The gender gap has narrowed in climbing. These women have closed it.

In the months after she claimed a silver medal in sport climbing at the Paris Olympics, Brooke Raboutou returned to the place where she had once competed as a child prodigy: Arco, Italy. Just outside of town, Raboutou set her sights on a sheet of rock called Excalibur, a steep and powerful 40-foot route just two other climbers had ever solved.

With its microscopic holds, Excalibur is considered one of the most difficult climbs in the world. It is rated 9b+/5.15c on climbing’s grading systems, a degree no woman had managed. For more than a month, Raboutou tried to become the first. Many days, her hands numbed out, and she was unable to complete the final move on the pitch. She would wake most mornings in Arco and meditate, wondering whether that would be the day she finally conquered the most difficult project of her career.

There was another twist: Raboutou knew Janja Garnbret, the woman who narrowly beat her for gold in Paris, also was trying to climb Excalibur. They considered each other close friends, but neither of the climbers knew exactly when the other might do it.

“It was interesting to hear people be like, ‘Oh, it’s a race for a woman to do 9b+,’ ” Raboutou said. “In the moment, it almost frustrated me because I’m drawn to this climb itself.”

For Raboutou, it was really a race against herself. On April 5, she decided it would be her last day in Arco. Within 24 hours, she planned to fly home to Colorado to celebrate her 24th birthday. That self-imposed pressure, along with a technical adjustment on one of the final moves of the climb, helped push her through. By that afternoon, Raboutou stood on top of Excalibur, becoming the first woman to ascend 9b+/5.15c and closing the gap between men and women in the sport.

“There was just so much more than the grade to me,” she said. “But also, you can’t take that away that it was a motivating way to push the sport in a way.”

Raboutou held off on announcing the accomplishment for a couple of days as she wrapped her head around the historic ascent. Few in the climbing world knew about it.

The next day, Garnbret arrived in Arco to try the climb, but the weather grew cold, and she had to stop after she numbed out. She retreated to a hotel for a couple of days before trying again, and before she fell asleep those nights, she went over the route in her head – down to where an index finger would go and where a foot would be placed on each move. But before she set out again, she received word of Raboutou’s feat.

“I’m happy for her, and it’s part of the game,” said Garnbret, widely considered the greatest competitive woman climber in history. “People tried to make it into a competition between me and Brooke, who sent it first. I didn’t feel like it was a competition. It was just a matter of time, and in our sport, it’s a logical step forward.

“Women have tried to push our limits as far as we can. Now with a woman doing 9b+, it means we are closing the gap between men and women. This proves we women can climb as hard as men.”

There are different climbing grade systems worldwide; in Europe, rock climbs are often graded using the French scale, which assigns numbers 1 through 9 to describe the difficulty of a climb. The letters a, b or c are added as a level of distinction for climbers to accurately grade their climbs, while a “+” can be added to denote another level of specificity to the challenge of the ascent. In North America, climbers use a similar five-class scale called the Yosemite Decimal System; while a 9b+ is the second-hardest sport climbing grade in the French system, it is the equivalent of a 5.15c on the YDS.

Fewer than a dozen people have climbed 9b+/5.15c, including Raboutou; just three have ascended the hardest grade, 9c/5.15d, but none of those ascents have been repeated.

The first person to climb Excalibur, Italy’s Stefano Ghisolfi, had watched numerous climbers from across the world attempt it in recent years, only to fall short.

They often reached out to him before they began their ascents. Garnbret had written him to ask about conditions and when might be the best time of year to try it, he said, and Ghisolfi kept in close touch with Raboutou as she took on the project.

He knew it was only a matter of time before she would finish it.

“Climbing is one of those sports where women and men are not that distant in terms of performance,” Ghisolfi said. “Excalibur is really hard. The hardest routes in the world are just a half-grade harder than Excalibur. In rock climbing, you can really see that the gap is closed.

“The first female 9c could even be before the first male 9c+. So the gap could even be completely closed in the future.”

Raboutou had made two trips to Arco to make the climb; after she didn’t complete it last fall, she returned in early March to begin the project again. Most days, she was at the mercy of the weather, unable to make the climb if it was too cold or wet. In March, she tried it roughly 10 times. She kept falling on the last move.

Because she was smaller than the men who had climbed it before her, she had to use different footwork; it was more of a jump and required immense energy to reach the height with proper position. Another issue was her hands numbing out – and not necessarily because of the cold. The holds would hit her fingers in the same spot, forcing her to lose circulation before the final move.

On the final day she tried it, the weather was warm. She changed her method to grab the last hold more aggressively with her thumb, which allowed her to reel into the hold and take a higher position.

“Physically, it was actually a harder way to do the move. It was worth it to be harder but more in my control. I think that made a really big difference,” she said. “When you’re on the finish, you’re like, ‘Don’t mess this up; just breathe and relax.’ And then you get to stand on top, which is really unique for a sport climb. Usually, you clip the chains and that’s the end. But that was really special to stand on top and feel all the emotions.”

Even as she reached the top of Excalibur, which at its base has a statue of a sword wedged into an anvil, Raboutou said she was processing what her climb meant for the sport. For as long as she can remember, she has felt the weight of lofty expectations.

Raboutou’s parents, Didier Raboutou and Robyn Erbesfield-Raboutou, are former world-class climbers, while her brother, Shawn Raboutou, is a professional rock climber. By the time she was a teenager, Brooke already had claimed multiple youth world championship medals.

Yet even as she developed on the indoor competition circuit, which led to Raboutou becoming the first American woman to medal in sport climbing with her silver in Paris, she still yearned to push herself in outdoor climbing and, in the process, push the boundaries of the sport.

“Outdoor climbing speaks more to me than competitions. I’m a competitive person but more with myself,” she said. “Generally, I was just alone, doing this huge goal of mine. It’s kind of silly at the same time – like, I’m waiting for a rock to dry in Italy. … But being able to push myself in that way is something that I know a lot of people don’t get to do to feel that joy, that purpose.”

Garnbret could feel purpose in her own way. While she is undisputedly the top competitive climber in the world, with two gold medals and eight world titles to her name, outdoor climbing is relatively new to her.

“There are more unpredictable things that can happen. It requires much more patience,” she said. “In the past, it was believed that some routes or boulders were too hard for women, that it’s too powerful for women. Since I started competing, I wanted to prove that it was possible.”

She attempted Excalibur one more time after she found out about Raboutou’s milestone. She came close but ran into cold weather again and was unable to complete it.

She flew back to Slovenia and began to prepare for another 9b+ climb in France, which she will attempt this summer.

But she already was thinking about what could come after that.

“The next step is 9c, so absolutely I want to find something like that, a project that I will work on for quite some years,” Garnbret said. “That’s the next logical step.”