Le Voyage gets more repeats from Le Nevé and Buhl

• Sunday 26th November 2023

French climbers Melissa Le Nevé and Fabi Buhl have both made quick repeats of James Pearson’s Annot classic, Le Voyage.

For a top route, Le Voyage has seen a fair number of ascents recently; this year alone Le Voyage has been repeated by five climbers prior to Le Nevé and Buhl ticking the route. Following James Pearson’s first ascent, Le Voyage has now seen a further twelve ascents from Siebe Vanhee, Jacopo Larcher, Babsi Zangerl, Symon Welfringer, Jonas Schild, Steve McClure, Ignacio Mulero, Seb Berthe, Robbie Phillips, Caroline Ciavaldini, Melissa Le Nevé and Fabi Buhl.

Earlier this month Caroline Ciavaldini, James Pearson’s wife, made the first female ascent. That was her first E10 and the first time that E10 had been climbed by a mum. Melissa Le Nevé’s ascent therefore is the second female ascent of the route.

Although Le Nevé has climbed F9a on sport – famously, she made the first female ascent of Action Direct in 2020 – Le Nevé’s experience doesn’t include a lot of trad. Like most of the ascents thus far, Le Nevé top-roped Le Voyage prior to leading it. Writing about her ascent on Instagram afterwards she compared the difficulty of Le Voyage to the routes at Ceuse saying, ‘..it felt a bit easier than some 8b [5.13d] there. And if the crux problem was in Fontainebleau, it will be probably around 6c [V5]. It’s possible the holds get better over time with this very smooth sandstone. I didn’t feel like I could get injured if I fall and it brought me this really nice feeling of control over engagement. It felt actually pretty safe if you are able to place gear well.’

Fabi Buhl also commented on the grade saying, ‘I have not climbed a huge number of trad routes with E grades , but the one’s I’ve climbed were graded also E9/E10 and felt much more committing than Le Voyage as you actually could hit the deck. In Le Voyage you have plenty of gear and basically never take a grounder. I would say it is a classic 8b on trad gear.’

Following his write-up on Instagram James Pearson added his own thoughts both on Fabi’s experience and comments as well as E-grades and dangers of trad climbing saying, ‘E grades can seem weird when you don’t have much experience, but it’s all about the combination between the difficulty (physical / technical) and the danger. eGrader does a really good job of showing you how it works. Deck out potential alone doesn’t really mean anything… you can deck from plenty of E1’s, and you can equally have an E10+ that is as safe as a sport route if the physical difficulty is high enough. Le Voyage would get a 2 on the eGrader danger scale (this means run out with slim chance of injury). For some context, a 1 would be a very standard feeling trad climb, with loads of gear whenever you want it, 3 would be something where an injury (not necessarily life threatening) is likely, and 4 is certain death or severe life changing injury. Once you have that, plus an idea of the sport grade, you can use it to work out an E Grade. Obviously, people’s perception of fear and danger is fairly subjective, so take it all with a pinch of salt 🤣'

Check out Fabi and Melissa's posts on Instagram for more details.