BURSTSwiss climber Katherine Choong has repeated the famous Swiss route Ravage at Chuensibert, the first climb to ever be graded 8b (5.14b) after the first ascent by Antoine Le Menestrel. Some have since suggested it’s 5.14a/b, but Choong noted it’s a soft 5.14b.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first ascent, completed in 1986 by Le Menestrel, who famously “won the race” to the first ascent against the route’s bolter, Wenzel Vodicka, who would later claim the second ascent.
Ravage also carried personal significance. The third ascent, achieved three years later, was made by Philippe Steulet, a climber from Choong’s region of Switzerland. She had known him personally before his fatal accident on the Eiger. And with the route located at Chuensiberg in northern Switzerland, only 30 minutes from her home, she felt she had little excuse not to finally give it a try.
The reality of the climb was far from welcoming, as Choong notes that Ravage is only about t10 metres long, but it is brutally intense, with extremely polished footholds. Choong admits that her first experience on the route was not love at first sight. “I honestly didn’t like it at all,” she recalls. Many of the moves felt too reach-dependent and therefore impossible for her.
Over time, however, she gradually unlocked the sequence, and spent countless sessions refining the moves, adapting techniques to suit her height, and repeatedly falling on the same crux move, “dynamic,” as she jokes, at least when you’re under 1.60 metres tall with a short reach.
On May 2, after years of fascination and months of effort, she finally clipped the chains. “Without a kneepad, of course,” she said. In that moment, she felt she finally understood the meaning behind the route’s name. Antoine Le Menestrel had called it Ravage, and after her ascent the name suddenly made perfect sense.
“After climbing, there are no more thoughts left. No overthinking,” she says. “At the top, I felt destroyed and happy. No thoughts remained. I felt free.” Later, while returning to film additional footage, she unexpectedly climbed the route again.
On 8a.nu, she wrote, “8b+/c hard (or soft 8c?) What a route! I’m not used to climbing such short, brutal routes with polished footholds. But in the end, I absolutely loved the effort.”
Choong on Ravage
The post Katherine Choong Climbs World’s First-Ever 5.14b appeared first on Gripped Magazine.