Ryan Sklenica adds Hartkäse’ F9a+ at Nowra

• Friday 25th August 2023

In unreported news Ryan Sklenica has recently added Hartkäse’ F9a+/36 at Nowra, New South Wales.

Posting only a photo, a name and a grade Ryan Sklenica announced in early August that he’d added Hartkäse’ F9a+/36 at Nowra, New South Wales. Predating Tom O’Halloran’s ascent of Hump of Trouble, click here for our recent report on that ascent, Hartkäse’ F9a+ quietly slipped in to the history books as Australia’s first reported F9a+/36.

Ryan Sklenica has added a whole collection of hard routes to his CV within the last couple of years. Back in July 2021, he repeated the famous Canadian testpiece, Cobra Crack. In October last year he made the first repeat of Big Cheese (F8c+/34) at Nowra and then in December he climbed his then hardest route making the first ascent of Friction (F9a/35). His quiet, quasi off-the-radar, post about the first ascent of Hartkäse’ F9a+/36 went un-noticed until Climber were tipped off about his ascent.

Since then, Sklenica hasn’t been resting on his laurels – as the saying goes. Earlier this week Sklenica sent Little Baby Cheeses F9a/35 also at the Cheedale sector at Nowra. However, having figured-out new beta it seems that Sklenica suggested something of a downgrade to F8c+/9a/34.5 albeit keeping a 0.5 because of a perma wet hold.

However, reports received by Climber suggest that Ryan Sklenica is now working on the second ascent of Tom O’Halloran’s Hump of Trouble and that a repeat might not be long in coming! If and when Sklenica gets the repeat of Hump of Trouble, that'll may well help resolve some of the grading uncertainties of the grades of these latest routes. As usual, it’s a case of “watch this space” for more info. However, in the meanwhile it seems reasable to say that the recent ascents by Sklenica and O'Halloran have brought the Australian scene to life with a series of hard ascents.