Sébastien Berthe flashes Le Voyage (E10 7a)
- Thursday 13th April 2023
Le Voyage (E10 7a/F8b+) at Annot is back in the news with three more ascents coming in quick succession including one of the hardest-ever flashes of a trad route from the in-form Belgian, Sébastien Berthe.
Annot and James Pearson’s in-vogue trad masterpiece Le Voyage seems to be attracting massive attention with no less than five ascents this year. Following ascents from Steve McClure and Ignacio Mulero, the latest round of ascents has included Robbie Phillips, Mathieu Miquel and Sébastien Berthe.
The latest ascent from Sébastien Berthe is arguably the most impressive given Seb flashed the route using beta from Robbie Phillips and Mathieu Miquel; Seb’s flash is one of the hard trad flashes ever achieved.
Sébastien Berthe has increasingly been in the news in recent years; not only for wearing outlandish clothes - pink lycra tights included – but for getting involved with very hard routes at the world’s top climbing destinations. A year ago Seb – along with Siebe Vanhee – spend 23 days on an unsuccessful attempt to repeat The Dawn Wall in Yosemite. Taking the positive from that, however, Seb said, “I probably showed the best climbing of my life and could send the first 13 pitches (which could be by itself the hardest multi-pitch I've climbed). But I also had my biggest failure ever, falling on the very last move of pitch 14.”
In January this year, and after 14 sessions, Seb successfully repeated La Rambla (F9a+) at Siurana. That being said, you might well think that Seb has been on a crushing run all winter but that actually isn’t the case as six weeks ago Seb partially ruptured his MCL ligament in an aggressive Egyptian move whilst attempting Seb Bouin’s Les yeux plus gros que l'antre (F9a+/b) at Russan.
However, Seb had this to say about it, “Weirdly, I was almost happy about it: finally a good excuse and opportunity to only focus on training my fingers and upper body strength. Indeed I've been living in Font and spending time on the rock for the past few months and have been struggling to find true motivation for a proper training cycle in the gym.
So I just spent one month of training with quite a big load: hangboard, campusing, weightlifting,... 5 or 6 days a week! My body has adapted quite well and I was surprised how much load it could accept.”
Clearly, the training paid off massively; having dropped into St Leger to get back into the rock groove, Seb continued up to Annot where he flashed Le Voyage.
Reporting his ascent on Instagram Seb said, “Wow... I flashed Le Voyage (E10-8b+) in Annot 😳⚡🥳
Climbing flowly, for the first time, on this sandstone unbolted wall, was probably one of my best experiences as a climber.
What a feeling to clip the anchor of this amazing 40m-line!”
Seb promised to share more info about his ascent and Robbie was on-hand videoing Seb’s flash ascent and will be releasing a video on his YouTube Channel downstream.
Seb’s flash of Le Voyage at E10 7a/F8b+, is now one of the hardest-ever flashes of a trad route. Previously Alex Megos flashed The Path (5.14a R/F8b+) at Back of The Lake, Lake Louise, Canada. Like Le Voyage, The Path is said to be E10 7a. The hardest flash of a sport route, by comparison, is Adam Ondra’s 2018 flash of Supercrackinette (F9a+) at St Leger.