Jana Švecová has made the first ascent of Nova 8B+, a new boulder within the existing Adam Ondra boulder Terranova, 8C+, in Moravian Karst, Czech Republic.

The boulder is Švecová's third at the grade, having already climbed Martin Stranik's Prehistorik 8B+, also in the Czech Republic, and Roof der Wildnis 8B+, in Austria, the latter of which she did in four sessions.

Švecová's journey to Nova started three months ago, when she posted a video detailing her first sessions on the 8C+ Terranova. Within two sessions, she had managed to do all the moves, despite having to use different beta due to being almost a foot shorter than Adam.

On her third and fourth sessions she set herself an intermediate goal, to climb to the end of Terranova from the middle:

'I think from the sit start of Sedni si na kosts 8B+ it could be a 8B+/8C boulder problem by itself, and that is my intermediate goal'.

This boulder became Nova, 8B+, Švecová's 'hardest boulder yet'.

Starting from sitting, Nova shares the first two moves with Sedni si na kosts 8B+, before following the line of Terranova to its finish. Using Adam's first ascent as a reference, Nova covers the latter twelve of Terranova's twenty one hand moves. 

After having established this goal and worked out more detailed beta, Švecová was able to climb through the crux of Nova on that same day, as well as in her subsequent fourth session, but on both occasions was unable to continue to the end of the boulder.

Speaking about the process on her YouTube channel, Švecová said:

'The process of Nova was quite interesting for me, because until session seven I always saw some progress. On other sessions [since then] I couldn't see the progress anymore, and I basically couldn't make it through the first crux'.

After three sessions without progress, Švecová took a step away from the boulder and instead dedicated some time to training on a replica of it on her home wall.

On her first attempt back on the boulder after three weeks of replica training, she climbed straight through both cruxes only to fall off at the final move. The next three sessions featured yet more unsuccessful attempts. On session fifteen she came close before the pain of climbing with bad skin caused her to call an end to the session:

'I was on my way to give it one last try, but after the first move I gave up because it was just too painful. I wrote to my diary "It is the end of the session and I failed again", but Martin convinced me to take twenty minutes of rest and give it one last go'.

'Maybe because of that, I didn't expect anything from this try, my mind was just free and I just got into the flow, and everything went perfect'.

Having made the first ascent of Nova, Švecová's focus remains on climbing Terranova 8C+ in its entirety. If successful, it will be the hardest female boulder ascent ever.

Despite having received no repeats and little attention in the twelve years since Adam first climbed it, Terranova has recently seen renewed interest due to both Švecová's impressive efforts on the boulder, as well as the fact that Will Bosi, shortly before climbing Burden of Dreams (f9A), said the 8C+ Terranova was 'on the same level' as Burden of Dreams, and harder than Alphane (f9A).

Whilst Will didn't spend an extended period working Terranova, he told us in a recent interview that he 'couldn't do half the moves on it, it was ridiculous'.

Since making the first ascent, Adam has said that the boulder, which he described as 'a low traverse, on zero-friction limestone that gets quickly polished', could also be considered a 9b sport route.

Check out the video below to see Adam's first ascent of the full boulder, as well as some power screams on Gioia for good measure: