WoGü 8c

WoGü is a 350 meter, nine pitch multi-pitch sport route on limestone at Kirchlispitze in the Rätikon range on the Swiss-Austrian border. It opens with easier 6c and 7a pitches before stacking seven pitches in the 7th and 8th French grades, topping out at 8c, which makes it one of the hardest long multi-pitch free climbs in the Alps. Climbing it in a single push means managing that much sustained difficulty back to back, with pacing and finding what rest there is between belays deciding whether a no-fall lead holds together.

History

Beat Kammerlander established the route from the ground up in 1997, naming it WoGü as a tribute to his friend Wolfgang Güllich, who had died in a car accident in 1992; Kammerlander completed the first ascent but could not free the hardest pitches himself. The route resisted a free ascent for roughly a decade until Adam Ondra, then 15, made the first redpoint in 2008 alongside Pietro Dal Prà, confirming the 8c grade. It has since been repeated by a short list of climbers including Roland Hemetzberger and Edu Marin.

On film

"WoGü" (350m / 8c) Full Ascent by Cédric Lachat - CLIMBING RAW EDITS documents Lachat's one-day, no-fall lead of the route in June 2020, with Nina Caprez belaying and climbing alongside him throughout. Guillaume Broust's wider WoGü film project, shot that spring in the Rätikon, follows the pair on the wall and behind the camera, and situates Lachat's ascent against the route Beat Kammerlander first put up in 1997.