James Pearson shares his thoughts on grading Bon Voyage E12

James Pearson made the FA of Bon Voyage in Annot in in February. He did not grade but compared it to 9a sport routes. (c) Raphaël Fourau

”This route took me longer than any other route or boulder I’ve ever tried. Both in terms of days actively trying it and time preparing myself for it (~ 20 days over 2 years and 10 redpoints). I spent more actual redpoint attempts on this than on Tribe, and all of my other 9a sport routes. I had to train specifically on a fingerboard to be able to do the moves and link the intense, fingery crux section. Around the same time I made the first ascent, I climbed a couple of 9a's in a similar length and style. These took me around 4 sessions and 4 to 5 redpoints."(c) Raphaël Fourau

Now, he has made a statement where he suggest E12, meaning that it is the hardest graded trad route in the world using the British grading system which also includes how dangerous the route is. The only other E12 suggested was made by James some 15 years ago but which was later downgraded to E9. We asked him if he also could elaborate on a grade for Bon Voyage using the French system?

The short answer is I don’t know because I don’t feel capable to grade that precisely in French sports grades at that level. From my own experience on my hardest routes, I’ve got at least 1 grade of error in both directions, depending on whether the style suits me, if the conditions are good/bad etc etc, and this is one of the reasons I haven’t given it a simple sport grade. After having enjoyed showing some other climbers the route, seeing them struggle with certain sections, but also find alternative methods that might be easier than what I did, it confirmed even more that climbing is so subjective. I've seen people I consider to be far stronger than I struggle on the same move for a month, and others skip holds that I couldn’t have fathomed not using. I can now say that Bon Voyage is definitely “morpho", but not only in the way I originally expected (arm span between pockets). The pockets (especially those in the crux) are very small, and your finger size (and strength) plays a huge role in how comfortable you might find each move. If your fingers fit, you can hold the hold quite deeply, as a side pull, which gets you a lot closer to the next hold. If they don’t, you have to crimp the hold with your tip, which is harder and much worse on the skin. A hypothetical climber with strong, small fingers who climbs a lot in places with shallow pockets will undoubtably find the route easier than somebody with big sausages who climbs mainly on slopers and edges! That’s very much stating the obvious, but is something I feel we often forget - grading seems like it often follows the lowest opinion (could be a harsh view on grades, or a climber who really suits the route) rather than grading for the “average/all round” climber.

Is it fair to speculate that Bon Voyage is at least 9a R?
Regarding your grade calculations, If you put those numbers into eGrader, 9a with 2.5 d points makes hard E12, For it to be E11, it would have to be 8c (assuming the D point stays the same), as 8c+ D2.5 would be easy E12. I feel more confident assessing the potential danger of a route, because (and I know this might sound bizarre) I find it less subjective. Grading the physical/ technical difficulty of a climb relies on so many exterior factors. Body morphology is one very important thing, but also the climber's own style, as well as their strengths and weaknesses all play, a huge role in how easy or hard a particular climb, at a particular grade might feel. Assessing the danger of a route also has a lot of factors, but these are less dependent on the actual climber, provided the climber is able to see the difference between a situation that is dangerous and a situation that is just scary. I know there are a lot of climbers out there who are unable to climb even a few metres above a good bolt because of the psychological element, and the way things feel can have a huge impact on the way we perform. I think I'm personally pretty able to remove the emotional attachment that we have to danger and look at things fairly objectively. If a fall is big, but not dangerous, it doesn’t matter to me if the runout is 2m, 5m, or even 10m, I actually quite like taking really big falls (Rhapsody is an amazing route for this), but as soon as things become dangerous (and there are obviously many levels of danger, from potentially twisting an ankle, all the way up to certain death), I force myself to climb in a more controlled way due to the potential consequences, and at some point I can no longer justify taking the risk.