28 Mar Keita Kurakami climbs The V, new 9a/9a+

Keita Kurakami finally puts an end to a sports project that he had on the agenda for three years and frees The V, a route that he estimates to be 9a/9a+.

Sigh of relief for the very strong Japanese climber Keita Kurakami who on March 20 lastly closed an old sports project by releasing The V, in the Chichibu area, grading it 9a / 9a +.

“I’ve done my 3 years term project yesterday. Finally, I did FA’ed it and I gave the name “The V” (5.14d/15a).

Various negative feelings were mixed and confused when I was trying it. Fear, trouble, tangle, lapse of confidence, escape mind and sometimes angry. Actually, I fell off same move for 5 days more. (Solution was to take a left hand rest on 6mm crimp!!). So, it was the hardest (toughest) time to try on the project for my climbing carrier.

But finally, thanks mind was occured and I realized I’m really happy man…And, on this way I realized this one fact “There is no short cut, I just need to do it if I really want to get my top.”

Now, it’s going to be a bit madness in the world so that corona virus. But I believe we can overcome this toughness time, like try on hard projecting proccesses.

Pray for all of my world friends. About the grade. I would give it 5.14d/15a for making flexibility of the grade so that I had just tried two 5.15 grade route so far. But it was definitely hardest route ever for me.”

In 2017, Kurakami had repeated The Walk of Life, E9 6c at Dyer’s Lookout and climbed the famous Nose in Yosemite alone, then asking not to be considered because he later assessed that he had gone too far from the original line, a feat that he then repeated in the 2018 without a doubt. In March last year, however, he was able to climb Mare in self-protection, 8c + pitch on Monte Futago.