Brooke Raboutou Reaches A New Level
10/4/2025
American Brooke Raboutou has made the third ascent of Excalibur (9b+/38) in Drena, Italy. She is the first woman to climb a route of this grade, the previous hardest ascents by women are from Angie Eiter, Laura Rogora, Anak Verhoeven and Julia Chanbourdie, who have all climbed 9b/37 routes. Excalibur was first climbed by Stefano Ghisolfi in 2023, famously working the route with the very best going around, Adam Ondra, Jakob Schubert and Will Bosi. Despite significant efforts from all three, only Bosi has been able to repeat the route since Ghisolfi's first ascent. Raboutou worked on the route with her brother, elite boulderer Shawn Raboutou, who is yet to make a successful ascent. Brooke's mother, Robyn Erbesfield-Raboutou was the third woman to climb an 8b+/32, in 1993. She became the first woman to onsight an 8a+/30 that same year. In 2012, Erbesfield-Raboutou became the oldest American to climb 8c/33, at age 49.
Brooke Raboutou's ascent is incredibly significant, for a number of reasons. Firstly and most obviously, the grade shows that her level on outdoor rock is at an unprecedented high standard.
Secondly, this serves as evidence that the difference in the difficulty of climbing possible for the elite men and women is very small and that climbing is one of the leading athletic disciplines in this respect. While it is just one ascent of one route by one person and could be called a statistical outlier, the fact that the route has been tried by Ondra and Schubert unsuccessfully suggests it is not in line for a sudden downgrade. To add to this, it took Bosi 21 sessions to complete the route. Many will know he's no stranger to hard climbing, having ticked many of the very hardest boulders in the world, including four V17's amongst which was the much-coveted second ascent of Nalle Hukkataival's Burden Of Dreams. Furthermore, there are only three routes in the world generally accepted to be at a harder level, Ondra's Silence, Schubert's B.I.G. and Seb Bouin's DNA, all at 9c/39.
Thirdly, those naysayers of modern competition climbing who insist that it bears little relation to outdoor rock climbing—take note. Raboutou is adept at the modern comp style and clearly the only way it is holding her back in terms of climbing hard outdoors is the time and commitment involved. Furthermore, the list of women who have climbed 9b/37 above all have one thing in common—they are all climbers who first became known as elite competition climbers, some still active in competitions, some who have retired to outdoor climbing. Which leads to the inevitable question: given her dominant level in competitions, when will we see Janja Garnbret dedicate herself to a top-tier outdoor rock project and how hard will it need to be?
Finally, this is astonishingly Raboutou's first route of the '9th grade'. That's right, she skipped three grades! Again, we shouldn't take this as a sign of an outlier performance, Raboutou was the youngest female to climb 8b/31 at 10 years old and then the following year she climbed 8c/33. More recently, she has climbed a V15 boulder and as many as six V14s. Many of these ascents were fast (she did Direct North V14 in just one session) and suggest it is easier to fit in bouldering projects than routes.
Brooke Raboutou is best-known as a competition climber and rightly so, she is the silver medallist from the Paris Olympic Games. Competitions have been her main focus in recent years and the modern competition circuit has a demanding schedule, especially with Olympic Games and qualifying thrown in. Raboutou was forced to go through the gruelling Olympic Qualification Series in order to qualify for Paris, two specific competitions in the Olympic combined format on top of the standard World Cup circuit of Bouldering and Lead events. This leaves little time for outdoor climbing, but Raboutou has now shown the world what the potential of the top female competition athletes is, if they can carve out some time between competition seasons.