Alphane V17

Alphane is a boulder problem on the rock of Chironico in Ticino, Switzerland, graded 9A (V17). It sits beside an easier line called Alphane Moon, established earlier by Dave Graham, and breaks down into a hard opening section around V14 followed by a V15 finish, nine climbing moves in total at the upper end of difficulty. It stands among a small handful of boulder problems worldwide confirmed at 9A.

History

Shawn Raboutou made the first ascent on April 6, 2022, after roughly 25 sessions of work spread over several months, but did not announce the ascent publicly until August 2022. At the time it was framed as a candidate for only the third V17 in the world, alongside Nalle Hukkataival's Burden of Dreams in Finland and Daniel Woods's Return of the Sleepwalker in Red Rocks, Nevada. Footage of the ascent was released through The North Face and Mellow that August. Later in 2022 Raboutou made the first ascent of another V17, Megatron, in Colorado, becoming the first climber to establish two different problems at that grade. As of late 2024, only seven climbers had repeated Alphane.

On film

The North Face presents: ALPHANE (2022) follows a team of climbers, including Shawn Raboutou, Matty Hong, Jimmy Webb, Daniel Woods, Felipe Camargo and Giuliano Cameroni, returning to Chironico to chase new boulder problems, with Raboutou's work on Alphane as the central thread. Mellow's companion film Alphane (2022) narrows the focus to Raboutou alone, covering the sessions that led to the V17 first ascent in more depth.