Bronwyn Hodgins climbs her first 8c+, La Rubia at Villanueva Del Rosario

Last Wednesday Bronwyn Hodgins successfully climbed the 55m stamina fest La Rubia at Villanueva Del Rosario in Spain. In doing so, the Canadian climber made the hugely impressive leap from 8b+ all the way to 8c+ in a single go.

Better known for her big wall free climbing and remote first ascents such as Golden gate on El Capitan, and Time is a Construct on Agparssuit and Sea Barge Circus on Qaersorsuaq in Greenland, after three back-to-back big wall expeditions in 2022, Bronwyn was feeling burnt-out from expedition stress and logistics. A little lost for motivation she travelled to Spain to climb tufas and improve her Spanish, and soon found herself wondering how hard she might be able to climb if she put her intense focus into training and sport projecting.

She set her sights on La Rubia at Villanueva Del Rosario 11 months ago, when she began working with Maddy Cope at Lattice Training. She dedicated herself to training for 8 months and then spent 2.5 months living in southern Spain working on the line itself.

"It was hugely intimidating arriving at La Rubia, having only climbed one 8b+ and a handful of 8b's. I definitely felt like maybe I had dreamed a little too big this time! But over the course of the season I slowly ticked away at more manageable chunks of the route until I was finally able to put it all together.

The mental aspect was really tough. I felt like I had some of the tools from big wall free climbing such as performing well under pressure and sequence visualization and execution, but I had no experience in sticking with a project for anywhere near this long. At the same time, I continued to make progress pretty much every time I tied in which was super motivating.

The route is 55m long, and steep with many knee-bar rests in the top half, which also gives a lot of opportunity to overthink things and get nervous. On the send go, I climbed super smoothly and faster-than-ever all the way up to the final bolt (where I'd fallen on my last attempt a few days earlier). I tactically skipped the final knee bar so that I didn't interrupt my mental flow and launched myself with all I had left for the big move just next to the chains. I still can't believe my fingers latched onto that hold!"