Anna Hazlett tiptoes up Prinzip Hoffnung at Bürs in Austria

America's Anna Hazlett, better known online under the pseudonym Anna Hazelnutt, has taken her slab climbing skills to Austria where she has successfully repeated Prinzip Hoffnung, the technical hairline crack that splits the Bürser Platte in two. Established as a sport route by Beat Kammerlander and then climbed without the bolts in 2009 by Kammerlander himself, the route boasts the equivalent of 8b/8b+ climbing, on gear. The first female ascent was carried out by Barbara Zangerl in 2014, and further female repeats include Nadine Wallner (2019), Madeleine Cope (2019) and Lena Marie Müller (2020).

Hazlett worked the route together with climbing partner Tom Randall and while the technical difficulties obviously couldn't be underestimated, finding the right conditions between one bout of rain and the next proved challenging. Placing all the gear on lead, Hazlett sent the route after about 2 weeks of effort, on her third lead attempt after having fallen twice from various points on the runout slab.

In recent years Hazlett has made a name for herself for bold trad climbs. In 2021 she surprised many with her impressive repeat of the E9 Once Upon a Time in the Southwest at Dyer's Lookout in England, while a year later at the same crag she completed the first female ascent of extremely bold The Walk of Life. Talking to planetmountain after Prinzip Hoffnung, she explained "this one felt a bit more physically difficult, but thankfully also safer, although the runout was quite scary nevertheless. It felt like a step up for sure, teetering into the 5.14 range :)"