A winter free climb of the Diamond on Longs Peak.

The women’s speed record on Eldorado Canyon’s “The Naked Edge.”

The first ever female ascent of a 5.15c sport route.

Each of these climbs is noteworthy in its own right, yet taken together they’re extraordinary. All have taken place within the last four weeks, and all were done by Boulder-based climbers. While I typically save a column like this for some sort of year-end recap, I’d be remiss not to highlight this outstanding trio of firsts in real time.

I’ve written about the Diamond and “the Edge” quite often, and there’s a reason they keep surfacing: they are such fascinating challenges that climbers can’t help but revisit them with new eyes, greater skills and creativity. And when they do, the possibilities seem limitless.

And 5.15c? Well, our hometown hero Brooke Raboutou, the silver-medalist in the Paris Olympics, keeps wowing the world with her consistent and wide-ranging accomplishments.

What I love about these specific, back-to-back achievements is that they represent an unwavering learning curve among modern climbers, through the lens of three unique genres of our sport.

In the alpine category, Jesse Huey, Matt Segal and Quentin Roberts freed the Diamond via “D7” — a popular summertime rock climb — from March 11-13 in a compelling, hybrid style. With temperatures too cold to safely climb in bare hands, as climbers do in the summer, they instead wielded ice tools to torque into thin cracks and hook on edges. They eschewed the typical wintertime footwear of boots and crampons and replaced them with rock shoes in an effort to reduce scratching the rock, which is unavoidable with front points.

“D7” has previously been climbed many times in winter, but this was its first free ascent: all three climbers dry-tooled the route without weighting the rope or gear. For Huey, the climb was a gratifying culmination of eight years of attempts.

The speed record on “The Naked Edge” has been another multi-year project for a cadre of local speedsters. On March 28, local Kate Kelleghan and French ace, Laura Pineau, cut 32 seconds off the previous women’s record (set by Kelleghan and Becca Droz in 2021) for a crazy fast time of 37 minutes, 8 seconds.

Most climbers will spend half a day or more on this route (Kelleghan’s first time up took nearly eight hours), which features vertical cracks, insecure face climbing and an overhanging finale so exposed only the brave look down.

As if it’s not enough to race up 750 feet of vertical to overhanging sandstone up to 5.11 in difficulty, the speed record encompasses a round-trip time from the bridge across South Boulder Creek near the parking lot. Once they topped out, Kelleghan and Pineau sprinted down the steep and technical descent, and across the finish line at the bridge.

Finally, on April 5, Raboutou made history by redpointing Excalibur (5.15c), a fiercely powerful sport route near Arco, Italy. The then 23 year-old (she turned 24 April 9) spent many weeks working on each sequence, learning how to grab each hold and refining specific body positions for the route, which had only been climbed by two men previously, despite attempts from some of the best climbers on earth.

The idea of climbing something this hard is abstract and difficult to imagine, even for climbers. It’s as if Raboutou, through patience and persistence, has truly learned how to defy gravity. For perspective, only four other women in the world have climbed 5.15b — a grade easier than Excalibur, and only a few more than that have climbed two grades easier, or 5.15a.

What these recent accomplishments underscore is much more than how far climbers have come; it’s how far we still have to go. In alpine, speed and sport, as well as in other genres from bouldering to big walls, climbers are still just scratching the surface of our potential. Our sport is young and our learning curve remains steep.

Thanks to climbers like these, who are pushing the edge further and higher, that curve shows no signs of flattening out — nor will it anytime soon.

Contact Chris Weidner at cweidner8@gmail.com. Follow him on Instagram @christopherweidner and X @cweidner8.