BURSTSwiss climber Noé Looser has made the first female ascent of Fred Nicole’s L’isola che non c’è 5.14d in Amden, Switzerland, climbing the route without a rope or kneepad. The 19-year-old, who finished 11th at last month’s European Championship, spent a dozen sessions working the route after first trying it in March. She returned between comps whenever she had time.
“Wow wow wow,” she wrote on 8a.nu. “First female ascent, first ascent without rope.” The route starts on a V14 before climbing into a tall section where previous climbers all used a rope. Looser said the route initially felt far beyond her ability. “When I first started projecting the route, I couldn’t do the individual moves,” she said. Each sequence gradually became familiar, however, and she eventually linked the route without a rope.
The opening section was particularly demanding, with boulder-style climbing requiring body tension, precision and strength from the first moves. For Looser, the biggest challenge was ultimately mental. “Throughout the entire climb, I felt remarkably calm and focused,” she said. “It didn’t feel like I was fighting the route. Rather, I was completely absorbed in the movements and in the flow.” She said the ascent stood out not only because of the grade, but because it combined physical and technical difficulty with the mental demands of climbing without a rope. “I was calm, focused, and above all, I had a lot of fun,” she said.
Looser used the existing pads at the crag, stacking a maximum of two for the higher boulder. She fell several times around the roof edge while working the upper section, but never fell in the final no-fall section. She first rehearsed the upper boulder with a rope and repeatedly climbed the final section on rope before attempting the full ascent. She had left a rope at the top several sessions earlier to make the descent possible, attaching a foot loop and hand loop that allowed her to lower herself back to the ground.
Full Send
“Thanks Fred Nicole for making the first ascent and making this possible,” Looser said.
While there seems to be a blurry line between free-soloing and highball bouldering, we’re leaning into the fact this route has bolts, has only been climbed with a rope until now, and has a route grade to say that this is a free solo. To read more about free soloing versus highballing, check out a story by U.K. climbing coach Pete Edwards here, where he says, “My own personal definition for a boulder problem is the willingness of the climber to fall relatively unscathed from the last hard move.”
Other Sends
Nicole made the first ascent in 2009, and it’s been repeated by a handful of climbers, including David Firenburg for the second ascent in 2018, and Stefano Carnati in 2025. Watch the second ascent below.
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