Jon Cardwell claims La Rambla at Siurana

Siurana is currently being sieged by various all-star climbers including the likes of Daniel Woods, Dave Graham and Jon Cardwell and, unsurprisingly, the climbing action is hotting up.

While Woods climbed his first 9b last week with La Capella, 28-year-old Jon Cardwell has now redpointed the crag’s showpiece La Rambla established by Alexander Huber in 1994 and extended by Ramón Julián Puigblanque in 2003.

Ever since its creation this 9a+ stamina outing has tested the best of the best, including Margo Hayes who in 2017 became the first woman to climb a confirmed 9a+. After attempting the line last year and then slowly battling back from serious finger injury, Cardwell now celebrates his comeback on one of the Spain’s finest, and most popular, showcases.

In May 2016 Cardwell repeated another benchmark 9a+, namely Biographie at Céüse in France, while in April 2017 he repeated Chris Sharma’s Papichulo at another Spanish hotspot, Oliana. Cardwell is equally at home on other styles of climbing: last year for instance with Sasha DiGiulian he made the first free ascent of Misty Wall in Yosemite, while over a decade ago he climbed the famous 8C boulder problem Dreamtime at Cresciano.

TOPO: Siurana, Spain

La Rambla
First ascent: Alexander Huber, 1994
Extension: Ramón Julián Puigblanque 2003
2006 - Edu Marín Garcia, Spain
2006 - Chris Sharma, USA
2007 - Andreas Bindhammer, Germany
2007 - Patxi Usobiaga, Spain
2008 - Adam Ondra, Czech Republic, aged 15
2011 - Enzo Oddo, France
2013 - Sachi Amma, Japan
2013 - Felix Neumärker, Germany
2013 - Sangwon Son, South Korea
2013 - Alexander Megos, Germany, second attempt
2014 - Daniel Jung, Germany
2015 - Jonathan Siegrist, USA
2017 - Matty Hong, USA
2017 - Margo Hayes, USA, first female 9a+
2017 - Stefano Ghisolfi, Italy
2017 - Jacopo Larcher, Italy
2017 - Klemen Bečan, Slovenia
2017 - Sébastian Bouin, France
2018 - Tomás Ravanal, Chile
2018 - Jon Cardwell, USA

So stoked to watch @jon_cardwell take down the classic La Rambla (9a+)(15a). Last year he battled a serious finger injury that put him out for multiple months, but was able to rise above and get back in the game. goes to show that hard work and obsessive motivation pays off. Time to hit that vino now then back to business... A muerte Photo @greg_mionske

A post shared by Daniel Woods (@dawoods89) on Mar 3, 2018 at 12:41pm PST