Trip Tip Tonic (9a) by Maho Normand (17)

Maho Normand, who last month did his first 9a+, has repeated Cedric Lo Piccolo’s Trip tik tonik (9a) in Gorges du Loup, which was set up as an 8c/+.

Do you know why it was upgraded to 9a?
Originally, the route had 2 sika crimps in the crux. When one of them broke, the climber Guillaume Lebret imagined other movements that could be done without the 2nd sika ruler that remained! As a result, the route outfitter Cédric Lo Piccolo decided to break the 2nd sika ruler and re-chained the route in its new version. Trip Tik Tonik has thus become one of the most beautiful natural 9a’s.

Can you tell us more about your ascent?
Second 9! So much emotion! After chaining Sachidananda (9a+) I felt better than ever! For once I finally took pleasure in trying hard routes, working them to finally manage to tick it off! This pleasure was such that I set myself goals for this year on the cliff! The first was to chain trip tik tonic! By definition it is a very natural king line!! The route is long and begins with a resistance start in 8b/+, then follows directly with a good, really cool and hard boulder in the endurance! After that it’s in the head and in the forearms, an 8b of 20 meters to run to clip the relay of this long base of about 70 movements according to the methods!

From the bottom it is really impressive and it immediately caught my attention when Jules Marchand did it last year! I also had to film it and this was very useful to me! I arrived with all the methods, knowing almost by heart! The first session allowed me to fix it to perfection, my second to put in a few runs and to approve the route and the end so to not make any mistake in the sequence! And today after a good warm-up and a climb in the route! I put in a run and finally passed the middle crux and managed to manage the last part well!! It’s really fun, training pays off! Place for the many next projects, the mustache 9a+, casimono 9a. Thank you to my family and my coaches!!