First Repeat of Sharma’s Psicobloc 5.14d
Jakob Schubert made the second ascent of Alasha in Spain back in 2021. He just released a video of the send
In 2021, Jakob Schubert made the first repeat of Alasha, a psicobloc (deep water solo) route first climbed by Chris Sharma in Mallorca, Spain. Sharma made the first ascent of Alasha in 2016 and named it after his daughter.
Schubert was fresh off winning bronze at the Tokyo Olympics and winning the Lead World Championship in Moscow. He attempted Alasha ground-up several times before opting to check it out on rappel. After his send, he commented on the difficulty:
“If I remember correctly, Chris never set out a grade for ‘Alasha’ or ‘Es Pontas’, it was more that he compared the process with some of his hardest sport climbs and this is how numbers made their way into media. Most of all I think sport climbing grades aren’t ideal for deep water solo climbing, especially the difficult and high ones where more factors come into play than just the ability to send hard. Even if you check out some sequences on a rope the whole endeavour is still so different from a sport climbing process, where you have all options to practice or rehearse moves or sequences countless times without the consequence of big falls into the sea. What I can say is that during my send of ‘Alasha’ I physically felt like climbing in the 8c+ range. Also taking the commitment and fear factor into account calling it 9a [5.14d] feels about right to me.”
Sharma said the location of Alasha is rugged and that he took repeated falls from the 20-metre mark. “It needs very subtle body positions, really tricky beta,” he said of the crux. “I finally figured it out to the point where I was like ‘OK, the moves go, now I can start trying it from the bottom.’”
Alasha 5.14d
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