DNA

Grade: 9c (5.15d)
Style: Sport
Where: La Ramirole, Gorges du Verdon, France
First ascent: Seb Bouin, 29 April 2022

DNA is Seb Bouin’s line through the steepest part of La Ramirole, a limestone cave in the Verdon Gorge, and the second route in the world proposed at 9c. It is 50 to 55 m long, but Adam Ondra says the meat of it is the first 30 m.

History

Bouin bolted the line in 2019 and made the first ascent on 29 April 2022, after about 150 days and more than 250 tries. Adam Ondra and Jakob Schubert worked on it together in 2024, and Schubert came back in October 2026 to try it live on YouTube. He climbed it on 10 October 2026, on his ninth live attempt: the first repeat of the route, and the first repeat of any 9c.

The route

Section	Grade
To the couch	8c, five bolts (Ondra thinks 8c+)
Crux 1	8A/8A+
Crux 2, the redpoint crux	8A+/8B
Cruxes 3 and 4	8c+ overall (Ondra says 8c), with boulders of about 7B and 7C
To the chain	8a/8a+ on tufas

Ondra sums up the climbing as hard boulder, good rest, hard boulder, bad rest. Bouin’s own account is that the whole route takes about 45 minutes from the ground.

Seb Bouin’s beta

The 8c. Easy climbing off the block, with a sketchy second clip, traverses into slopey but sharp pinches and a very technical kneebar. A huge reach leads to the rest.
The couch. The left knee goes under a tufa and the right toe over it. Then both hands let go and the climber hangs upside down. Ondra compares it to lying on the couch and watching TV.
To crux 1. Four or five moves that are not hard but tiring, then a toe hook out right to take a right-hand pinch.
Crux 1. Comp style. The right foot throws down and out in Ondra’s “ninja kick”, then a full-span jump to a tufa. Schubert, 7 cm shorter than Bouin, does it another way (below).
The bad rest. A terrible kneebar, the last before crux 2. Staying too long leaves the leg too tired for the crux.
Crux 2. A reach up to a pinch from the kneebar, a drop knee as the knee comes out, a terrible right foot and the worst hold on the route, a three-finger drag. Then a bump to a slippery undercling, the crux move, where Bouin fell 30 to 40 times.
To the good rest. One more big move and four hard ones lead to a good kneebar. Bouin fell after the crux six times.
Crux 3. About 7B by Ondra’s count: tricky, reachy and low percentage. A kneebar rest follows, good but no couch.
Crux 4. About 7C by Ondra’s count, five moves with two wild drop knees. It is easy to fall here, with the whole body tired.
The finish. Tufas to the chain, with kneebars all the way.

Jakob Schubert’s beta

The file carries a second beta at Schubert’s height, 1.73 m against Bouin’s 1.80 m. It is Bouin’s beta with the two differences Schubert describes himself, in his commentary on his live attempts and in his 2022 film. Reports of his send say he changed a few pieces of the beta without naming them, so everything else follows the first ascent.

Crux 1. No toe hook and no kick. He keeps both feet out left and lets the swing off them carry the jump, with the tufa at his full arm span.
Crux 2. Being shorter, he brings the left foot up higher before the bump to the undercling. Bouin and Ondra move it after.

In the app, Compare betas plays the two side by side.

Open it in the app

Open it in the web app with the button below, or download the file and import it into Broken Crimp. Either way, step through the beta move by move and slow it down. A new install of the app starts with this climb.

Open it in the web app Download the .beta file

Sources

An unofficial reconstruction, put together from the public sources above. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the climbers or sources named, and it is no substitute for your own judgement on the rock. See the Terms of Use.