Brooke Raboutou Solves ‘Excalibur,’ Becoming First Woman to Climb 5.15c

Brooke Raboutou has pulled the sword from the stone. On April 8—one day before her 24th birthday—the American announced success on Excalibur, a brutally steep and powerful 9b+ (5.15c) in Drena, Italy. In doing so, Raboutou has joined the slim ranks of 5.15c climbers and become the first woman in history to complete a route at the grade.

Raboutou paid homage to the climb in an open letter posted on Instagram, writing to Excalibur as if to a loved one, noting that she was drawn to the “unrelenting intensity” of the line. “The way you pushed me was like none before,” she wrote. “You forced me to confront my fears, detach from expectation, and feed every flicker of belief I could find. You taught me to argue with doubt until it began to doubt itself. You asked for everything, but gave me even more in return.”

The idea to write a letter to the route came to Raboutou because she truly felt she had developed a relationship with the climb over the time she spent working it. “It became more about self-discovery and pushing my own limits than the rock itself,” she says. Initially, she felt really strong on the climb, and quickly formed an expectation that she would be able to “send it—and fast.” But with the many variables and conditions that come with climbing outside, that didn’t happen. “I had to detach from that expectation and be patient for things to line up—good weather, my skin to heal, my muscles to recover—and work toward a mental state that allowed me to execute physically.”

We asked Raboutou if there was a deeper meaning behind the line in her letter that said the route pushed her “like none before”—or if it simply referenced the pure difficulty of this climb. “Yes, the route pushed me like no other climb before,” she told us. She explained that this was the “most time and energy” she’d ever put toward a climb, especially since until recently, she’s been focused on competition climbing. She says that Excalibur “brought out all the variables and struggles that come with projecting and made the send feel that much better.”

Excalibur was initially bolted by Italians Cristian Dorigatti and Morris Fontanari, and first redpointed by Stefano Ghisolfi in 2023. “The aesthetic of the line, the perfect straight wall [that is so] steep, on small holds, the landscape behind the route, and the possibility to watch the route from very close… It immediately felt special,” Ghisolfi told me at the time.

Raboutou’s ascent “is a huge step for climbing,” Ghisolfi told us yesterday. “The gap between men and women has been shortened. Excalibur has been a challenge for the strongest climbers in the world.”

Unlike many other climbing routes named for figures and symbols from myth and legend (including Ghisolfi’s Erebor), Excalibur’s handle is both figurative and literal. There is a large steel sculpture, an anvil with a sword jammed into it, emerging from the rock at the base of the route, part of an open air art installation scattered around Drena.

The line is a mere 40 feet long, and only around 18 moves, but is 40 degrees overhanging. By all accounts, Excalibur is a barbaric fight from start to finish, linking painfully sharp, microscopic edges and tiny pockets to a technical heel hook, all on a face that would appear utterly blank to anyone but phenoms like Raboutou and Ghisolfi.

Though several of the world’s strongest climbers—including Adam Ondra, Laura Rogora, Jakob Schubert, and Will Bosi—were attempting Excalibur at the same time Ghisolfi was gunning for his first ascent, it took two years for the route to see a repeat.

Excalibur finally fell to Bosi on February 3 this year, exactly two years to the day after Ghisolfi made the first ascent. It was Bosi’s first 5.15c. (“I’ve learned that Excalibur can only be climbed on February 3,” Bosi joked to me a few days after his climb. Raboutou has, it seems, proven him wrong.)

While Raboutou used some of the beta from Ghisolfi and others, she ultimately had to forge her own way. “I had to find my own methods and strategies that fit me,” she explains—a process that her brother, Shawn Raboutou, helped her with. She ended up foregoing the starting heel, since she had to pull more than the male climbers before her to reach the first hold. “There are many other subtle beta changes compared to the guys who’ve tried it, since my dimensions and climbing style are very different from theirs,” she says.

Another strategy Raboutou employed on Excalibur: only shaking and chalking up each hand once. “One of my biggest obstacles on the climb was numbing out, due to the cold temperatures and the lack of circulation since all the holds are a similar size,” she explains. “I found that more time spent on the holds led to even less circulation in my hands, so I opted for a pretty fast pace.”

For many years in the early development of hard sport climbing, the gap between the hardest routes redpointed by men and the hardest redpointed by women was not insignificant. Over the last decade, supernatural talents like Margo Hayes and Angy Eiter have closed the gap, most recently in 2017, when Eiter became the first woman to send 5.15b with La Planta de Shiva in Malaga, Spain.

Now with Excalibur, Raboutou has narrowed this lead even more. There are only three routes proposed harder than 9b+/5.15c in the world: Silence, B.I.G., and DNA. None have been repeated.

Excalibur’s short, powerful nature is right up Raboutou’s alley. (She is far better known for her hard bouldering and competition climbing—and is one of just a handful of women to have ticked V15.) The scion of early comp-era legends Robyn Erbesfield and Didier Raboutou, she’s been a prodigy from the cradle (bouldering V10 aged 9, climbing 5.14b aged 11). But until the last couple of years, she was best known on the competition scene.

In addition to a long IFSC career, she nabbed rare invitations for both the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games (placing 5th) and the 2024 Games in Paris. In the latter event, last summer, Raboutou won silver in the combined Boulder and Lead event, becoming the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in sport climbing.

In one sense, Excalibur represents a remarkable leap, not just for women’s climbing, but for Raboutou herself. Prior to this, she had yet to redpoint a 5.15a route. Her hardest sport send, as far as Climbing can tell, was Southern Smoke (5.14c) in the Red River Gorge, which she climbed nearly a decade ago, shortly before her 15th birthday. If this is accurate, to tick Excalibur, Raboutou leapt an entire number grade. And Excalibur is no mere “proposed” 5.15c—it’s been confirmed by the world’s best, and even stymied Ondra.

We can’t wait to see which route Raboutou tees up next.