15 Mar Zehani: 19 years and 9b

Loic Zehani close to 9b at 19 years old.

The French talent Loic Zehani has climbed Les Affranchis, 9a+/b first ascent.With almost 30 routes “9a or harder”, Loic knows very well how is made a 9th grade line. Despite his young age, he has already climbed a lot of great and hard first ascent: 15 of them are 9a or harder.

This time, he has climbed a new line in Orgon, a connection between two old lines. Loic has put a bolt in the traverse, just for checking if it could be possible to climb and, luckly, it has been. If it wouldn’t be possible to climb, he would have taken it out because they are mythical routes and he did not want to modify them: such a great thought! The two mythical lines are Sachidananda (9a+) and Bronx (8c+). The traverse could be graded around 8A boulder, really hard!

So, to schematize, we have:

6-moves 8a

A 7C + boulder approximately

an 8A boulder to arrive in “Bronx”

The exit of Bronx

In total, we have 20 movements in 9a/a + followed by 18 moves around 8b+ in Bronx.

From Loic Zehani’s IG page

AP