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Jumbo Love is a very long sport climbing route, on remote limestone cliffs on Clark Mountain in the Mojave Desert. Bolted by American climber Randy Leavitt in the 1990s, he invited Chris Sharma to attempt it in 2007. When Sharma completed the first free ascent on September 11, 2008, the route became the first-ever rock climb in history to have a confirmed grade of , and it remains an important route in the history of rock climbing.
The route has been repeated, and its grade confirmed, by a number of subsequent climbers, including French climber Seb Bouin, who made the fourth ascent on October 25, 2022. Bouin followed up his ascent by adding a direct start to the route on November 1, 2022, to create a route called Suprême Jumbo Love, which at was at that time North America's hardest rock climbing route and only the sixth-ever 9b+ sport-climbing route in history.
At the time of Sharma's ascent, Jumbo Love was one of several sport climbing routes that were proposed at the grade of . Fred Rouhling's controversial 1995 route, , was downgraded to 9a after its first repeat by Seb Bouin in 2020. Bernabe Fernandez's equally controversial 2003 route, , was later downgraded to 9a+/b after repeats by Adam Ondra and Bouin. Tommy Caldwell's 2003 route, Flex Luthor, always had caveats due to the extreme level of rock erosion (including from Caldwell himself), and was regraded to by Jonathan Siegrist in 2022. 's 2007 route, Ali Hulk Sit Start Extension, was downgraded to 9a+/b by Alex Garriga in 2021, and further downgraded to 9a by Dani Moreno in 2023. Andrada's September 2008 route, Delincuente Natural, was also downgraded to 9a on its first repeat by Jonathan Flor in 2021.
Sharma was the only rock climber of this "first potential 9b" group that would go on to climb further consensus 9b-graded sport-climbing routes in his climbing career, which he did with (2008), and Neanderthal (2009); Sharma also went on to climb at with La Dura Dura in 2013. Rouhling, Fernandez, Andrada, or Caldwell, would not climb another route with a claim of being at, or above, the grade of 9b in their careers.
The first repeat of Jumbo Love was completed almost seven years later by Ethan Pringle on May 17, 2015; his climb (and Sharma's 2008 ascent) was captured in the 2016 Reel Rock documentary film Reel Rock: Jumbo Love. American climber Jonathan Siegrist completed the third ascent on May 17, 2018, and French climber Seb Bouin made the fourth ascent on October 25, 2022. Despite being able to use kneepads, Bouin felt the 9b grade was unaffected, saying: "Jumbo Love is not just a hard line, it's a whole adventure"; at the time, Bouin had climbed 9b/9b+ and 9b+
Sharma said that after Jumbo Love he had to change his approach. His past breakthroughs had been on routes established and bolted by other climbers who had given up on them. In a 2013 interview with Rock & Ice he said: "I wanted to push myself to the next level. Where is that? I had to discover it. That was a big process in itself. So I bolted all these routes in. And a lot of them ended up being that next level". The culmination of that process would be Sharma and Adam Ondra's development and completion of La Dura Dura, the world's first-ever in 2013.
Suprême Jumbo Love has been ascended by:
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