BURSTWill Bosi spent time this year projecting Silence, the world’s first 5.15d that was first climbed by Adam Ondra nearly a decade ago but has never been repeated. Bosi put in several sessions trying to link the many cruxes, including the V15 crux, which Bosi hinted might be harder than V15. Bosi has completed his season on Silence, saying, “So psyched to train hard over the winter and get back to this route soon.” Watch his attempts below.
Silence was bolted by Ondra in 2012 when he completed Change, the world’s first 5.15c. Even then, he saw the potential but not the possibility. He admitted he could imagine the moves, but the idea of linking them, especially the crux boulder, felt “way too ridiculous.” So he left it alone.
When he returned in 2015, everything shifted. The route became Ondra’s “lifetime goal.” He reshaped his training around it, modelling his body and mind for the bizarre, inverted kneebar rests and the spatial confusion of the cave. Visualisation sessions became as important as finger strength; learning to stay oriented while hanging upside down in a featureless granite dome was its own discipline.
By 2016/17, Silence consumed him. Across 40 days and seven trips, he worked on sequences that defied conventional movement, single-finger locks, foot-stabs above the head, and a form of figure-four that read like a new dialect of climbing. And then, on Sept. 3, 2017, he linked the improbable. At the anchor, he felt a shock of emotion so strong it muted his trademark scream. This absence of sound gave the route its final name: Silence.
The climb itself is a journey of contrasts: a 45-metre sweep of granite, opening with 20 metres of 5.13 and kneebar rests. Then the first hard crux funnels into the route’s core, three boulder problems in succession: a precision-dependent V15, a four-move brute of V13, and a slippery V10.
The first crux, the V15, is the one Ondra called the hardest of his life. Ten moves that require perfect timing, full inversion, a foot jam above the head, and a final lurch while locked into an extreme drop-knee he described as feeling like it might tear his body apart. The problem ends in a poor upside-down kneebar where he trained himself to rest for nearly a minute, bat-hanging in stillness to reclaim enough composure for what remained.
After the last crux, a generous hold ushers the climber toward the finishing boulder, a final, almost merciful sequence after a hallucinatory stretch of difficulty. But even that easier ending demands the clarity to execute after the crux below. For Ondra, clipping the chains was a release of years of pressure, a moment he felt more than he could express.
Silence has yet to see a repeat. Climbers like Pete Whittaker have experimented with crack-style solutions to the crux, but these variations only highlight how closely the line aligns with Ondra’s own blend of flexibility, power, and precision. Stefano Ghisolfi’s long campaign, culminating in his 2024 repeat of the crux in isolation, shows that progress is real, just not on the full link. Of all contenders, Will Bosi’s attempts have so far looked the most promising.
Action Directe, the first 5.14d, and Biographie, the first 5.15a, were both repeated within four years. Change, the first 5.15c, stood unrepeated from 2012 until Stefano Ghisolfi’s ascent in 2020. Will Silence see a second ascent before Ondra’s becomes a decade old? He has called it “much harder than anything else” he’d ever done, a benchmark so far beyond his previous limits that 5.15d felt like the only honest grade.
Whether future climbers will one day call Silence the world’s first 5.16a remains unknown, but for now even the best have thrown everything at it and walked away empty-handed.
Bosi on Silence
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