Hugo Parmentier does Papichulo (9a+)

Hugo Parmentier, with 13 routes 9a to 9b under his belt, has repeated Chris Sharma’s Papichulo (9a+) in Oliana. (c) William Barcello – PhotoVertical.com

Can you tell us more about the ascent and the long trip coming up?
So basically we build a van all the autumn till mid january. The plan is to go climbing during a whole year in France and neigbour countries with my girlfriend Tess. We started the trip to Oliana and stayed there for 1 month and a half. We needed to get back to real climbing after 3 months of tiring work in the garage to make our new home.

I went back to Papichulo which I tried a lot over 1 month and a half last winter. This route is pretty far from my usual hard projects choices as it’s super long, resistant and requires the ability to rest and poor holds and climb on sustain climbing for ever. It has been such a hard process last year getting stuck for something like 20 tries in the second move after the main rest. Making almost no progression was so hard mentaly. This year having a real “home” and lot of time ahead helped a lot! I gave basically 1 try a day and then climb other thing to keep my motivation high! Thanks to Laura Rogora’s beta. I could skip the cross move that kept me falling last year! Then I could progress on pretty much every try that led to the damn Sennnnd !!!

Pretty cool we share the send try with my parents for their first day a the cliff and with close Friends! Such an interesting experience on this route that began to teach me patience. Really glad for the people I met there and the whole experience eventhough it was tough.