Pietro Vidi repeats Permanent Midnight Low (Font 8C+)
- Monday 8th September 2025
Italian climber Pietro Vidi has made the 2nd ascent of the boulder Permanent Midnight Low at Val de Bagnes, in Fionnay, Switzerland. This low start to the existing Font 8A+ problem, Permanent Midnight, was first climbed by Clément Lechaptois in May of this year, with a proposed grade of Font 8C+.
The low start adds several hard, powerful and draining moves utilising undercut holds, thus adding significant difficulty to the original line. Vidi dedicated time over multiple trips to working the boulder, totalling around 10 sessions, before finally sending the boulder on the last day of August.
Pietro commented, “It feels so good to be back on some hard stuff! Lately, I’ve stepped back from bouldering to explore other aspects of climbing, nice to see I haven’t lost it! My ambitious aim was to try and pull this one off quickly, in a single trip, but conditions and fitness were pretty hard to manage.
In the end, I actually enjoyed getting dragged back into the same old circle of obsession. It’s probably my hardest boulder so far, even though it’s my absolute style (pure bicep power with really bad feet) it took me around 10 sessions to finally link it, falling way too many times on the last easier moves, making for quite a mental battle!”
Pietro’s repeat of Permanent Midnight Low is the latest hard climb to succumb to his recent rampage on rock. In the last 12 months, the 22-year-old has cemented himself among the best all-round climbers in the world, with ascents including the hard trad route Tribe (E11?) in Cadarese, Italy, that was first climbed by Jacopo Larcher in 2019. He followed this up with the second free ascent of the big wall route Lurking Fear (5.13c) on El Capitan in Yosemite, USA, twenty-five years after the first free ascent by Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden. And finally, a fast repeat of the multipitch Histoire Sans Fin (8b+) on Petit Clocher du Portalet in Switzerland (click here to read about that).