famous Off the Wagon Sit V16.
