Mark Brand ticks Le Pilier du Désert assis (8C)

Mark Brand has repeated Michiel Nieuwenhuijsen’s Le Pilier du Désert assis (8C) in Fontainebleau. Interestingly, the 27-year-old has had a very steady progress for ten years straight, not counting Covid 2020, and last year he sent The Big Island (8C). ” Happy with this one! Such a good line. Big props to Michiel for the FA. Ended up using Jonas's beta but using a heel instead for the first moves.”

Can you tell us more about the ascent?
Last time I was in Font I decided to take a look at Pilier du Desert and instantly knew that it was something I´d like to try. It is quite a striking feature and the big compression style nature of the boulder was something that would probably suit me well. So this trip it became the main objective. The boulder has been done in quite a few different ways now. Quite quickly I realized Jonas´s beta would suit me best as I wasn´t a big fan of taking the pocket with the right hand. By starting with a heel or toe on the left (in my case a heel) you can go to the pocket with the left and take a hold further to the right. This way the compression is even bigger with a bigger jump at the end. I did play around with a completely different beta for the middle part, but this ended up being too low percentage.

The go I did the boulder was a classic one more go situation. I was already deep into the session, almost ready to leave. But I had just dropped the last jump twice, so I had to have one more go. I put a bit of pressure on myself and hyped myself up a bit before setting off and found myself on top of the boulder a minute later.

How can you best explain your continuous and steady progress over the last ten years?
Through my youth career lead competitions were the main focus with a bit of bouldering for fun. A couple of years ago I noticed that although I had the fitness I didn´t have the strength to really compete at the worldcups. I decided to take a year and fully focus on bouldering to build this strength. The idea was to get back into lead climbing after, but this never happened haha. Over the last few years the focus on competing at first but I started to transition into outdoor climbing more and more. I have just been training consistently over this period with a power based focus, for example climbing more on spraywalls and boards. This has definitely been beneficial for climbing outside. As I got stronger I have seen quite linear progression outdoors. Climbing my first 8A+ in 2021 and my first 8C last year. It would be great to continue this trend :), but we'll see.