SAMAYA x KILIAN MONI
ÉTAT DE CHOC AND AVE CÉSAR AU PETIT CLOCHER
Kilian Moni, his sister Elona and their friend Tristan Roguiez set off to climb État de Choc and Ave César, rated 7a max and 7c max respectively, in August 2023. Kilian gives us a detailed and passionate account of the pitches they climbed to reach the summit.
"It was with Elona and Tristan, over two days, on the north face of the Petit Clocher du Portalet, in the Swiss part of Mont Blanc. Here you'll find the purest, most vertical, straightest cracks, with the summit standing alone in the middle of the immensity.
After completing the approach, we set up base camp and headed straight for État de Choc, a 300-metre route with a crack line from start to finish. The crack is rather wide and more like a chimney, in which you can completely slip and which is great fun to climb. We were very busy in the pitches, with a big set of friends up to size 6.
The route consists of 7 pitches. At the start, it's 6b+, followed by a third pitch of the same difficulty, which leads on to a system with a hyper-physical 6c crack. Then we had a crack in 7a, in off-width, i.e. where only the body enters, while the head and helmet remain outside. At that point, you have to sweep, it's a fight against the crack. Once again, it's very physical: you become your own stopper, so you're not allowed to fall, despite the fact that it's a bit overhanging, which makes the pitch rather challenging. The last pitch was difficult, we had no room for error. We were asking ourselves a lot of questions. What am I doing? Am I moving forward? Am I taking the risk of falling? Will the clamp hold? It's mentally exhausting, as much as physically.
The next pitch was 6c, with a double compression crack at the bottom of the dihedral. The last hard pitch was 7a, starting with an unprotected chimney, then a small, smooth roof with a slightly blocked crack at the bottom. We had to push one last time and finish with a final pitch of 6b+ and 4 before finding the sun again at the summit.
As we climbed, we kept an eye on the second route we wanted to do the next day, which was just 10 metres from ours, in parallel. Once we'd reached the top, we abseiled down, found our bivouac and enjoyed a beautiful starry night filled with shooting stars.
The next day, we set off in the fresh air towards Ave César. The route started out the same as the day before, until the third pitch when we turned right. We started with a 7b+ that was 40 meters high, in an off-width chimney that offered no protection, before picking up a slightly smaller crack that did. Between these two cracks, we had a bouldering step that required commitment, with two rulers and flat feet to recover the crack on a very slight overhang. We had to keep our energy up to continue. Our arms were gone, but we had to keep going. We made sure our hands were locked in the crack so as not to hurt too much. After 14 or 15 friends, we were happy to get out of the pitch.
We went on to a magnificent 6c pitch, with a 10-centimeter-wide crack, on this very pure orange-yellow rock. Apart from the cracks, we had no other holds. Not a ruler, not a bump, nothing at all. We reached the first 7c with a big traverse to the right on small, unprotected holds, to pick up a slightly overhanging crack, until we emerged onto a beautiful terrace. You really need to know the moves. There was just the width of the fingers holding in the crack, in ring lock. It's a lock that hurts, but it works. Before starting on the second 7c, we took a break to enjoy a nice meal that we're not used to seeing up there: a slice of bread, a mango curry confit, fatty Beaufort strings. It was exceptional.
We went on to the second 7c, a 35-metre finger splitter with a vertical crack at the end. It's torture for fingers, arms and feet alike. It was very hot, and the bottom of the crack was damp and slippery. We were able to reach the last portions of Etat de Choc from the day before and arrive at the summit, tired and happy."
