McClure repeats Le Voyage (E10 7a) during short French trip

• Thursday 30th March 2023

Steve McClure has made a super quick repeat of the Annot classic testpiece, Le Voyage (E10 7a), during a whistle-stop trip to the South of France.

Calling in at Annot for a few days as part of his trip, Steve McClure made a trademark “skin of my teeth” two-day ascent of James Pearson’s 2017 testpiece, Le Voyage. “Can’t believe I’ve not been here before! Simply amazing. So much variation.” Steve said about Annot.

Writing about his ascent online, Steve was full of compliments about James’ route. “Wow! What a route! Managed to absolutely skin-of-teeth scrape my way up ‘Le Voyage’. This is an absolutely amazing trad route from James Pearson at Annot. One of the best in the world. 8b+. Enough gear, but spaced and pumpy to place. It feels like a real adventure. 40m long too! Just a couple of days and first lead effort, seems like my usual adopted style of only just getting it, with the odd section still barely worked out! But so much fun!”

Annot has been in the news a fair bit over the last few years since James, a columnist for Climber Magazine, made the first ascent of Le Voyage. A number of Euro-wads have visited Annot and repeated Le Voyage; remarkably the route got three ascents in a 24-hour period when Jacopo Larcher, Babsi Zangerl and Siebe Vanhee all made back-to-back repeats in June 2021.

Having topped out on Le Voyage Steve moved on from Annot up to Opeirre where he smashed out a couple of F8a+ onsights.

Climber has been in touch with Steve for more details about his ascent of Le Voyage. Likewise, Climber has also asked James for his reflections. Firstly, here’s what Steve had to say about his time at Annot, what attracted him there, how he worked Le Voyage and then ‘redpointed’ it as well as how he thinks it compares to other top ‘sport-style’ trad routes which he’s done over the years.

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Although you’re perhaps better known for your sport climbing you’ve made a number of flying visits in recent years for fast ascents of hard trad routes; Rhapsody, Choronzon, Muy Caliente, GreatNess Wall, Olympiad, Lexicon and now Le Voyage. Is this your bag now?  

I think I’ll always have the ‘sport climber’ badge, but I’ve always been equally into trad climbing. This is where I began, and I didn’t really start sport stuff till I was about 24. One really interesting point is that lots of sport climbing really helps with progression with trad climbing. I’d kind of stalled with my trad years ago, the style is often slower, there is fear, and the volume of climbing is low. Sport is totally turbo-charged; loads of volume, pushing to the limit. You learn a lot and get way fitter and stronger and can bring that back into trad, and climb way harder! 

So the hard trad routes that I’d never dreamed of doing came into view. These routes are so good to climb. I love the extra layers that the trad routes bring, with the element of risk, and figuring out the protection. But most of the routes I’ve done I’ve attacked like a sport route, I’m not on the dangerous routes. My CV is pretty sparse compared to the real masters, like James Pearson and Dave MacLeod etc.. 

So what attracted you to Annot and Le Voyage then?  

Annot is a climbing area in the South of France I’d vaguely heard of many times, but it never made it onto my radar. I really knew nothing about the area, that is actually just crazy! This year I obviously noted James Pearson’s new mega route Bon Voyage in the press and was super impressed. Reading about it of course it mentions Le Voyage, and how Le Voyage is amazing and E10/F8b+. It was the E10 route that grabbed me. I was also interested to see 'potentially' the hardest trad route in the world, of course, but realistically I knew it would be only a 'look' as opposed to any kind of actual trying! I know my place, and a route that takes James over 20 days to do I don't turn up and even make a dent in it! So this was perfect. I’d get three awesome bonuses: see the new mega route, try Le Voyage, and actually visit Annot too. 

Another two-day and “skin-off-my-teeth” ascent then; this really is becoming a habit?! Rather than “over-work” routes you clearly prefer to get on the lead as early as possible. What drives you to give routes a go as soon as possible and do you find that gives you the most reward?  

I love going for it when I genuinely don't know the outcome when I’m really going to have to battle. I’ll not try a route if there is really no chance at all, but if I think it's 50:50, or probably even less, I’ll give it my best shot. And I think many of us can give it that little extra on the send go too! That feeling when you’ve over-worked something, kind of ‘what was all the fuss about, it was easy in the end’ is something I avoid, though it seems I’ve pushed it probably a bit far in the wrong direction! Clearly, extra work is required when a route is dangerous, you don’t want a skin-of-teeth ascent! So it’s a process of weighing up risk and balancing the odds. 

Nearly all the trad routes I’ve done for quite a few years have been pretty touch and go! They all really stick in my mind, the experience really strong. I ‘think’ I’d have got away with it if I’d fallen in most cases, but occasionally have come away thinking that maybe I should have probably stacked the odds a little more in my favour! 

Can you break down the route a little, it's 40m long but must have a lot of varied climbing over that length. 

In a nutshell, it begins with a gnarly hand-jam crack, proper jamming, and tough laybacking if your jamming is rubbish. A real back-of-hand skin remover! It's maybe eight metres long, the hardest move at the top squirming into a big slot where you can lie down and ponder that you’ll most likely have to do that again! From there a few bouldery moves to a no-hands rest knee-bar, and then it really starts, decent thread (in-situ) and some really hard moves lead to some unlikely pockets and the base of the thin crack. This is the meat of the route, with maybe 10m of awesome thin crack, the odd small crimp and bad feet, protected generally by small wires and poor cams, that lead to a really hard crux…. That’s at about 2/3 height but it’s still not over with a really awkward off-hands crack at the top, that someone said could even be F7c, and I’d not argue either! That’s a real sting in the tail for sure!! 

How did the send go on Le Voyage? At least there were no 70-foot lobs off Le Voyage; that must have been a relief.  

It was an ascent of many different feelings! My first day was just the crack at the bottom in the dark, and then the next day I had two top-rope goes up, resting a lot and trying to figure out a method that would work. It’s not dot-to-dot climbing, loads of options, but none that feel really any easier than the other! But after the second go up I figured I could probably fudge my way up most of it bar the lower crux, which I might fluke through, but the higher crux I only managed once out of about 20 goes.

But even so, first thing the next day I decided to get on the lead. I know from experience that a trad route like this needs lead attempts to know how it feels on lead; placing gear is such a big part of it; body position, hold choice while placing, which side of the harness to rack etc. I also knew that if this was a sport route I would have given it a redpoint burn even with the crux after all the hard climbing still so vague, it would still be worth an effort. So I set off kind of trying, kind of on a learning go, kind of expecting to be resting on some gear, but kind of trying my best to see...

I’d made the ‘risk assessment’; it was ‘if all the gear goes in as planned, then it’s good to go, and good to fall off. There could be big falls, but I was sure that it would just be big air. The crack at the bottom felt nails, harder than in the dark! Next section I also felt tired and not flowing. I could feel my expectations dropping and kind of entered ‘ah well, let’s just press on as you’ll just learn something’. This was attempt number one, well ahead of my ‘schedule’ so there was no pressure. That probably helped and suddenly I was at the crux, thinking ‘wow, I probably won’t pull this off, but if I do I’ve done it’. Man, I certainly gave it beans, and for about two seconds as I hit the tiny crimp after the crux, I began my celebration, only for it to totally unravel as the last two moves to a jug suddenly became absolutely on the limit. Now, you’ve seen how close I’ve been to falling on quite a few trad routes, and this was by far the closest to falling off!

In comparison with other routes of a similar grade, how did it feel?  

Good question, and ironically a fair few of the routes I’ve done all feel about the same, with routes like GreatNess Wall, Lexicon, Olympiad and Le Voyage all in the F8b+ ball-park, and all taking roughly the same amount of time, but all SOO different! How cool is that? Unsurprisingly they are all about the same E grade too, give or take. Lexicon is a notch up on danger, maybe Greatness Wall too.

You were in Annot with James Pearson and he gave you the low-down on Bon Voyage. How does that look?  

Bon Voyage looks mega. It’s really unlikely, linking a couple of bigger features that draw the line out of Le Voyage all the way to an amazing arete. I can see why James spotted the challenge… but the features are far apart, with the route taking a slightly rising traverse right across the wall. I had the privilege of James showing me the route close up on abseil, to inspect those holds and moves in detail. That was special like being shown something of incredible importance! Impressive, James has nailed something very hard for sure!

My intention from this trip was to have a look at the route… I guess if it had really grabbed me I’d have perhaps got involved, but it was as expected just a look! The first impression was hard! Those holds are small! The gear is ‘enough’ if placed, but it’s the difficulty that stands out. Looks like F9a or maybe even more. It’s also pretty reachy, spanning sideways between awful pockets with zero in between. I don’t like playing the ‘short arse’ card, but for this one, it’s probably pretty valid, and basically, I didn’t fancy my chances!    

What else do you have your eye on for this year?  

It’s just March now, and the last few years have just unfolded in front of me.. so I’m just in it for the ride! But I’ve a personal target of reaching my 1000’s F8a, which if I pull my finger out I might manage before 2024! 

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James Pearson also gave his thoughts on Steve’s ascent.

Is it satisfying to see your two routes getting some love and Le Voyage getting repeated?

Yeah, it's super satisfying to see your routes getting repeated especially when climbers come down and are so complimentary about the routes themselves, the quality, and the experience they had up there; it makes it all worth it.

Tells us about Steve’s ascent; was that, for example, one of the fastest ascents yet of Le Voyage?

It’s the fastest ascent I’ve seen personally for sure although there has been a number of ascents recently so whilst I’m not totally sure if Steve’s is the actual fastest. His ascent was really, really impressive though; I think he had so much more to give than the route demanded, but we are talking about Steve McClure here!!

It was obvious that Steve’s beta wasn’t as well refined as it could have been having only really been on the route for one day previously – discounting having done the low crack on the day previous. Interestingly, he used plenty of alternative beta. I’ve never seen anyone else climb the route that way before; most people tend to do it in the same way with just two variations for the upper crux. Steve was really completely different the whole way up the route which obviously worked very well for him as he’s quite small but light and with very strong fingers.

Any personal thoughts on Steve’s ascent?

The thing that touched me the most is that although Steve has climbed in a lot of places all around the world, and although he’s well-known for being a sport climber, he’s an incredible trad climber as well having probably done more hard trad routes in the hard sport/redpoint style than anybody else so to have him say that the route is of such high quality – probably one of the best routes he’s ever done – was pretty awesome! It confirmed to me that Annot is a pretty special place and those two routes are really cool and really special but it’s really nice when someone openly says that to you.

Watch James’ first ascent of Le Voyage below…