The belgian Sébastien Berthe successfully climbs the 12-pitch route „La Voie Petit“ (450m, 8b) at Grand Capucin. The route has also second free female ascent owith Caroline Ciavaldini and Nina Caprez. The route opened by Arnaud Petit and Stéphanie Bodet in 1997 and freed by Alex Huber in 2005 .

„I have been thinking about this 13 pitches-attractive-route born in 1997 from @arnaudpetit_climb for few years now, and I feel so happy that I sent it on my first go.  I was quite close from the onsight but slipped in the first 7b pitch and fell at the very last move on the 8b crux pitch… But still, I was pretty satisfied with my climbing as I onsighted all the other pitches including the 8a and the 7c+! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

With Eric Berthe, my father, this was a flash alpitourism passage in the Mont-Blanc massif. As we had a really short good weather window, I could not prepare myself as planned and went directly with my brand new ice axe for the „voie Petit“ even if I had not recovered my skin from Céüse and without any acclimatization. I can tell you, the battle against the altitude, the skin and the cold was epic! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

We started pretty late in the day and had to sleep in the route finishing it 22hours later (having climbed all the pitches on lead) just right before the weather got bad.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Can’t wait for the next multipitch fight.“

Last year Sébastien Berthe climbs free the legendary “Nose” at El Capitan in Yosemite. He started ground up and reached the exit with his partner Loic Debry after eight days