Watch Paul Robinson Send Karoshi V15

Paul Robinson is one of the world’s strongest boulderers. In December, he made the first ascent of Karoshi and summarized the climb below.

Back in early 2018, my friend Keith Allen Peters and I headed over to the New Map of Hell boulder. We both quickly noticed that there was a line of holds that went directly out the steep overhang. We chalked them up and I quickly became obsessed with the line.

Day after day, this was all I could think about.

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#3 comes from my most recent first ascent in Hueco Tanks, “Karoshi!” Karōshi, which can be translated literally as "overwork death" in Japanese, is occupational sudden mortality. This is how I often feel when working a hard boulder problem. There were multiple agonizingly close attempts on this steep overhang before finishing it up this season! But the struggle is what makes it all worth it in the end. #bouldering photo 1: @westmountainmedia photo 2: @punkaca

A post shared by Paul Robinson (@paulrobinson87) on Dec 28, 2018 at 10:30am PST

Temperatures started to warm up and I knew I was going to have to wait until the next season to get on this project again.

Fast forward to December, Katerina and I were on a plane from Denver to El Paso. I had one goal in my mind, climb the New Map project.

I spent a total of two weeks trying this thing more or less day on followed by a day off because of how sharp the boulder problem is. Thankfully by the end of the trip, I had the boulder problem pretty dialed in. It was just going to take that lucky try to get it done.

Karoshi