Simon Lorenzi Shares the Story of Soudain Seul V17/9A 

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So much negativity in the comments. Please people, be kind and piss off. The guy is a master of bouldering, and is honest about the measures he took. When talking about ethics, lets talk about the Madrock Drone that Steven is advertising. The heel has an edge, specifically to grab edges. Now that is aid if anything is. But even that, won't get my piss boiling as much as all these bloody armchair critics.

This gave me idea of a knee pad with one of them small ball pumps on it to inflate it and really lock ur knee in

Amazing boulderer and seems like a really nice guys aswell, wp Simon can't wait to see your next achivement

Ondra said, that when younger, he would climb with knee jams and just endure the pain, and take precautions, or climb with jeans. For him, knee bar pads are a way to reduce the pain. Like jam gloves. Other methods work, but it hurts the skin more and reduces the possibility to project as hard. This I understand. Using kneebar pads to significantly improve grip so that once unusable rest becomes a rest, is questionable. Using a book to make something a rest that in no other way would be a rest for you, is aid. Remove the book and kneepad and the route is too hard. It's not about reducing the pain. Some routes are impossibly hard for short people, and some for tall people. Some are impossible for people with short fingers etc. The list goes on. Some routes are never doable for me, or many others, because of our physical limitations. Not even the strength or skill, but merely our measurements. That's ok. It's clear to everyone that tying metal hooks onto your wrists or onto your shoes to use them to get a rest would be aid. It's admirable that he climbed this line and now others can try it. If someone else should climb it without a book or even without a knee bar pad, I'd say they've climbed it more purely.

Dude is crazy strong and all the glory to him for this achievement. However, I don t know if this kind of aid should be considered as a normal part of bouldering (like shoes or chalk). To better ilustrate my point: Some boulders are quite morpho, but I wouldn' t say that short guys trying those kind of problems can use ladder or start from stack of 5 pads and still claim the ascent (or maybe it should be considered as the ascent in new discipline - book bouldering). Genetics do not justify non-standard tools imo. But again, no hate - Simon you are amazing !

I think people should relax with rules, it’s climbing not an election! As long as he’s honest with the way he did it, let him use a book and then you can decide whether you admire him for it (I do). If someone wants to climb Burden with a ladder and say they did, it’s fine with me, I just won’t think to myself « what an amazing climber ».

He’s climbed 3 V17’s and people who don’t even climb v4 are trying to discredit him haha

To me if you can't climb it without using the book in your knee pad. You can't climb it. It's actually cheating the problem.

Snorrrrr

Books are aid, confirmed.

This is just cheating, whoever gets the boulder next is first ascent.