Interview: Jonathan Siegrist on Sending His Hardest Route Yet

On April 17, Jonathan Siegrist sent Stoking the Fire (5.15b) in Santa Linya. Although it was his fifth of the grade, he described it as being a new personal level.

A year ago, Siegrist made a trip out to Santa Linya with the intention of trying Stoking the Fire, but, after getting shut down by a morpho move in the opening crux sequence, he quickly pivoted. Instead, within a five week period, he managed to send two 5.15a’s, one 5.14d/5.15a, and two 5.14d’s… not too shabby. Still, he couldn’t get Stoking the Fire out of his head. 

[Also Read: “It was the best climbing trip of my life”: Jonathan Siegrist Crushes His Anti-Style in Spain]

“I was just barely under the size limit for this one move—I couldn’t reach between the hand and the foot,” he told Climbing. “But maybe once a week, I would try Stoking once to see if I could find a new beta, and on one of the last days of the trip, I ended up finding an alternate method that I liked. It felt really hard, but it also felt possible, and it was enough information for me to go home with and then train appropriately.”

Siegrist took the past few months to train for that specific move and for other elements of the route, and he arrived in Spain at the beginning of March for a six week trip. The process of working Stoking the Fire would turn out to be both utterly amazing and mentally devastating. 

“I had honestly for weeks already digested the idea of failure and what that meant moving forward,” he says. “I was already making plans to come back the following year. I was already thinking about training. I was already thinking about how I would describe the trip to friends, what I would say to them and how I would portray the difficulties I had. I almost feel like I had two experiences: I had the experience of not sending, and then I also got to have the experience of sending. It was pretty unique in that way.”

FA’d in 2013 by Chris Sharma, Stoking the Fire was equipped by Czech climber Tomás Mrázek. It’s seen repeats from Adam Ondra, Sachi Amma, Stefano Ghisolfi, and others. Stoking the Fire marks Siegrist’s 70th route 5.14d or harder.

We caught up with Siegrist to hear more about the send and lessons learned. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Interview

Climbing: Can you start by giving me an overview of the route?

Siegrist: It’s a really unique route in that it’s very powerful and an insane strength-endurance challenge. I think the majority of the difficulty is from this crazy section of climbing with no rests. On top of that it’s also a pure endurance challenge. When I first arrived, my strength and power felt really good—I felt solid on all of the moves. But the top half of the route, while it’s probably only 5.14a/b, felt really hard and pumpy. I was getting blasted up there, so I really needed to find a middle ground between the power and the stamina.

Climbing: How does it break down?

Siegrist: It starts with a 12c that’s actually pretty hard—harder than you want it to be. And then you get to an awkward alcove where you can take a no-hands rest. I’d rest there for seven to ten minutes, which just kind of sucks because it makes the mental aspect a little harder. From there, there’s three bolts of intro climbing, maybe 13-, and then straight into the opening boulder problem—the morpho part that I did a different way—and then it continues straight into a section of climbing with no rests whatsoever. This whole section, if you include the opening bouldering problem, is about 23 moves, and they’re all pretty hard—they build as you go higher. There’s maybe one spot you can chalk. It’s so intense that you end up skipping two draws and it’s actually a pretty massive runout. 

After that 23-move insane strength endurance bit, there’s a rest. It’s not amazing, but it’s pretty good. And then you have maybe eight more moves of harder-than-you-want, risky outro climbing. Sachi and Chris both fell there on redpoint tries. So the hardest part of the climbing is done, but there’s still 5.14 climbing. After that you get a better rest, and then you have maybe another 8 bolts of 5.13d to the top, which, again, is harder and riskier than you want. So it’s kinda the whole package. I needed to have strength endurance, the best I’ve ever had, and on top of that I needed to have the reserves to just keep going for another 15 to 20 moves.

Climbing: What was your process on it like?

Siegrist: At first I was really focused on just building endurance on the top of the route, and also deciphering the intro bouldering problem. I had an idea for what I would do, but it wasn’t really that well tested. So it took me a while to piece that together. And then as I was doing good links in all the different sections, I started trying from the ground. After that it was about building strength endurance as best I could. I ended up one hanging in the first two and half weeks, but then it took me almost a month of just whittling things down and one hanging again and again and trying different beta, etc.

I was using a really powerful method for the redpoint crux—the end of the 23-move section. It was the same beta that Chris and Jakob [Schubert] had used. It was so hard for me to have the strength coming from the ground. I kept falling there, and then I revised my beta in the last two and half weeks of the trip, and I immediately broke through, which was super exciting. 

That’s actually kinda when everything got tough, because I felt like I was really close at that point and the time left in the trip was ticking down. I loved the new beta, but then I started having difficulties because of skin, conditions, and overall fatigue from trying the route so much. So I knew that I could do the route because of the links that I was making, and because of how good I felt on it, but I also was pretty mentally fatigued at that point. 

Climbing: Can you elaborate on what made projecting this route in particular so challenging?

Siegrist: I think what made it so hard was, for one, it’s a really hard route. And actually that element was really gratifying when I did send it. I’ve definitely had projects in the past that felt really mentally challenging but not physically as hard, but this one had both, and that made it even more satisfying. 

You know, I trained, I made the trip, I had expectations, and I think, in a lot of ways, it was to my detriment that I made such rapid progress in the beginning. In fact I distinctly remember writing to several of my friends that I was cautiously optimistic, and that I felt ahead of schedule. But then I had that middle chunk of the trip—a few weeks where it felt like I was improving as a climber strength wise, but I was just stuck and using some not-great beta but trying my best. It takes a lot out of you mentally and physically.

I think by the time I had the physical shape and the right beta, some of the stars were beginning to align. At that point I had been trying so much and had invested so much energy, so I had already used a lot of the tools in my toolbox to stay optimistic and motivated. So I felt completely beaten down I think. A big part of me knew that I could potentially send, so it was this really hard balance between feeling kind of hopeless and out of energy emotionally and at the same time knowing rationally that I had a chance.

In the end, I think it really was a numbers game. I had to have the right skin, the right conditions, the right rest in my body, the right psych. It just felt like for the last few weeks of the trip, on any given day, I could get like 50 to 70 percent of them correct, but that final piece that I needed to have the winning try just wasn’t there. I wanted to give up so many times, especially in the end. The idea of letting go was starting to feel as good to me as sending, because it had just been such a long and hard process. But a part of me just couldn’t stop trying, and I’m really grateful for that piece of me.

Climbing: What was the biggest lesson learned throughout the process?

Siegrist: I actually believe that the degree to which I pushed was relatively unhealthy. I’m really happy that it worked out the way that it did. But my takeaway is that I have certain mental cues now that will help me to step away from a project and change the stimulus before I get in too deep. I’ll still be learning for sure, but I think that this was just such a cool experience because, although on paper it’s the same level that I’ve climbed before, it felt like a new level for me, and I hope that I can apply this to big projects in the future.

I think the flip side of that piece of learning is just that there’s a possibility to send even when your confidence is at an all-time low and your doubt is at an all-time high. It was really encouraging and motivating to me to see that it’s possible to pull through in those moments, because we can’t control it and that’s just the way that we feel or that’s the way that the variables have stacked up against us, and that’s pretty cool.

Climbing: Tell me about sending it.

Siegrist: I actually couldn’t even write this story if I tried… So, on the very last day of our trip, I waited a while to warm up—the best conditions were between 6 and 8 p.m. Normally, I warm up in a pair of oversized Skwamas, and I save my OG Testarossas just for the route. But earlier that day I had taken one of my Testarossas out of my pack to repair a piece of it, and I had forgotten to put it back in my pack. So when I went to tie in for an actual redpoint try, I immediately recognized that I did not have both of my Testarossas that I had been trying the route in. And you know, you can’t just change shoes at the last minute. But I was just like well, fuck it, I’ll just put one Skwama on my left foot and the Testarossa on my right foot. So I tried like that, and it felt horrible. I love the Skwamas, but it just wasn’t the right shoe. And so I felt pretty low. The thought of hiking a little bit, driving the half hour back to our house, grabbing the one shoe and then driving the half hour back, and knowing that there was only like two hours of light left… all of that got about as close to breaking me as I can imagine. At first I was like, Oh thank god, this is a sign that I’m not supposed to try the route anymore, that I’m just supposed to throw in the towel and know that it was a really good effort and to just play around and get out of there. But for whatever reason, I sprinted out of the crag, I jumped into the car and I drove like hell back to the apartment, I got the shoe, and came back to the crag. At that point it was like 7:30, so I knew I had one try before it got dark at about 8:20. 

But then I tied in and I did it. Which is totally insane. 

Climbing: That’s amazing. How did it feel to send it?

Siegrist: The feeling was incredible. It felt hard the whole way, it wasn’t easy at all, but it flowed the whole way. 

As you know, it always feels a little bit like a dream. If there weren’t people there cheering me on and telling me how excited they were for me, you could have told me it wasn’t real.

It was a huge emotional release to send and I was really happy to be there with a bunch of good friends who were so encouraging throughout the whole trip. For sure it was the best send and the biggest sense of release and accomplishment in my climbing that I think I’ve ever had.

Climbing: This makes your fifth 5.15b. Do you think you’ll try a 5.15c?

Siegrist: I would love to try 5.15c. I’m 37. I was really motivated to see Chris do his route this year at 41. I hung out with Chris a bit as well at Santa Linya and his vibe and enthusiasm after doing the route was mega. I’m going to fight like hell and get stronger and get better. I’d really like to at least give it a good shot and know that I tried. It seems like a daunting task but I think I did take a lot away from this experience. Hopefully I can put that forward into even harder things in the future.

Also Read:

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