Oriane Bertone at Fontainebleau frees her first 8C boulder problem

With disarming ease Oriane Bertone has made the first ascent of what, if confirmed, is her first 8C boulder problem, Satan I Helvete low start at Fontainebleau in France. The 15-year-old climber from the Reunion Island had set new standards in 2018 when, aged a mere 12, she climbed her first 8B+. Now she’s made a new personal best and, in doing so, has reached the apex of women’s bouldering by adding a low start to the classic 2003 Dave Graham problem.

The first woman to climb 8C was America’s Ashima Shiraishi who in 2016 repeated Horizon at Mount Hiei in Japan, while in 2018 Germany’s Katrin Lehmann repeated Kryptos at Morchelstock in Switzerland. Earlier this year Japan’s Mishka Ishi, aged a mere 13, became the youngest woman in the world to claim this grade in sending Byaku-dou established by Dai Koyamada at Mt. Hourai, while the fourth to do so now is the Youth Lead and Boulder World Champion. With disarming ease. Check out there video clip below and see for yourself.

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{"Satan I Helvete low start" — 8c} This trip in lockdown in Fontainebleau taught me much more than I expected. During this quarantine, my motivation suddenly went down. It was surely the hardest month of training I’ve never experienced. But thanks to that, I’ve learned that progress is the only real objective I must have. Become and relive each day, renew and reinvent yourself with new shades of color on our canvas. Simply progress, move forward and keep your head up high. Dare to accept yourself as you are. Dare to accept being kneaded, molded and shaped with defaults and qualities, and that perfection and achievement of results doesn’t simply mean accomplishment. Accomplishment is the accumulation, the acceptance that our falls, our adjustments, our fears, our doubts, our abandonments and our surpassings are neither useless nor lost. That the way taken may be the right one, and that the longest path sometimes hides more treasures than the shortest path. It is thanks to all these stages, these stops, these injuries, these fears, tears and these questions that each in his own way progresses and advances. Here is "Satan I Helvete" my very first 8c and long-standing project. During this journey, I did some wonderful boulders that I’ll surely post later Everything obviously wouldn’t have been possible without the support of my family, my friends and my sponsors, thank you so much for your incredible work and your big involvement, I’ll never be able to thank you enough ! @scarpafrance @e9clothing_official @team_edelrid @verticalartclimbing @basaltevolution @zer0_3000

A post shared by OяıΔηε Βεяτoηε (@oriane_bertone) on May 27, 2020 at 6:48am PDT