Katie Lamb Makes History (Again) with V16 Ascent
She recently topped Carlo Traversi's The Dark Side V16, Yosemite's hardest boulder problem
Katie Lamb recently made the first female ascent of The Dark Side V16 (8C+) in Yosemite National Park. Established by Carlo Traversi in December 2023, the ultra-technical and subtle line is found on the Thriller Boulder in the forest beside Camp 4. Traversi projected the problem on and off for years before his eventual FA, which he called his most difficult boulder ever.
Lamb’s ascent marks the second time she’s become the first woman in the world to climb V16, a statement which might sound a little odd. In July 2023, she made the first female ascent of Daniel Woods’ Box Therapy. Originally graded V16, Brooke and Shawn Raboutou suggested a downgrade to V15 a few months after Lamb’s ascent, which Woods agreed with. Lamb’s ascent of The Dark Side is likely the third. Aidan Roberts repeated the problem in early January.
“It’s easy to fall into the trap of treating friction on this boulder like passive resistance – a force that each scaler is at the whim of,” said Lamb via Instagram. “But I learned to reshape this narrative: friction is something to sit with, to actively attend to, and to ask for help in understanding. Despite everything in this world that is built to minimize friction, there are moments of stickiness for a scaler. And in these high stakes times, when it becomes clear all the ways we could have been more ready, the most important thing is to just show up to the session.”
Other than Lamb and Raboutou’s ascent of Box Therapy V15/16, six other women have climbed the grade V15 (8C): Ashima Shiraishi, Kaddi Lehmann, Mishka Ishi, Jana Švecová, Janja Garnbret, Marine Thevenet, and Michaela Kiersch. Lamb has two other V15s to her name, Equanimity and Fallen Angel, both Jimmy Webb first ascents.
Lamb is one of the best boulderers in the world. She had an incredible 2023, starting the year with the first female ascent of The Buttermilks ultra-classic Spectre, giving the line a personal grade of V14. That summer she repeated Box Therapy V15/16, and then in the autumn she repeated Deadlift V14 in Squamish and Decided V14 in Mizugaki, Japan in October.
Last year, she made the first ascent of 24 Karat, a stunning V11 highball in Yosemite. In August, she topped Equanimity V15, a line Jimmy Webb described as a “contender for the hardest technical boulder in the world.” Later in the year she made first female ascents of David Fitzgerald’s Echo Chamber V14 and Webb’s Fallen Angel V15, both located in Tahoe, as well as The Rookery V14 in Yosemite.
Aidan Roberts on The Dark Side V16
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