Adam Ondra makes second ascent of Bon Voyage (E12)

• Sunday 18th February 2024

During a short trip to Annot, Adam Ondra has made the second ascent of Bon Voyage confirming both the quality and difficulty of the James Pearson testpiece.

Bon Voyage, the considerably bigger and harder version of his earlier route Le Voyage, was climbed – but left ungraded – in early 2023 by Climber columnist, James Pearson. Taking James a substantive 20 days in total, considerably more than it took him to repeat Tribe – Jacopo Larcher’s trad testpiece at Cadarese, Italy – James finally offered a grade of E12 for Bon Voyage in the late autumn. (Click here for that report.)

Ever since he made the first ascent of Bon Voyage James has been super keen for other top climbers to get on his route and try it. Top of James’ list was Adam Ondra; in early February and after some collaboration with James, Adam travelled to Annot with the specific intent to try Bon Voyage.

Having spent the day with him, James described how Adam’s first day on Bon Voyage went: “We spent the morning trying the crux section. Adam climbed with fluidity and grace, making light work of most moves, but what impressed me most is that he didn’t find all of them easy (some didn’t suit him) yet he was quickly able to find alternative methods, either through creativity, or just digging really deep! In the afternoon he switched to ‘lead working sessions’ (basically like red-pointing, except there are no bolts here to help you), and was completely at ease running it out, jumping off, taking big test falls, pulling back up, and trying again.”

Rain then hampered progress forcing Adam to spend time on the limestone at both Gorge du Loup and Buoux. Being the climber that he is Adam wasn’t blown off course too much and was able to make a quick repeat of Dai Koyamada’s Inga at Deverse. Originally given F8c+/9a Adam’s thought this was F9a without a kneepad of hard F8c+ with. A day later Adam investigated Brilliant Sonne, a new sector at Buoux, where he on-sighted Brialliant Saoul (F8c) and Finement con F8b+.

When the weather improved Adam was able to return to Annot and Bon Voyage where he made quick progress and made the second ascent on Bon Voyage in a further two days. Posting the news of his repeat online Adam said; “I am very happy and proud to make the 2nd ascent of this James Pearson’s @onceuponaclimb masterpiece 👌”

Although Adam has dedicated his life to hard climbing he hasn't done as much trad climbing. However, his overall experience helped him both climb and assess the difficulty of Bon Voyage. After his ascent Adam had this to say about Bon Voyage; “Not that I am an expert in trad climbing, but it could be (physically) the hardest route on trad gear in the world. It took me 3 days of work, and I had to really put up a fight. The route felt challenging in many different ways, and apart from being very runout (but probably safe), it has some very hard (and odd!) moves where you really need to be a very complex climber 🤜🤛”

Adam was full of praise for James’ route too; “It is hands down one of the best routes I have ever climbed, and it is a true miracle that there are just enough holds to make it climbable and enough gear to make it runout, but safe. Grade-wise, I think if it was bolted, it would be very solid and specific 9a 👊 Placing the gear makes it a little more physically difficult and adds some extra spice 😎”

Whilst Adam is a sport climbing specialist it’s worth remembering that he has climbed a number of hard routes on traditional gear – including routes on Czech sandstone. He also made a super-fast repeat, the only so far, of The Dawn Wall in Yosemite. As usual, a video will be released of Adam climbing Bon Voyage in the near future so stay tuned in for that.