Nathan Philips FA’s Deep Fake (8C+)

Nathan Phillips, with three 8C’ under his belt, has done the FA of Deep Fake (8C+) in Brione. ”6 years and it’s finally done!! Best feeling ever! Sitter to Fake Pamplemouse.”

Can you tell us more about the ascent, the process behind and the number of sessions needed?
I think it was around 50 sessions and maybe another 50 on my replica. 9 trips total over 6 years. I climbed the stand [Fake Pamplemousse (8A)] on my first trip to Brione in 2018 back when there was no guidebook and it was a far less popular area. I immediately saw the big ledge at the bottom which would be an obvious place to make a low start. I ended up having 2 sessions that trip to see if it felt possible and then 6 on the following trip before I had done all the moves. My beta changed several times since then but even taking that long to just do the moves meant I knew it was really hard but at least possible.

For the next 4 trips, my first session on each would end up being the best. Then every subsequent session would be better than the previous trip but not as good as that first one. Finally at the end of 2023 I decided to get really specific with training for it and ended up making serious gains on the boulder.

I had several consistently good sessions on that trip and got very close to making it through to the 8A/V11 stand start. Unfortunately the weather turned on me and I ran out of time to send it. After another unsuccessful tip in March and another solid block of specific training I came back this winter to see if I could finally do it. My first 2 session I got super close and was very confident I would do it. Then 2 not so good sessions followed… the session I eventually did it was actually terrible.

It was going really bad and I had basically decided that I had gotten too weak on one of the moves to do be able to do it. I then decided to change one thing as a last ditch effort and out of nowhere I found myself into the stand for the first time ever!

I tried to keep my cool but I started to numb out. On the penultimate move I completely missed the hold and in that moment I thought I was off. Somehow I stayed on and couldn’t quite believe that I had finally done it. All the pressure just washed away standing on top and it was honestly the best feeling I’ve had in climbing.

How hard is the sit start?
I think climbing into the start of the stand is 8C/+. It’s 3 moves of 7A/V6 and then all the difficulty is in the following 2 moves and a foot move. So 5 hand moves but I definitely count the foot move as a move.