Caroline Ciavaldini does La Voie Petit 8b MP at 3 500 m in Chamonix

Caroline Ciavaldini reports with a wonderful story that she has done her long time project, La Voie Petit 8b MP at 3 500 m in Chamonix. - I have been compeeting for 10 years in the climbing lead world cups, I have won, made podiums. But there is a world between an 8min exercice on artificial walls and free climbing a vertical or overhanging wall of granite above a glacier. So when I set myself for the route last year, I made a plan : I had to learn all the skills that I missed, and the list was long, from walking on ice with crampons to climbing very, very far above your last protection, with the knowledge that injury would be the likely result of a fall. And I trained, for a full year, with my goal in my mind every morning when I woke up. I had set myself a few rules, because big wall climbing is full of shades of grey, and you are the only one who shall decide on limits : I could count on my indefectible partner, James Pearson, my husband and best climbing partner, to support me and belay me. But it was my project, and I would be the only one to first recognise the movements of the route, to place the rope in dangerous sections.