Petzl Roc Trip

La Fouche with his party smile

The medical team fixing a burner on Said Belhaj

Dani Andrada onsights an 8a+ 'Soft'

Edu Marin on the same 8a+

Petzl has for some years now organized several Roc Trips, which are like climbing festivals with part of the focus on all night long parties. Petzl has almost 100 people preparing the festivals, which includes putting up new routes with fixed carabiners, organizing food, shows and parties. 8a asked to get an invitation and the founder of the event, La Fouche, picked us up at the airport. His concept for the Roc trip is simple: Invite some true life-style climbers, put up some nice new routes and prepare for party...then it can't go wrong. - We don't want to make it competitive and instead we try to create a nice atmosphere where the best climbers can challenge themselves. Desperately we tried to sell some banner space but he just kept talking about his passion and getting interrupted by phone calls. La Fouche has tried the international competition arena and he knows: 1. Climbers want to see other climbers climb, 2. Climbers want to climb a lot and 3. Climbers want to party. As celebrities such as Chris Sharma, David Graham, Dani Andrada and Lynn Hill come back year after year, it seems as if he knows what he is talking about.

Normally they have an 'ultimate route' with prize money and fixed ropes for the photograpers and this year the 8c+ respectively 8b were completed by Kleman Becan, Chris Sharma, Charlotte Durif, Martina Cufar and Lynn Hill. Sharma did the route on his eigth climbing day in a row and I think this just prooves that he is a long way from spending endless days in competition isolations climbing single routes. On his ninth day we met him together with Graham at the crag. They had checked out some new 80 m walls in Gorges du Tarn and it does not take long before Chris's eyes are all over the place. - What kind of routes are up there? - I guess some 6c's and 7a's, his girfriend responds. - Wow, we have to climb them. So you see that this guy doesn't like restdays... - Ok, let's do the routes barefoot without ropes as I did in the old days (his look-a-like father smiles).

Chris is on his way back to USA where he will set up some climbing camps for children. This autumn he will go back to Mallorca where he has a DWS project that has already had him swimming about 100 times. Apparently, there is a super dyno halfway and then some hard moves on the 52-mover. They swim out in the morning with loads of chalk bags loaded in a dry pack. Then he goes to Kalymnos for the next Roc Trip and the perfect life continues...

Graham is on his 30+ restday due to an injury and soon everybody is checking his injury and giving advices. He has yet another month of frustrating recovery days and if he is lucky he can at least belay his girlfriend. - I'm truly very sorry that I haven't continued the relay interview, he says, but I have a plan... (8a runs a relay interview where celebrities are interacting and David got the stick from Natalija Gros.)

The womens 'ultimate route' was done by Charlotte Durif (15), Martina Cufar (29) and Lynn Hill (45). Lynn says that lately she trains at her maximimum capacity once a week and I ask how this is possible. Pointing at her head, she says - It is all in your mind, and she smiles. Lynn runs some training clinics each year and I feel that I might have use for a mental brainwash as well. - So let's say you also focus on physical training, what could you then achive? - I have seen a nice looking 8c+ in Rifle and I might just start projecting that route this autumn. Somebody carries around her 3-year-old child and I think 'Superwoman'.

I guess that can also be said about Charlotte who, three days later, won the European Championship in Russia. The thing that makes it even more interesting is that she had been training and travelling for 15 days in a row, instead of preparing with restdays like her competitors. With such a lifestyle climbing filosophy I guess she can turn into a perfect role-model. Strangely, Charlotte has recieved a lot of critiscism in France from guys who don't beleive her ascents and accuses her for poor ethics. I talked to her father, who in fact plays an important role in most of Charlottes climbing, and he said that they had stopped reading open forums. Last day, Charlotte did get very frustrated missing some 8a's and contrary to the rumours her father was very supportive. Regarding the ethics, apparently they did not know all the 'regulations' when Charlotte was only13 but they have been and still are learning and I answered some of his question on what 8a thinks is a correct practice for onsight etc.

Unfourtunately, there are not so many pictures from the Roc Trip and this is because we thought that Petzl would present some on their website, which we could use. Strangely, there are very few out there on the web and this is actually the first article presented in english from the event. I guess that la Fouche focuses on making high quality festivals and in the long run this will pay itself because then they get free good-will articles like this instead of having to buy banners from 8a ;-)