New 9A boulder for Charles Albert
Charles Albert has made the first ascent of L'Ombre du Voyageur (The Traveler's Shadow), in Salève, Haute-Savoie, in the French Prealps. He has graded the boulder 9A.
Charles Albert, also known as Barefoot Charles, has added three difficult moves to the start of his own, unrepeated, La revolutionnaire, ~8C, at Gros Sablons, Fontainebleau. These moves he suggest bumps the difficulty up to ~8C+, which, if confirmed would make it the first of that grade in the area. As always he climbed it without shoes.
© Charles Albert coll.
Charles told Fanatic climbing It adds 3 difficult moves to the obvious start and it takes me 2 sessions for climbing it with this new start addition. It's classical roof climbing, the only particular thing is a kneebar. It's a 10 moves problem before finishing your effort in a blue circuit boulder.
One of Charles' creations, the direct version of Le pied à coulisse, given ~8B+ but thought by many to be a lot harder to climb with shoes, was repeated recently by Nalle Hukkataival, who confirmed the grade.
To my question "Barefoot?", he replied "Bare hands!", so apparently there was a way.
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