Do you remember the first 9A boulder?
No, not Nalle Hukkataivals Burden of Dreams, the one in Font.
No, not No Kpote Only. Nicolas Pelorson downgraded that.
No, not Soudain Seul. Nicolas Pelorson downgraded that too (a one-man war to keep V17 out of The Forest)
The year was 2012. The climber was 55 year old Jean-Pierre Bouvier. And the grade was 9A FbT (Font Boulder Traverse). For those of you who don’t know, there exist two Font bouldering grades – one for boulders and one for traverses, though the latter has fallen farther and farther out of style over the last few decades. What’s also important to know is that these grades are “easier” on average than the same number Font Boulder grade, that is, Font-Traverse 9A is ~V13, not V17.
Yes, a 55 year-old Frenchman climbing 9A while the mighty Chris Sharma only climbed 8C! But I didn’t come here to talk about arcane climbing grades (UIAA is coming for you). I came here to talk about the other reason the major climbing media turned up their noses. His 9A was Four rie – aller/retour. Those of you who speak French already know what that means, but let me translate: “aller” – to go, “retour” – return, so “aller retour” means, roughly, “round trip”.
That’s right folks, you climb the boulder left to right, its 8B+, right to left its 8C, and if you go out then back again, BAM, 9A. Why do I bring this up in 2021? Because recently there have been a number of hard hard lines going down that I could never do, but also strike me as kinda silly if I’m honest. If I were to do similar lines at my local crag, they’d be a lark, something done for getting fit, not even deserving of a name. Then again, they also wouldn’t be V14 or even harder. Does the grade of something influence our decision to call it a contrivance?
First up, Drew Ruana’s Shame on a Knee Extension. A wild line that punches out a steep roof to the lip, traverses, and then heads back into the roof to regain the long continuous rail one could have traversed to get to the same spot (albeit without all the V14 bit in the middle).
Our second example of some “out and back” action is Matt Fultz’s Warp Speed. Those with a keen eye will recognize this as the same roof as the famously hard James Litz line, Warpath. Warp Speed represents the hardest linkup possible in the roof, and by that we mean traverses left directly off the start, up, and then traverses left-to-right across the upper part of the wall (basically Warpath in reverse) before rolling up and out the right side of the roof to top out almost directly above the start.
In 2012 when J-P Bouvier did his 9A aller-retour, there was a somewhat snide article in the US media, which thankfully I can no longer find. Somewhat mockingly saying, roughly, “clearly we’re all doing it wrong if a 55 year-old is climbing in circles, 2 grades harder than the rest of us”. The comments over on 8a weren’t much kinder. I say, everything else in life is a round trip, and climbing is a silly contrivance anyway – why not have fun with it. If that’s not convincing, remember physics – if you end where you started, the net amount of work done is zero, so you’ll never get tired!
If only we knew in 2012 that J-P’s roundtrips weren’t a relic of an time gone by, but were in fact a snapshot of the future of hard climbing. In honor of his prescience, check out this clip of him rocking the out-and-back at nearly 60, at grades us mortals might even be able to achieve! Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go snag the FA of the Lynn Hill Traverse from left to right to left again.