Burden of Dreams V17 (9A)

Burden of Dreams is a boulder problem on a red granite block in a forest near Lappnor, close to Loviisa, Finland. It is about 4 meters tall and was proposed at 9A (V17) on first ascent, which would make it the first boulder problem in the world confirmed at that grade. The climbing centers on a single very hard link of moves rather than a long sequence, and the difficulty comes from combining several near-maximal moves without a rest between them.

History

Nalle Hukkataival first ascended the problem on October 23, 2016, after four years of returning to the same boulder and working the moves. Climbing magazine gave him a Golden Piton award for proposing the unprecedented 9A grade. The second ascent did not come until April 12, 2023, when Will Bosi repeated it after training specifically on 3D-printed replicas of the boulder's key holds. It has since been repeated by climbers including Simon Lorenzi, Elias Iagnemma, Sung Su Lee, Makoto Yamauchi and Noah Wheeler, and Bosi's repeat became the subject of its own 2023 film, separate from the one on this site. Commercial 3D-scanned replicas of the boulder's key holds are now sold for training, though climbing them in a gym or on a training board would grade considerably easier than the actual outdoor line, since the replicas strip away the approach, exposure and rock texture that make the original attempt so demanding.

On film

The Lappnor Project (2017), from Adventure Sports TV, documents Hukkataival's multi-year pursuit of the boulder in the Finnish forest and his first ascent, following the repetition and obsession involved in projecting a single hard link of moves for years before it went. The film spends as much time on the routine of returning to the same forest boulder session after session as it does on the send itself, which is consistent with how Hukkataival has described the project elsewhere.