At 23, Jean Rouaux is the kind of Chamonix local you could walk past without noticing: a climbing instructor, low-key, not exactly chasing the spotlight. And yet last summer, he went after a pretty radical traverse—riding a bike from Chamonix to Nepal to get to Ama Dablam, no shortcuts, driven by an almost private obsession: not to “cheat.” Jean Rouaux © Simond Behind the plan is a temperament. A way of living in the mountains, of looking at performance, of describing the world from road level. “Okay. Whoa—here we go,” he says, like he opened a door too fast, then laughs and slows down. He talks fast in that way people do when they’re not in a hurry to finish, they’re in a hurry to be in it. In Chamonix, we catch him between two appointments, during that in-between moment when the valley settles back into itself—no summit scene, no polished adventure pitch, just a guy talking the way he lives, without trying to impress you. He doesn’t have that big, press-kit adventurer tone. He’s got dry humor—the kind you pick up after a lot of hours outside—and the clear-eyed sense that a whole project can hinge on a badly handled flat, a visa that falls through, or food poisoning. When he talks about what he did, he’s not selling “a performance.” He keeps dragging it back to the real stuff: the fragile stuff, the daily stuff. He circles the same words like they’re both a habit and a compass—road, bivy, fatigue, “the crux” (climbing slang for the hardest, most decisive section), and that fixed idea: hold the line. Jean Rouaux, 23, a climbing instructor in Chamonix, left the valley by bike on August 10 to reach Nepal and try Ama Dablam. He made it to Kathmandu in 58 days, after roughly 12,000 kilometers. On the way, he had to fly a short stretch—about 500 kilometers—because of an administrative blockage, a bend in the rules he describes like a break in the story. Then, in the Khumbu, the project ended abruptly: an infection, a hospital in Lukla, and a forced stop at 4,100 meters. A Kid From Here Before all that, Jean is first a local kid. “I grew up here, in Chamonix. I fell into it when I was little—climbing, mountain culture.” A bit of club climbing, a bit of competition, then injuries as a teenager that made him ease off. Around 16, he came back and set a clear goal: get his French state certification—the diploma that lets you guide and coach professionally. By 18, he had it. “I brought a hangboard, my climbing shoes, and chalk.” Jean Rouaux Why so early? “It was passion. I’ve always loved climbing. And I’ve always liked teaching.” He says it without posing, with a kind of straightforward candor that keeps coming back with him: “I didn’t really know what I was getting into. Turns out, I love what I do.” To get there, he sped everything up, even bending school a bit—finishing his last year of high school remotely. “I was in a rush. And I didn’t want to be stuck in high school anymore.” The Bike as a Tool The bike didn’t show up because he’s a cycling guy. It showed up because of friction. Jean tried a detour into school, moved to Lyon, got interested in journalism… and ran into a feeling he puts bluntly: “City life, after growing up here—I really can’t get used to it.” Then a classroom friendship opened a door. A classmate, chess games, geography games on Google Maps, and a story told almost like a family joke: the classmate’s grandfather had ridden a bike to the North Cape multiple times. The classmate said he might do it “in ten years or so.” Jean cut in: “We’re doing it next year.” Jean Rouaux © Simond What stands out is how little foundation he had. “No—I’d never really biked before,” he says. “Last time I rode, I was probably 10.” He bought a bike and panniers and started by meeting reality head-on: a kind of janky Tour du Mont Blanc loop, logistical messes, a flat he handled badly, time lost, a body learning. Then he did a loop to England to see a friend—“I must’ve done 3,000 kilometers total… I think it took a month.” He didn’t build a cyclist identity out of it. He says the simple truth: it wasn’t the bike that pulled him in, it was the long-range goal. “I’m not really into cycling for its own sake,” he explains. “It’s just—having a goal like that long-term is so good.” The North Cape trip became a kind of proof: “9,000 kilometers in sixty-something days,” winter in Lapland. But in his bags, he carried more than food and a sleeping setup. He carried a piece of who he is. “I brought a hangboard, my climbing shoes, and chalk.” “Looking back, the main risk is the road.” Jean Rouaux Climbing isn’t one sport among others in his story. It’s the base language. The one he learned as a kid in Chamonix, the one he returned to at 16 after injuries, the one that pushed him to get certified and coach. So on the road, he kept speaking that language so he wouldn’t get swallowed by the bike—which stayed, in his mind, a means more than an end. “Every four days, I’d do a hangboard session,” he says. And whenever he found real rock, he stopped. On the Norwegian coast, in the Lofoten Islands: “I did a few boulder problems there—it was absolutely legendary.” No crash pad, no grade-chasing, no staging it for anyone—just staying connected to the thing in him that doesn’t move. That’s where the next idea started to harden, almost by accident: Wait. There’s something here. The Real Danger That “something” became Nepal. Jean started looking up what had been done mixing bike travel and mountaineering, found the story of Göran Kropp—a Swedish climber who rode from home to the Himalaya—and the plan took shape. He doesn’t talk like a would-be influencer. “I’ve never posted on social media. I never wanted to publicize what I was doing.” The film happened almost despite him: a friend pushed him to reach out to Simond, the Chamonix brand owned by Decathlon. Jean tried without a plan, with one sentence: I’m leaving, you can give me whatever you want—but I’m leaving either way. At the time, he says, he had no audience and no real camera skills. “I had 500 followers on Instagram, and I’m not especially good at filming.” Jean Rouaux © Simond His training also breaks a cliché: no obsession with “getting strong.” “For physical prep, I didn’t do much, because I realized it didn’t really help,” he says. The way he explains it is simple: training makes the beginning easier, then fatigue stacks up and you have to learn to function inside it. The real prep was mental and bureaucratic: leaving alone, far away, for a long time, with visas designed for travelers who book hotels. “I was bivying the whole way,” he says—bivy meaning sleeping out, usually light and unplanned, not a formal campsite. “The activity just doesn’t fit visa applications. I never had an address to put down.” “Honestly, I think about eating a lot” Jean Rouaux And above all, he puts fear where he thinks it belongs. “Looking back, the main risk is the road.” Not “foreign countries,” not the unknown—the traffic, the speed, the passes. He even places his sketchiest stretch in Europe: “Maybe between Bulgaria and… Turkey.” He describes it with a crisp image that’s almost funny if it weren’t so unsettling: “In Bulgaria they have two lanes. But people basically invent a third lane in the middle while they pass.” For him, the crux wasn’t a mountain pass. It was the asphalt. Leaving Home Is the Hard Part Jean left Chamonix on August 10. And the hardest part, weirdly, wasn’t the faraway. It was the near. The first hours feel different because the reverse gear is right there. “By car, through the tunnel, you’re home in 15 minutes.” On a bike, the same terrain becomes a constant reminder: you have to earn every kilometer even though you know the shortcut by heart. The start turns into an internal negotiation—hold steady, don’t talk yourself into an excuse, let the valley close behind you. Then, day by day, the temptation changes shape. The distance becomes normal. Logistics settles. What felt impossible turns into… the day’s work. “The more you move forward, the easier it gets,” he’d tell himself. “I hadn’t cheated once… and then it all collapsed.” Jean Rouaux Over time, life narrows down to basics. “Honestly, I think about eating a lot,” he says. It’s funny, but it’s also the truth: find water, find food, find somewhere to sleep, repeat. “It’s simple. You think about surviving, getting to point B.” He barely listened to music—two songs in two months, max. He wanted his head clear, no soundtrack masking what was around him. He bivied almost every night: “Out of 58 days, I probably bivied 50 nights… maybe 52.” Jean Rouaux © Simond Problems were rare: an issue with dogs, one night ruined because he stopped too quickly and picked a bad spot, an evening in Pakistan when hospitality and curiosity started to feel suffocating—he finally snapped and took a lodge. And then there’s a choice that says a lot: he didn’t carry a lock for his bike. “I trust people,” he says, almost as a throwaway. He even felt the theft risk was higher in France or Italy, where “people understand a bike can actually be worth money.” Elsewhere, some people assumed he was broke and even offered him cash. When he tries to name the “best moment,” he doesn’t talk about arriving anywhere. He talks about vertical terrain—the thing he craves instinctively, coming from the mountains. He hates flat riding. “Riding on flat ground… it pisses me off,” he says. After two weeks of desert and headwind, Tajikistan flipped a switch: “And then suddenly—vertical.” The Pamir Highway, plateaus at 4,000 meters, then up toward Pakistan. A day facing Nanga Parbat. “It was insane,” he says. He keeps coming back to the time-warp part—the part you can’t photograph: a month and a half earlier, he was on his couch in Chamonix. The Flight, and the Crack in the Story The worst moment wasn’t epic at all. It was forms, deadlines, doors closing. In Turkey, Jean realized his Iran visa wouldn’t hold. He’d tried to plan ahead, worked with a visa service, thought it would go through. Then everything jammed up. The options didn’t show up like they do in adventure stories. They had schedules, closed borders, administrative uncertainty. Waiting became a gamble. And he had a calendar in his head: “By late October I needed to be on the mountain,” to leave room for acclimatization and a weather window. In that game, bureaucracy won. He flew roughly 500 kilometers. It wasn’t flying, in itself, that bothered him. It was breaking his personal rule: don’t break the continuity. He says he turned down rides from the beginning—out of stubbornness, sure, but also logic. Once you step off the line, you stop knowing when you’re getting back on it. Now he was strapped into a seat, watching the ground slide by too fast. “Honestly, I was on the plane… it was horrible.” Then he drops the sentence that captures the private defeat: “I hadn’t cheated once… and then it all collapsed.” “Alpinism is everything that gets you to the foot of the mountain. And if it doesn’t work out… you have to stay humble.” Jean Rouaux That’s also his story: a morality meant for himself. He’s not trying to teach anyone. He’s describing a pact he made with himself, and the moment it snapped. The trip kept going the way trips always do—find a box for the bike, wait for hours, then Kazakhstan, the desert, the feeling of starting from zero again. The crack didn’t disappear. It just became part of the narrative, like a scar—proof that your ethics don’t always beat reality. Kathmandu, Then the Body Says No Jean reached Kathmandu in 58 days, “way ahead” of what he’d imagined. He took one day off, picked up gear, then got back on the bike toward Jiri, the old starting point for walking into the Khumbu. Those two days cost him more than he likes to admit. “In my head, I’d put the bike in the basement,” he says. He forced it anyway—grimaced through it—then finally got what he’d come for: walking, feeling Nepal underfoot, entering the valley. Jean Rouaux © Simond That’s when his motivation spiked. He describes an almost physical euphoria, a ridiculous speed: he covered in two days a stretch that usually takes close to a week to trek. “I was so fired up… I had insane energy,” he says. And then everything flipped on something stupid, almost humiliating: “I ate something I shouldn’t have.” He got sick, kept going anyway, drained himself. At 4,100 meters, his body wouldn’t recover. “Shutting down at 4,100 is rough,” he says. Weakness, dizziness, hallucinations, the hospital in Lukla—and that feeling of being kicked out of your own project before you even understand what happened. Here, his story thickens, because the failure isn’t just physical. He also describes a shock in the Khumbu: tourism, consumption, certain power dynamics between clients and Sherpas. At the hospital, he says, staff told him an anecdote that stuck with him—a local woman in childbirth complications, and priority going to “a tourist who paid.” He doesn’t turn it into a big theory. He just says it like a clean wound. “When you see that… it hurts.” That’s where he offers his definition of alpinism, even though he didn’t “do” the mountain the way people expected. “Alpinism is everything that gets you to the foot of the mountain,” he says. “And if it doesn’t work out… you have to stay humble.” Then he draws a hard line in the middle of the mess: “Not every means is justified to reach a summit.” Climbing, Fame, and the 20-Meter Problem On the way back, Jean gives you two numbers that clash—and together say a lot. “I left at 70 kilos. I came back at 53.” Seventeen kilos gone. Not “training fatigue,” just the accumulation: days, nights, managing water, heat, hours in the saddle. He says he was hungry “a bit,” sometimes. He doesn’t dramatize it, but you can hear the cost: long-duration adventure wears down the machine even when the mind holds. Then he drops the other number like he’s setting it on the table: “But I gained 40,000 followers.” He’s still surprised by it. “I’m really discreet by nature… I didn’t want to be in the light at all.” Back in Chamonix, people recognized him. A kind of valley fame—sometimes funny, sometimes awkward. The sense of becoming “somebody” because of a trip, while his daily life is still climbing sessions, coaching kids, teaching. On the sponsor side, he says there was no pressure. Simond funded the expedition. He owed them footage for a film. Not reaching the summit wasn’t a problem. The heaviest pressure, he says, came from people close to him—so invested they experienced his stopping as their own defeat. And then there’s the modern reality he owns without turning it into a slogan: Instagram wasn’t “the deal,” but he started posting constantly—“one video a day.” Like the storytelling showed up alongside the expedition whether he wanted it or not. Now people even ask him to advise other athletes on communication. He smiles, hesitates, and says the line that sums up his relationship to visibility: “I really don’t feel like I’m the best guy to do that.” It worked, he says, but “kind of by accident.” He also refuses the moralizer role. Yes, his trips can inspire lower-impact choices. Yes, he’s environmentally aware—he lives “facing the glaciers.” But he doesn’t trust the preachy tone. He knows his contradictions: content production, digital footprint, attention economy. His “consistency,” again, isn’t a banner. It’s caution. At the end, Jean talks about what he actually cares about: climbing. Not as a backdrop—as work. He trains, follows plans, wants to improve. “I’d like to climb 8c next year,” he says—about 5.14b in the US grading system (8c). Then he says it plainly, without bitterness but with real clarity: that’s not what his audience comes for. “When I’m here and I post climbing stuff on Instagram, nobody cares.” He sums up the problem in one clean question: “Where’s the journey on a 20-meter line?” He says he can live an adventure just as intense on a short route as on 1,000 kilometers of road. But that doesn’t read to the general public. It isn’t instantly shareable. So he looks for a bridge. He talks about trad in England, autonomy projects with a pulk sled, the idea of coming back one day to do a “full” Ama Dablam: the gear on the bike, the out-and-back, and—maybe—the summit. He also talks about becoming a mountain guide, because in Chamonix the terrain is vast, and mid-mountain instruction has its limits. And at the center, what hasn’t changed: his need to pass things on. In his story, adventure isn’t an escape. It’s a way of refusing shortcuts—even the comfortable ones. “I hadn’t cheated once,” he says, like it’s a point of honor he doesn’t really need to explain. Then he tells you about the moment that point of honor cracked. And maybe that’s where the portrait really holds: in the tension between the straight line you want to keep, and the real world that forces you—sometimes—to compromise.

In Annecy, the screening has just ended. People are still talking in the aisles—about the film, about those wide shots of Lapland, about that steady voice describing glaciers that keep shrinking. Lauriane Miara sinks a little deeper into her chair, like she’s trying to buy herself a few more seconds out of the spotlight. Lauriane Miara (right) and her student (left) during a workshop where she teaches how to paint mountains © Vertige Media With a half-smile, she heads it off before anyone can misread her posture. “I’m sitting way back in this chair,” she says. “Not because I’m trying to look above it all. My back just needs it.” It sounds like a throwaway comment. It isn’t. It already tells you something about her: the reflex to disarm, to explain, to make sure no one thinks she’s “posing.” Miara—French, a graphic designer and illustrator—has that rare quality where, once you’ve met her, she stays with you. Maybe you can’t name exactly why. But you feel the impression she leaves. The audience in Annecy had just watched L’Art Vivant , her documentary, shown during the most recent Femmes en Montagne festival. On screen, Miara talks about black holes, uprooting, Alpine heat waves, and what she calls the capitalist “hypnosis” of screens, all while tracing the outline of an artist pulled toward big, wild mountain spaces. The film moves between laavus—open forest shelters in Lapland—and the cables and infrastructure around Bourg-Saint-Maurice, where she lives now. It follows work that looks fragile at first glance, and it asks a bigger question underneath: what place do people like her have in landscapes that are being reshaped, packaged, and wired up? The festival jury thought the film landed with real clarity. They awarded it the Environment Prize. There’s a small irony in starting our conversation with someone who tells me right away that she hates screens. L’Art Vivant  will soon air on Swiss public television (RTS), one of the country’s major broadcasters. She avoids screens because they make her feel physically sick, and yet she’ll have to deal with them. So she reaches for a word that comes up often when people talk about her watercolors: peace. And the calm that seems to rise out of them. “People talk to me a lot about softness,” she says. “They’ll say, ‘It’s Lauriane’s softness.’ I read it sometimes, too. For me it’s strange, because I don’t feel soft at all. I feel like I’m hard.” The invisible fight When Miara describes what she’s lived through, she doesn’t hide behind euphemisms. When she says “black hole,” she means it literally. “There was a time in my life when I fell into a hole,” she says. “Really—a black hole. I don’t have a better image than that. And then I had to climb back out. It’s better now, but I still have this daily fight not to get pulled back into it. It’s like I’m walking on ground full of holes.” Her words are plain. The meaning is, too. More than once, she leaves space for the hard parts without naming them directly. For her, moving forward is about noticing, anticipating, adjusting—not to “optimize” her life, but to stay upright. “I have to pay attention to how I sleep, what I eat, what I drink, what I consume, my pace, the way I work,” she continues. “I have to watch a lot of things so I don’t fall back in.” “I have serious sleep problems. I’ve had them, and I still do. But in those environments—no. I sleep well. I can’t really explain it. Maybe it’s feeling the cold, seeing the stars.” In that work of keeping herself steady, she says her center of gravity sits with other people, far from her own comfort. “In my life, anxiety takes up a huge amount of space,” she says. “It’s invasive. And I really don’t want to pass my anxiety on, out of respect.” In recent years, talking about mental health has become a constant public expectation—almost a moral rule. With Miara, it reads differently. It feels less like a confession and more like a commitment: don’t let your fear spill into someone else’s life. Lauriane Miara, in Annecy, November 2025 © Vertige Media That’s where her art starts to feel thicker than it looks at first glance. From a distance, Miara’s watercolors match what people project onto her: softness, clean lines, delicate palettes, lost cabins, miniature ice floes, silent forests. You could mistake it for another version of slow living turned into an aesthetic. But when she talks about it, she shifts the whole frame. “At first, drawing is a refuge, sure,” she says, “because I’m trying to draw things that represent a kind of calm I don’t have access to. So in a way, I’m drawing a fantasy. When I paint, I can be inside that calm. I can almost touch it.” Green, not walls In the documentary, you see her in a cabin in Lapland, a candle burning, and then under a laavu—an open shelter that lets the sounds of the night come through. For many people, sleeping like that in winter, deep in the woods, sounds like vulnerability. For her, it’s the opposite. “Out there, I sleep well,” she says. “I have serious sleep problems. I’ve had them, and I still do. But in those environments—no. I sleep well. I can’t really explain it. Maybe it’s feeling the cold, seeing the stars. I find it more reassuring than being at home, in a small town, in a small bedroom, in something closed, closed, closed. When I sleep in the mountains or in the forest, it’s even stronger: I feel sheltered. No one’s going to find me. Nothing can happen. Nothing can happen to me. It’s deeply calming.” “I see more and more lift cables, power lines, all the development,” she says. “It’s taking up more and more space because it’s a valley where there might be snow longer than elsewhere. It’s nightmarish. Even if it’s still wild, it’s like it’s not wild enough for me anymore.” Everything flips. The closed room becomes the threat; the night outside becomes protection. The cabin, she says, is “sealed,” it “creates a barrier between what’s happening outside and what’s happening inside.” The laavu brings her back into contact with the living world—you hear, you smell, you’re not separated. That same logic shows up in how she travels. In the film, she drops a line—“Four days on a train goes by pretty fast”—and the room laughs. There’s a shared understanding now that travel time should be crushed down, that you’re supposed to “get there quickly.” Miara argues for the opposite. “I don’t experience a train trip as being ripped away,” she says. “It’s more like a thread unspooling. It feels gentle. I leave my place on foot, I go to the station—a familiar station—and little by little, the thread of the trip plays out.” Flying, on the other hand, feels like concentrated violence. “You’re dropped into a completely unknown environment,” she says, “in a time frame that’s way too short and not natural at all. It’s not the same temperatures, not the same sounds, not the same smells. All of a sudden it’s brutal.” Behind the usual “train versus plane” debate, she’s talking about something else: whether what your body is sensing can keep pace with what the landscape is becoming. The train gives your mind time to catch up to the movement. The plane cuts from scene to scene like an Instagram story. At the end of that line is the taiga—the vast northern forest she calls a kind of “mountain of trees.” And then there’s the return, which she says is harder than leaving. “When we finished filming, at the end of our trip skiing with a pulka sled, I couldn’t talk anymore,” she says. “I was crying. I couldn’t speak because we were about to leave. The truth is, I wanted to go back into the taiga. I felt pretty bad.” Back in the Alps, watching the wild shrink Miara lives now in Bourg-Saint-Maurice. She arrived through a love story, and for a while, the place fit. “Not the town itself,” she says, “but the mountains around it. There are wild spaces big enough that you can live there for a few years, at least.” But the wild is shrinking, and she sees it every day. “I see more and more lift cables, power lines, all the development,” she says. “It’s taking up more and more space because it’s a valley where there might be snow longer than elsewhere. It’s nightmarish. Even if it’s still wild, it’s like it’s not wild enough for me anymore.” She doesn’t say it for effect. It lands like a simple fact: her mental health depends, in a very direct way, on being able to be in places that aren’t fully organized by people. Her first uprooting happened earlier, when she left the rural northeast where she grew up. She doesn’t turn it into a dramatic family story, but she doesn’t downplay it either. “In that case, it’s uprooting,” she says. “It’s not tearing something apart. It’s uprooting. I planted myself somewhere else. Because I wasn’t okay. There were things I had to get away from just to exist. To exist—or to grow, to develop. That wouldn’t have been possible where I’m from.” In the film, she gestures at what she went through. She knows it could hurt the people close to her. “My parents aren’t very curious about what I do,” she says. “They don’t really understand. What I mention briefly in the film is still a huge taboo with them.” There’s a kind of mutual protection in that: not saying everything, not showing everything, accepting that part of the story stays under the surface. Uprooting, for her, isn’t settling scores. It’s survival. After the glaciers That relationship to the wild isn’t only emotional. It shapes her current work, too—especially a collaboration with glaciologist Jean-Baptiste Bosson and the collective Marge Sauvage, focused on post-glacial ecosystems. “Glaciers are retreating in the Alps. It’s over. They’re going to disappear. That’s done—we know it,” she says. “But behind a glacier, there isn’t nothing. New ecosystems develop. And those spaces need to be protected right away from infrastructure.” Scientists map out zones, track which species arrive first, return year after year. Miara takes that raw material and turns it into a graphic narrative, scheduled to be published by Actes Sud. “We want to talk about what we do with wild places in the Alps,” she says. “What are they? How do we describe them? What do we do with them? Do we need to do anything at all? Do they belong to humans? Do we see ourselves as part of the living world—so humans can inhabit those spaces? Or do we see ourselves as a separate species?” It’s the same set of questions her watercolors have been asking quietly for a long time: is the mountain just a backdrop for our hobbies, or is it something with its own standing? Do we behave like one species among others, or like an owner trying to squeeze value out of everything before the final melt? “I wish for us to live in peace” You might assume that with her patience for long travel, her distrust of screens, and her attention to vanishing glaciers, Miara lives outside the digital current. It’s not that simple. She has a phone, social media, all of it. She uses it to work and communicate. But she’s built a kind of active caution around it. “I decide when I pick up the phone and go look for information,” she says. “I use it, then I stop for a long time, then I use it when I have to, then I stop again for a long time.” She talks about stretches when she catches herself spending “way too much time” there. Her body reacts fast. “I feel disgust really quickly,” she says. “It’s physical—I feel nausea. And that’s when I know I need to step away.” This isn’t a trendy speech about digital detox. It’s a political diagnosis, in her own words. “We have to rethink our relationship to time, to family, to how we live our friendships, our loves,” she says. “Because those things are stolen from us by something we don’t name that often. But I think it’s called capitalism. And we can’t just let it happen.” For Miara, the mountains, drawing, disconnecting—none of it is a niche aesthetic. It’s an attempt not to dissolve. Against what she calls the “hypnosis” of screens, she claims something simple that almost sounds like a dare in 2025: the right to daydream. She describes it in plain terms—making herself take moments to do nothing, listen to music, let her mind drift “like a dream.” She talks about childhood boredom as an “immense” creative space, and she says, with calm sadness, “I feel like it’s over. Now kids don’t get bored anymore. And that’s dramatic.” Still, she knows the world’s dysfunction doesn’t hit her personal life in the most direct ways. Because, for her, happiness points outward. “You can’t really wish much for me, because I have everything,” she says. “My wish is collective. There’s only one thing I wish for us: to live in peace.” Then, as we’re about to wrap up and turn everything off, she says it again, like she wants it to land. “If my life stays like this until the end, I’m okay with that,” she says. “Now—yes.”

At Poush, just a few yards from the humming asphalt of Aubervilliers, there’s a mountain that doesn’t exist—except it does, in the way art can make something feel physical. It’s an imagined, poetic peak where contemporary artists take aim at our myths of the vertical: what we project onto height, what we go looking for up there, and what we pretend not to see until the ground starts shifting. © Simon Jung Le bord de la terre  was presented as a six-chapter journey—part expedition, part storybook—built to be walked like you’d read an adventure novel. Photographers, sculptors, and performance artists played the role of guides, leading visitors toward that precise point where the “ground” seems to fall away and vertigo takes over. Art—like alpinism—is often a story about limits: physical ones, geographic ones, but most of all poetic ones. Like a climber searching higher up for some kind of absolute, the eleven artists gathered at Poush pushed at the edges of what we think “mountain” even means. Far from the tired cliché of a summit to conquer, Le bord de la terre  invited visitors to read the mountain differently. Each work acted like a handhold—something you grab as you move through a shared narrative, step by step, from romantic dream to the tangible reality of a landscape in flux. A trip to the mountain’s far edge “I go to the mountains because up there is where the edge of the earth happened,” wrote Italian author Erri De Luca. That end-of-the-world feeling was the pulse Le bord de la terre  set out to capture. Shown at Poush (Aubervilliers) from May 22 through July 19, 2025, the exhibition took over the entire Le Rift  building. The scenography turned the space into a vertical, maze-like terrain—less a neutral gallery than an exploration zone, built for wandering, doubling back, and climbing your way through ideas. From the entrance, the premise was clear: you were meant to “walk the mountain” the way you’d turn the pages of a narrative. Six chapters structured the route, like a series of living tableaux that approached the mountain from different angles—“from romantic landscape to object of study.” You moved from a dreamlike vision inspired by the great Romantic painters to an encounter with the Pic du Midi in a speculative film: young people watched from a preserved landscape, taking in both our thin horizons and our own finitude. Sometimes the point landed with brutal simplicity—an ice cube suspended over a body of water, enough to suggest the permanence of a world that’s disappearing. The show also gestured toward a real, unsettling image: Swiss glaciers wrapped in vast tarps to protect them from melting—photographs that can read like shrouds, as if, failing to preserve the ice, we’re at least trying to carry it off under a sheet. Le bord de la terre  didn’t sidestep what’s pressing on our societies right now. It put visitors in front of outcomes that already feel decided, already irreversible, forcing you—through art and poetry—to face the strange absurdity of watching mountains rise while our future flattens. In other words: climate change was there, in the room, in the work, in the pacing of the walk. And some of the high-up performances on display could seem less “wild” than the tragic story quietly sitting behind the pieces themselves. Artists tied into a rope team, looking at the mountain together To bring this collective story to life, curators Simon Jung, Jeanne de La Masselière, and Inès Massonie brought together eleven artists whose works spoke back and forth across the mountain world. It was a kind of rope team—climbers would call it a cordée , a group literally tied together—except here the link was the conversation between images, materials, bodies, and ideas. Téo Becher, Simon Boudvin, Julia Borderie & Éloïse Le Gallo, Claude Cattelain, Caroline Corbasson, Max Coulon, Antonin Detemple, Matthieu Gafsou, Julia Gault, and Noémie Goudal formed a panoramic, richly varied set of viewpoints. Each artist brought a distinct way of seeing the mountain: changing landscapes, verticality, geology in motion, borders, perception, the body under strain. © Simon Jung Among the standout works, Noémie Goudal’s Soulèvements  series reimagined geology through striking visual illusions. Simon Boudvin’s ladders became symbols of crossing natural boundaries. Claude Cattelain leaned into the poetry of the “useless” gesture through physical performances. Matthieu Gafsou exposed the contradictions baked into our tourist habits, while Julia Gault staged the precariousness of any kind of vertical stance. The duo Julia Borderie & Éloïse Le Gallo, meanwhile, treated the mountain as lived space—threaded through stories, crossings, and human experience. Late night, last calls Even if this artistic expedition ended on July 19, it didn’t go quietly. On Wednesday, July 16, Poush hosted a special late-night opening to celebrate the “mountain” deep into the evening. Starting at 5 p.m., the curators led a free guided tour—an inside look at how the project came together and what was happening behind the scenes. After that, the night stretched into a music set, turning Le Rift into a kind of basecamp dance floor, with sounds meant to echo the peaks. For anyone who missed the nocturne, there were two final chances to catch the show during regular opening hours: Friday, July 18 and Saturday, July 19 (closing day), from 3 to 7 p.m. Admission was free. Le bord de la terre  was shown at Poush, 153 avenue Jean-Jaurès, Aubervilliers (Métro Quatre-Chemins). Free admission throughout the run.

When the Alps start crumbling, some people pour concrete. Others take the loss seriously—and try to save what can still be saved. Aster Verrier, an artist and climber, has chosen a third option: he records the fleeting gestures of climbers and turns them into a kind of poetic archive. Part sensitive report, part quiet stand against forgetting, his work gives shape again to a mountain heritage that’s changing fast. © Aster Verrier It starts with movement. The movement of rock that cracks, glaciers that melt, ridgelines that shrink. When an alpine landscape is shifting this hard, what can a climber do—besides try to preserve something from terrain that may not be there much longer? Verrier’s answer is both conceptual and strangely simple: he archives climbers’ motions—an invisible choreography from a sport that depends on natural features that can, quite literally, disappear. In a project that sits somewhere between climbing, contemporary art, and the close study of human movement, Verrier isn’t chasing raw performance—the frantic race for harder grades and cleaner sends. He’s drawn to the quiet stuff: the barely noticeable adjustments, the private beauty of a move that doesn’t need an audience. We met with the guy who’s turned archiving into a form of commitment—and climbing into a kind of watchful, patient dance. The delicate art of climbing differently In Saint-Gervais-les-Bains—a tidy, well-heeled alpine town where climbing can sometimes feel like a social trophy—Verrier needed a form of art that was subtle but a little provocative, just to poke at local assumptions about what climbing is. In a valley where “alpine performance” often gets translated into status, he sets up a counterpoint: no heroes in Arc’teryx puffies, no spotlight. Just anonymous silhouettes, stripped down to the essential thing—the movement. “I wanted to get away from the clichés of performance climbing and go back to what’s universal and intimate about it: the gesture,” he tells us. So he went out and met local climbers—everyone from seasoned vets to total unknowns—then followed and filmed them with a GoPro mounted on a helmet. The point wasn’t to freeze a grade or document difficulty. It was to catch an emotion. “Some movements aren’t spectacular at all,” he says, without any defensiveness. “But their value shows up in what they mean to the climbers themselves.” © Aster Verrier It’s an approach that feels almost anthropological—careful, precise, and heady in the best way—and it cuts against the dominant sports-and-spectacle version of climbing. The question stops being “Who climbed the hardest?” and becomes: what does it look like when a body has a private conversation with rock? From competition to contemplation: a sharp turn Verrier didn’t come to this by accident. He used to compete, trained in the strict world of high-level climbing, and still carries a complicated relationship with sport climbing. But he ultimately leaned toward art—“because climbing every day at 3 p.m. didn’t work with class schedules,” he says, bluntly. The choice stuck. Then came the Netherlands. Living somewhere with almost no real relief—no peaks, no big walls—did something unexpected: it sharpened his attention to verticality. From that flatness, he first imagined a dystopia where climate disruption had erased the mountains altogether. The project began as fiction. Back in the Alps, it stopped feeling fictional. He realized the dystopia was showing up in real time. “The disappearance of iconic features like the Drus pillar isn’t some futuristic fantasy,” he says. “It’s happening right in front of us.” So his response became aesthetic and political: build a memory of something that won’t hold still. The archive, for him, is a subtle but total answer to the same blunt problem—the landscape is being wiped away. An archive you can feel—for a heritage you can’t always see But how do you preserve a route’s memory when the rock itself may not survive? For Verrier, the answer isn’t the usual climbing-trip imagery, and it isn’t worshiping athletic feats. “What I’m archiving is an emotion,” he says, “not the raw difficulty, but the deeper meaning a movement can carry for the person doing it.” That’s why his choice of routes is deliberately eclectic. One climber, for example, picks a line that might look “average” on paper—but it matters to her because it brings her back to her years as a caver. Archiving that—that particular set of movements, tied to that personal history—is a way of preserving an intimate record that mainstream climbing media rarely touches. © Aster Verrier In that sense, Verrier is offering a counter-story to contemporary climbing: a version where the private outweighs the ego, and felt memory matters more than measurable performance. A political approach, without slogans Part of what makes Verrier’s work land is how quiet it is. There’s no overt activist pose here, no big declarations—just an implied manifesto embedded in the choices. “My project is an archiving proposal that can be questioned, and it leaves a lot out,” he says. “It doesn’t necessarily address the debates around climate, or around how we practice climbing. I hope it brings up a contemplative imagination—not the rush to the mountains to bag sends, but more the idea of actually being there and enjoying it.” In that light, the exhibition shown in Saint-Gervais through September 21 carries extra weight. Visitors who don’t climb discover a version of climbing stripped of its sports codes. Experienced climbers, meanwhile, end up reflecting on their own habits. “The most surprising thing is how positive the climbing community’s response has been,” Verrier says, “even though they know exactly what my archives leave out.” That’s the point. He wanted a space where the conversation could happen—quietly, productively—far from the loudest versions of the sport, and toward a shared way of thinking about memory, landscape, and what human movement means inside all this change. A living heritage, even as the mountains shift Verrier isn’t claiming he can stop the mountains from falling apart. But he’s insisting on something else: if the relief fades, the gestures don’t have to vanish with it. His project—dense with meaning, held tight with emotion—asks you to move past simple nostalgia for a disappearing landscape. It suggests a different kind of attention, a different way to face the future. A fragile, precise “vertical dance” that reminds you that even in collapse, something fundamental can remain. The movement. The quiet poetry of bodies hanging in space.

A few hours after Alain Carrière publicly announced he was stepping down, a French national-team climber emailed the entire French Mountain and Climbing Federation (FFME) to call out what she described as the federation’s “problematic” handling of her case—an alleged sexual assault by another member of the national team during a World Cup stop. Vertige Media collected her account, then put the allegations and the process to Carrière, the FFME president at the time. Here is what our reporting shows. © David Pillet It’s been a strange end of year for the FFME. On December 6, Alain Carrière announced his resignation . That same evening, a bluntly titled email landed in the inboxes of everyone with an @ ffme.fr address: “Sexual assaults on the France team.” The author—whom we’ll call Emma*—is a member of the French national climbing team. In the email, she says she filed a criminal complaint for sexual assault against another national-team member. She also says she does not intend to focus on the accused as a person, but on “the way the federation’s disciplinary bodies have handled this issue, to this day.” Over several paragraphs, Emma—who says she is “deeply angry”—accuses the federation of failing to put adequate protection and safety measures in place, for her and for others. She points directly to Carrière as the main person responsible. Later in the email, she describes the months she has lived through: insomnia, injuries, anxiety—six months in which, from her first report to the public prosecutor to two successive disciplinary panels, she says she never once felt protected by her federation. Vertige Media spoke with Emma, then questioned Carrière. The facts and their responses raise a broader question for French climbing’s federation system: how does it handle sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual violence? Anger, an Olympic dream, and a long dark stretch It’s close to 11 p.m. when Emma’s long message hits the inboxes of FFME staff and officials. In the email, which Vertige Media obtained, she says she filed a complaint for sexual assault against another member of the French team. She adds that her goal is to discuss “the way the federation’s disciplinary bodies are handling this problem right now.” Paragraph by paragraph, Emma says she is furious. She writes that the federation has not taken the protection and safety steps she believes it should have taken—for her, and for other athletes. She places responsibility on Carrière. She also describes what she calls months of ordeal: sleepless nights, injuries, anxiety. Months in which she says she “begged” a federation president to act in response to a situation she now calls “unthinkable.” Like many elite athletes, Emma started climbing young. Training, discipline, and talent took her into the Pôle France program, then the youth national team, and eventually the senior team. She made finals, landed podiums, and began dreaming about the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. “When I wake up, it’s like when someone taps you on the shoulder. You know you woke up because someone tapped you—but you didn’t really see the person do it.” Emma It’s summer 2024. The Paris Olympics are about to begin, with a month of major competition ahead. Emma says she likes being part of the national team. When she shows up to a new team gathering she’s been called into, she finds the vibe “great.” She likes competing, and she likes the way her athletic status makes her college life more flexible. She also says she had no idea an event was about to blow up her life. Now, on the phone, she tells Vertige Media what happened—and what led her, six months later, to alert the federation. During summer 2024, on the night between the two competition days of a World Cup stop, in the very hotel the federation had booked for its athletes, Emma says she was subjected to unwanted sexual touching by the man she later reported. She says he repeatedly ignored her lack of consent. She says it wasn’t the first time. In 2023, she says, the same person tried to assault her while she was asleep. “When I wake up, it’s like when someone taps you on the shoulder,” she says on the phone. “You know you woke up because someone tapped you—but you didn’t really see the person do it.” She describes a pattern of conduct that, in her view, fits what France often groups under “VHSS”—sexist and sexual violence and harassment. Beyond the alleged assaults while she was asleep, Emma describes repeated behavior and says the accused even admitted he’d “been pushy.” “Except that the ‘pushiness’ is touching,” she says. “And it’s violent, coercive, and threatening. He crossed the line. The line was my consent.” That night, she says, felt worse than anything before. But for weeks afterward, she stayed silent. She says the Mazan rape case —dominant in late-2024 French news—triggered obsessive thoughts. “Radio, TV, Instagram—everything dragged me back into it,” she says. “It got extremely anxiety-inducing.” She kept a lid on it for a few more months. Then, in May 2025, she told her coach, who immediately escalated it to the federation’s National Technical Director (DTN). Under Article 40 of France’s Code of Criminal Procedure , a public official who becomes aware of a possible crime has a duty to report it to the public prosecutor. A report was made. The justice system was notified. In the meantime, Emma says she kept receiving messages from the man she reported. She says he knew she’d spoken up. And then, buried inside a longer text exchange, one sentence hit differently—because it was the first time she says she truly felt afraid. A threat—and the president’s shadow “I’m tired of trying. I’m going to make you disappear. I hate you with every cell in my body.” For Emma, the placement doesn’t matter. She says she read it as a death threat. At the time of the report, she says she was supported by the federation’s VHSS point person—support she still calls “exemplary.” In summer 2025, she filed a formal complaint at a police station. “I ended up begging a federation president” Emma At that point, the question became what the federation president would do next. After first consulting the head of the federation’s ethics body—an former magistrate—Carrière decided to refer the matter to the FFME’s first-instance disciplinary commission. Reached by Vertige Media, Carrière confirms: “As soon as we learned about the allegations, the DTN made a report. We were monitored, supported, and advised by the ministry and by our legal counsel.” On August 29, 2025, the commission issued its decision: it said it lacked jurisdiction. The stated reason was that “the facts, even though they occurred during a night between two competition days, concern the strictly private sphere.” Emma says she was stunned. “It’s unbelievable,” she says. “It’s like they said, ‘What happens at night isn’t our business.’ So the sun goes down and it becomes a lawless zone?” A few weeks later, her lawyer noticed something else. The decision cites Article 2 of the FFME disciplinary regulations—but stops right before a key paragraph. That paragraph states that disciplinary bodies are competent in cases involving breaches of the federation’s ethics charter, including “violence or sexual and/or psychological harm,” including when the alleged acts happened locally “in the context of the activity of an affiliated association.” In the written decision, the paragraph explicitly addressing VHSS was omitted. How do you explain that? On the phone, Carrière first says: “I can’t explain the decision. I was very surprised.” He says that surprise is why he ultimately decided to appeal—after a brief period where he says he consulted the Ministry of Sports, the DTN, the federation’s director general, legal counsel, and other federations. Emma disputes the sequence. According to her, Carrière initially told her he felt “uneasy,” that he wasn’t sure he would appeal, and that he would get back to her after a few days of thinking. She says he called her again less than a week later. “He explains that based on the advice he got, an appeal has little chance of working, and so he won’t do it,” Emma says. She describes the moment as devastating. With her mother beside her, she says she fell into acute distress. She says she relayed that distress to the VHSS point person, her coach, and the DTN—and she pressed Carrière again. “I ended up begging a federation president,” she says. “I was angry. I was crying.” She says she couldn’t understand his reaction and felt a lack of empathy. “When I told him that not taking my side is taking the attacker’s side, he just answered, ‘Alleged attacker,’” she says. “Even if that’s the legal term, it’s not what you say to someone who filed a complaint.” Carrière, for his part, describes Emma as “extremely shaken” by what was happening and frames the disconnect as “a matter of perception.” He does, however, acknowledge that there was “a phase” at the beginning where he did not think he would appeal. Then, five days after his initial refusal, he changed his mind. At the last possible moment, Carrière referred the case to the appeals commission. He attributes the reversal to “consultations.” Emma offers a different read: “I think he got scared of the consequences,” she says. “If a court decision doesn’t go his way later and he didn’t appeal, people could hold it against him.” The drop The appeals commission met quickly, in October 2025, after accepting the president’s referral as admissible. A different panel sat than the first-instance commission. On October 17, it first reversed the earlier ruling on jurisdiction and held that the federation was, in fact, competent to rule on the matter. But the decision went on to state that “no element makes it possible to establish that X** would have overstepped the consent of Ms. X**.” For Emma, it was another gut punch—especially because she says she had provided, this time, “testimony from other people that strongly supported [her] account,” along with the harassment messages and the death threat. In the email she sent to federation members, she writes: “I don’t know what would count, in cases like this, as proof of my consent (…) But obviously, I don’t have a video of him assaulting me in my sleep.” Asked what he thinks of the appeals commission’s ruling, Carrière says he does “not want to comment on judicial decisions”—even though disciplinary commission rulings are not court judgments, since they are not issued by courts. He also says he never read the harassment messages or the death threat. “I know these elements were transmitted to the commissions, which I want to stress are independent,” he says. “If I have access to the initial report, I can’t have access to the entire case file, which is protected by the secrecy of the investigation.” In the end, Carrière says he believes he was properly advised and does not think he made a mistake. The appeals decision ended the federation process. For Emma, there were no more internal remedies. The man she reported was not sanctioned by the FFME. He continued to receive federation funding and to attend national-team gatherings. Emma argues that, independent of the final ruling, the president could have taken interim protective measures under Article 12 of the FFME disciplinary regulations —what amounts to a temporary suspension or separation: removing the accused from gatherings, keeping him away, barring participation until matters were clarified. Carrière says he never considered using that power. “I thought there was no reason to,” he tells Vertige Media. “The DTN told me the program and coaches had put measures in place so that Emma and the alleged attacker wouldn’t cross paths. I trusted my teams.” Internal sources at the FFME confirmed to Vertige Media that such measures were discussed and implemented. Emma, however, says she was the one who repeatedly pulled back “without being asked by staff.” She says she was harmed most by being the one who had to step aside—and she argues the federation failed its duty to protect other athletes as well. “Given the complaint, it’s reasonable to question what threats could be hanging over the safety of the other athletes,” she says. Carrière responds: “If we stopped selecting for the France team the person she denounces, he could also file a complaint.” ( An interim protective measure is meant to be protective, not punitive .) Legal caution, institutional self-protection, or a lack of empathy? The reporting leaves the question open. The result for Emma, she says, was the same. “Me too” Beyond any speculation, one thing is clear in Emma’s account: she says she spent six months getting through it with antidepressants, sleeping pills, and Xanax. She says anxiety combined with lack of sleep made her far more injury-prone: tendinopathy, shingles, back pain. The day before our call, she says she threw her back out again. “My Olympic dream moves farther away with every sleepless night, with every new injury,” she says. What she describes, above all, is abandonment. “Except for a few people I still want to thank, I was very alone,” she says. “Dozens of messages went unanswered.” At times, she says it tipped into the absurd. “The VHSS prevention campaign the federation posted on its social media at the beginning of October made me sick,” she says. “It’s easier for me to testify now because it was much harder for others before. And if, in any way, I can make it easier for the women who speak after me, then that matters.” Emma Carrière disputes that. He says the FFME is exemplary on VHSS, pointing to recognition he says the federation received from the Ministry of Sports. Again, he frames the gap as “a matter of perception.” He says he discussed Emma’s case weekly with the DTN and his teams. “And she didn’t perceive that,” he says. “She even perceived it as a lack of interest. Updates about Emma came to me indirectly. It’s true I didn’t reach out to her directly when she was doing badly. But I’m not a psychologist.” In the end, Carrière says he believes he was properly advised and does not think he made a mistake. Emma disagrees. She says Carrière ran from his responsibilities. “I’m not saying he’s responsible because it’s his fault,” she says. “I’m saying he’s responsible because it’s his job. And the fact that I had to fight him the way I did—that’s not normal.” Emma says she is speaking now because, after a year and a half of what she calls a nightmare, she reached a conclusion: “I told myself there was no point in me going through this if other people were going to go through it too.” She continues: “As a woman who grew up in the 2000s and 2010s, I’m part of a generation that was still raised with a lot of awareness of these issues. It’s easier for us to talk about sexist and sexual violence because other people spoke before us. In other words, it’s easier for me to testify now because it was much harder for others before. And if, in any way, I can make it easier for the women who speak after me, then that matters.” Emma says she spent two months writing the email she sent to the FFME. She now describes the support she received afterward as something that made her feel “much less alone.” “That also gives me more strength,” she says. “At the beginning of this, I thought it would be impossible to keep my sports career going. Today, I think it’s possible.” Her decision to break the silence changed the terms of an affair that, until then, had been known only to a small handful of people inside the French Mountain and Climbing Federation. The timing was striking: it came just moments after the federation publicly announced the resignation of Alain Carrière, who had been president since 2016. The federation insists it was a coincidence. Name changed.* Labels used to protect anonymity. **

Scarpa offered to let us test the Drago XT with no strings attached. Forty-three sessions later, one thing is clear: this is a shoe built around precision. It takes some breaking in, and it raises the same old question every high-end climbing shoe does—where the balance really sits between comfort, durability, and performance. Scarpa Drago XT © Vertige Media Over the weeks, the Drago XT traced its own arc: early sessions marked by that familiar Scarpa “performance fit” squeeze, then a gradual shift into a shoe that rewards clean foot placements and efficient climbing. The soft rubber loses its edge faster, sure—but it gives you extra confidence in return. The heel won’t work for every foot shape, but the toe is unusually precise. The XT doesn’t reinvent anything. It just sharpens a lot. It doesn’t change how you climb—it makes things easier to read. For a shoe, that’s already a win. Vibram XS Grip 2: instant stick Scarpa puts Vibram XS Grip 2 on the Drago XT, a rubber most climbers know well. It’s soft and sensitive, and it conforms to whatever you’re standing on—slick gym volumes or tiny edges on a limestone slab. That softness is the whole point: the rubber deforms just enough to spread pressure and increase your contact patch. The tradeoff is obvious, and it shows up fast. The softer the rubber, the quicker it wears. After around forty sessions, abrasion started showing up at the big toe—right where the downturn concentrates pressure. Nothing surprising for XS Grip 2. It’s a deliberate compromise: you buy stickiness and feel, and you pay for it in millimeters of rubber. The heel: better, but not a perfect fit for everyone Scarpa reworked the Drago XT heel with a textured design and full-coverage rubber, aiming to address complaints about the original Drago. In practice, heel hooks feel easier to “set” (to really lock in), the hold is more solid, and hooking feels more reliable overall. But there’s no such thing as a universal heel. Depending on your foot shape, you may still notice some dead space—the classic “baggy heel” feeling—and it can seem like the back of your foot never fully seats. So: real improvement, not a one-size-fits-all fix. You’ll need a break-in period Scarpa’s reputation isn’t made up. Sliding into one of their performance shoes has never meant instant comfort. The first sessions remind you what that looks like: noticeable pressure in the forefoot, an arch held under tension, and the sense that the shoe sets the terms before it starts working with you. The Drago XT uses microsuede, a synthetic material that mimics suede. Unlike leather, it won’t stretch enough to “gain” half a size, but it does soften, pack down a bit, and eventually conform better. After two or three sessions, the initial stiffness eases, the pain fades, and the XT finds its groove: demanding but manageable, technical without feeling like a punishment. A downturn that steers your climbing The Drago XT’s downturn is built on Scarpa’s FZR last—one of their most aggressive shapes. It’s a tight profile designed to funnel power onto the front of the shoe. That lets you load the big toe efficiently and use tiny footholds that would feel sketchy in a flatter shoe. That setup takes some adjusting. If you’re coming from a more neutral shoe, you’ll need to relearn how you place your feet: more precision, more targeted pressure, and more attention if you want to avoid burning through rubber early. Once it clicks, the downturn turns into real leverage. It helps you stand on micro-features, stabilizes hooks, and gives you that “locked-in” feeling that changes how you commit to certain moves. A shoe built for precision, not power After 43 sessions, the Drago XT’s logic is consistent: it rewards accuracy more than brute force. The toe responds when you place it cleanly, the downturn channels pressure, and the rubber amplifies small adjustments. The whole design nudges you toward better footwork instead of letting you muscle through with your arms. It won’t magically level up your climbing overnight. But it does shape habits that last: placing your feet more deliberately, reading sequences with more detail, and accepting a simple truth—precision tires you out less than trying to overpower everything. The XT isn’t just a performance tool. At times it feels like a quiet coach: demanding, but fair. Conclusion The Drago XT isn’t a “for everyone” shoe. The soft rubber wears faster than a stiffer sole. The heel won’t fit every foot. And you do need a real break-in period. But if you stop there, you miss what it actually brings. Session after session, it starts to feel like a progression partner. A shoe that pushes you to climb with finesse instead of force, and that reminds you economy of movement usually beats brute effort. It’s demanding. It doesn’t stroke your ego. But it does make you more honest—and that might be the best thing a climbing shoe can do. Specs Model:  Scarpa Drago XT Upper:  Multi-panel microsuede (synthetic) Closure:  Dual Velcro straps Midsole:  1.0 mm Flexan, floating pad under the big toe Tension system:  PCB-Tension + SRT (M50 rubber) Outsole:  Vibram XS Grip 2, 3.5 mm (1/3 length) Heel:  IHC (3 mm rubber, textured) Downturn:  Aggressive (FZR last, asymmetric profile) Weight:  ~200 g (size 41 / EU; ±10 g depending on size) Sizes:  35–45 (half sizes) Made in:  Italy MSRP:  ≈ €150 (seen roughly €145–€180 depending on retailer) Best for:  Indoor/outdoor bouldering, hard sport routes, precision-focused climbing (not designed for big walls or long comfort sessions)

A climbing helmet is a thankless piece of gear. It doesn’t help you climb harder, it won’t bump your grade, and it doesn’t come with any highlight-reel moments—yet it plays a huge role in whether you make it back in one piece. You just need it to show up: on long days, messy approaches, at belays where rock breaks loose without warning, and during all the repeat transitions where your gear takes a beating right along with you. Black Diamond’s Capitan E fits that mindset. It’s a helmet that treats durability like a feature, not a compromise—less “ultralight showpiece,” more “workhorse for real climbing,” with a clear focus on protection and day-long comfort. The design is built for impacts—and for how climbing actually happens. Built with two kinds of impact in mind The Capitan E uses a two-part approach: a hard shell made from recycled ABS paired with DuraPET, plus a dual-foam setup with EPS and EPP. The logic is straightforward—and smart. It’s designed to handle a top hit (the classic overhead impact) differently than side or rear hits, which are often more subtle but very real in everyday climbing. Black Diamond describes an EPS “puck” at the crown, with more forgiving EPP on the sides, all wrapped in a shell meant to take abuse. The most compelling promise here is coverage: more protection around the sides and back, with an explicit aim to meet stricter UIAA requirements in those zones. No hype needed—nobody “feels” protection until the moment they absolutely need it. But in a sport where the unexpected sometimes gets the final say, taking side and rear impacts seriously makes sense, and it sets this helmet apart from some more minimal designs. A tough helmet can’t be a pain to wear A durable helmet still has to disappear on your head. Black Diamond goes with a low-profile suspension system for fine-tuning the fit, plus removable pads made with bamboo fiber. Those details matter, because they decide whether a helmet gets worn or gets stuffed in a pack (or left at home). The intent here is clear: make this an everyday helmet you can keep on for hours, without turning the day into a constant tradeoff between protection and annoyance. Ventilation stays fairly open, with a straightforward focus on breathability when it warms up. And because climbing days rarely stay neatly inside a “noon to six, perfect weather” window, the Capitan E includes headlamp clips up front and an elastic keeper in the back—simple, but genuinely useful when the day runs long or the approach happens late. Weight, sizing, standards: the numbers The Capitan E sits firmly in the “durable by design” category: 320 g in S/M and 350 g in M/L, for head circumferences of 53–59 cm and 58–63 cm. On compliance, it’s listed as CE/EN and UIAA, and it’s presented as meeting EN 12492, the reference standard for mountaineering/climbing helmets. Conclusion The Capitan E isn’t the helmet you buy to shave 50 grams off your kit. It’s the one you pick when you want something that can take hits, dials in cleanly, stays comfortable over long days, and clearly pushes harder on side and rear coverage. In a market that often chases ultralight everything, this tool-first approach feels reassuring—and, more importantly, it matches how a lot of climbers actually climb. Specs: Black Diamond Capitan E Construction:  Two-piece shell (recycled ABS + DuraPET), EPS + EPP foam Recycled materials:  30% by weight (claimed) Protection:  Increased side/rear coverage (with reference to stricter UIAA requirements) Fit system:  Low-profile suspension Headlamp attachment:  Front clips + rear elastic keeper Pads:  Removable, bamboo fiber Weight:  320 g (S/M), 350 g (M/L) Sizing:  53–59 cm (S/M), 58–63 cm (M/L) Standards:  CE/EN, UIAA (EN 12492 listed by retailers) Country of origin:  China

In the world of travel bags, a duffel is often a necessary evil: great at swallowing gear, miserable the moment you have to carry it anywhere that isn’t the trunk of a car. Osprey promises the opposite with the Transporter—a duffel designed to ride on your back as comfortably as a hiking pack. After several weeks of real use—train stations, muddy parking lots, and improvised bivies—it mostly proves one thing: comfort changes everything once you’re hauling 30-plus pounds. © Osprey Most duffels are the bulky sidekick you put up with because it’s the simplest option. You stuff it, you drag it, you curse it on stairs. But if you travel with a rope, climbing shoes, and a sleeping bag you packed in a hurry, a duffel still makes sense. With the Transporter, Osprey tries to flip the script: take a bag built for volume and make it something you can actually wear—on purpose, not as punishment. A Duffel Meant to Be Worn The Transporter’s big selling point is the harness. Where most duffels settle for token shoulder straps—fine for a two-minute shuffle across an airport—Osprey commits to real backpack-style straps: decent padding, a sternum strap, and, importantly, the ability to stow everything cleanly when you’re checking it. In practice, it changes the whole experience. Even when it’s stuffed to the ceiling, you can carry the Transporter for a few miles without feeling like you’ve got an anvil slung over one shoulder. The load sits well, the bag stays stable, and you can walk normally instead of doing that awkward, hunched-duffel wobble. It’s not a trekking pack, but in the duffel category, very few carry this convincingly—and that’s the real difference. A Fabric That Takes a Beating Osprey currently has two generations of the Transporter. The older version used a 900D polyester with a TPU coating—rugged and a bit stiff, with a “armored” vibe and a plasticky feel. The newer version, launched in 2025, switches to a fabric Osprey calls NanoTough™: 100% recycled high-tenacity nylon, with a carbonate coating meant to improve abrasion resistance and boost water repellency. You notice the change the second you handle it. The fabric feels more flexible, less like vinyl, and the bigger sizes drop a few hundred grams. It’s not a dramatic weight cut, but you’ll notice it when you’re lifting and moving the 95L or 120L. Either way, it’s a durable build, with a reinforced 840D bottom designed to handle repeated impacts—the kind of bag you can toss onto a train platform or into the bed of a pickup without overthinking it. The Transporter doesn’t have the bunker-like thickness of The North Face Base Camp, but it plays a smarter durability game: tough enough to last, flexible enough not to be annoying every time you have to handle it. Water-Repellent, Not Waterproof The zipper flaps, coating, and construction do a good job limiting water getting in. In steady rain, your stuff stays protected, and you can walk outside for fifteen minutes or push through a downpour without panicking. But it’s important to be clear: the standard Transporter is not a waterproof bag. Osprey does make a specific version, the Transporter Waterproof, rated IPX7—able to handle submersion to one meter for thirty minutes. That’s a different conversation: kayaking trips, river missions, and places where “dry” is non-negotiable. The standard duffel is built for travel and everyday abuse, not for floating down a torrent. It shrugs off rain, damp platforms, and the mud of a crag parking lot, but it’s not trying to replace a dry bag. Translation: an excellent travel-and-field companion—as long as you don’t ask it to do a job it wasn’t designed for. Minimal Organization, Done Right The Transporter stays true to duffel DNA: one big main compartment, no obsession with pockets. Access is through a wide, lockable U-shaped YKK zipper, which makes it easy to see everything you’ve thrown in there at a glance. On the outside, an end pocket holds the small essentials you want handy—keys, headlamp, train tickets—without dumping the whole bag. Inside, a zippered mesh pocket helps separate clean clothes from the stuff that’s already been worked over. No frills, but the details matter. Internal compression straps keep the load from turning into a loose, shifting mess after a few transfers. And when it’s empty, the bag packs down into the included mesh storage sack—easy to stash in a car trunk, or use as a laundry bag on the road. It’s intentionally simple, focused on function over gimmicks—which is exactly what you want from a duffel. From 30 to 150 Liters: Pick Your Lane The Transporter Duffel comes in six sizes, from 30 liters (almost a daypack) to 150 liters (closer to a soft rooftop cargo box than a “bag”). Each size points to a different use case. The 40L is the most versatile: compact enough to be considered for carry-on depending on the airline, but roomy enough for a long weekend with climbing gear. But the real sweet spot—yes, the actual sweet spot—is the 65L. It’s the balanced choice for one to two weeks on the move, with enough space for a rope, shoes, layers, and a sleeping bag without turning into an unmanageable blob. It’s still a bag you can carry on your shoulder or wear as a backpack without wrecking yourself. Go bigger—95L and 120L—and you’re in a different category: trips where you’re bringing the whole kit. You can still carry them, but these sizes are really built for checked baggage and long hauls. And the 150L is almost daring you to overpack: big enough for pads, ropes, a giant sleeping bag, and food for an expedition—while being obviously miserable if you have to navigate a crowded subway staircase. The Trade-Off That Matters The Transporter isn’t the most armored duffel out there. By feel and by looks, The North Face Base Camp still wins the “thick tarp that might survive the apocalypse” contest—and it’s reassuring, even if it comes with extra weight. Osprey takes a different approach. The Transporter doesn’t try to impress you with brute toughness. It tries to be a duffel you can actually carry, and that’s usually where the real difference shows up. You don’t remember the exact fabric weight months later. You do remember trudging across a train station with nearly 40 pounds of gear on your back. In that context, the Transporter earns its keep. It doesn’t claim to be indestructible. It just makes a strong case for being one of the most believable duffels when you need a storage bag to function like an actual carry system. It’s a deliberate compromise—and it chooses real-world usability over tough-guy marketing. Specs: Transporter Duffel 65 Capacity:  65 L Dimensions:  62 × 35 × 40 cm Weight:  1.206 kg Fabric:  NanoTough™ (recycled 630D high-tenacity nylon, carbonate coating) + 840D reinforced bottom Closure:  Lockable YKK EYL U-zip + rain flap Carry:  Stowable backpack-style straps + sternum strap Organization:  Zippered end pocket, internal mesh pocket, compression straps Water resistance:  Water-repellent, not submersible Available sizes:  30 / 40 / 65 / 95 / 120 / 150 L Made in:  Vietnam (bluesign®-certified site) MSRP:  Around €150 (varies by retailer) Best for:  Travel and expeditions, hauling bulky bouldering or sport-climbing gear, mixed road-and-crag use

In climbing, there’s this stubborn myth that your shoes are supposed  to hurt—like pain is the cover charge, proof you’re serious, some vaguely ridiculous rite of passage. In reality, your first pair of shoes is mostly about learning: how to place your feet, how to trust an edge, what sticks (usually) and what skates (sometimes). That’s exactly where the Black Diamond Women’s Momentum lands. It’s an entry-level shoe with a neutral, flat last, two Velcro straps, and a design built to stay on your feet for a long time. It’s meant to support the kind of progress that comes from hours of repetition—not an immediate hunt for millimeter-level precision. A “forgiving” build—without turning into a slipper The Momentum is built around a pretty straightforward idea: make the shoe breathable and accommodating without letting it collapse into full-on “house slipper” territory. The upper uses Black Diamond’s Engineered Knit Technology, paired with a microfiber liner in the forefoot to help limit stretch and keep a baseline of structure over time. The goal here is comfort you can actually climb in, session after session, without the shoe turning into a baggy sock. There’s also a detail that sounds like marketing until you live with it: a hemp footbed. It fits the whole point of the shoe—something you can wear long, often, and comfortably, rather than a pair you suffer through for two “performance tries” before it gets banished to the bottom of your pack. “Women’s specific” is mostly about volume Black Diamond frames this as a women’s-specific fit—meaning lower overall volume and a shape intended for certain foot morphologies. In practice, the Momentum has a pretty welcoming forefoot and an overall comfort-driven feel. That plays especially well for longer sessions—gym climbing, moderate routes, and days when you’re climbing more than you’re “projecting” (working a route over multiple tries). The flip side is predictable: a forgiving shoe forgives a lot , sometimes at the cost of a more “locked-in” feel if you’re chasing a very technical fit—especially around the heel. On sizing, Black Diamond offers guidance by goal. For “all day comfort,” the brand generally recommends sizing down modestly from your street shoe—snug, but not painful. In the real world, the most common mistake with a comfort-first shoe is overcorrecting: trying to force the compression of an aggressive, downturned model out of something that simply isn’t built for that. 4.3 mm molded rubber: durability, by design The Momentum uses a 4.3 mm outsole aimed squarely at durability, with molded rubber (rather than rubber cut from a sheet). Black Diamond positions that as a way to optimize consistency, weight, and comfort. Either way, the message is clear: this is a shoe for people still building footwork. That thicker rubber is more forgiving when you’re missing placements and grinding your toes on gym holds. It doesn’t demand the delicacy of a super-soft, ultra-sensitive shoe. There’s a known tradeoff, of course. The more rubber you put underfoot, the more you dull that fine feedback from tiny features. But for someone progressing, it’s usually the rational compromise: better a shoe that survives the learning curve than a “scalpel” that’s trashed before your feet get precise. How it feels on the wall: where it shines, where it taps out Black Diamond positions the Momentum for vertical climbing and long-wear comfort, with a “soft flex” midsole (more supple, more forgiving) and a neutral shape. In plain terms, it holds its own on: Gym climbing (slabs, volume-heavy walls, training routes) Moderate crag days where footholds are readable and generally solid Long sessions where comfort translates into consistency But once you move into very steep terrain, razor-precise edging on tiny nubs, or sequences where every millimeter matters, the Momentum calmly reminds you what it is: an entry-level shoe built to support progression, not to chase the tightest “performance fit.” Updates that target the usual weak points The Momentum isn’t stuck in time. Black Diamond lists a handful of updates aimed at the classic shortcomings of comfort-oriented shoes: an updated knit with a softer lining, softer toe rands, a reworked heel geometry for more consistent tension, and—most importantly—an updated midsole intended to improve edging ability. In other words: same DNA, but reinforced where it counts—fit security and overall coherence. Verdict: a smarter first shoe than it looks The Women’s Momentum succeeds where a lot of beginner shoes miss: it lowers the barrier to entry without turning learning into punishment. It gives you time—time to climb, repeat, adjust—and that’s what actually builds skill. Its comfort and forgiveness aren’t a flaw. They’re the method. The limits are real and worth stating clearly: this isn’t a steep-project weapon, and it’s not a micro-precision tool. But as a progression shoe, an everyday trainer, a comfortable backup, or a solid option for moderate multi-pitch days, it’s impressively consistent—and exactly what a first shoe should be. Specs: Black Diamond Women’s Momentum Last/Shape:  Neutral, flat (comfort / vertical focus) Closure:  Two Velcro straps Rubber:  4.3 mm molded outsole Midsole:  “Soft flex” (comfort / sensitivity) Upper:  Engineered Knit + microfiber forefoot liner Footbed:  Hemp Claimed weight:  440 g (US Women’s 5) Made in:  China MSRP:  Around €90 on Black Diamond Europe

On October 13, 2021, in Sydney, a climber fell roughly 40 feet from a route equipped with an auto-belay (a self-belay device) and was killed. Four years later, an Australian court fined the gym operator and two directors a combined total of about €250,000. It’s easy to fixate on the number. But the bigger point is simpler—and harder to sit with: the slack that kills isn’t always in the webbing. A lot of the time, it’s higher up the chain, in an operation that stopped tightening its own bolts. © Jonathan Chan In almost every gym, there’s that comforting sound: click-click , the strap retracting. It’s mechanical, steady, almost soothing—the noise that lets you climb without a human belayer. You pull, you let go, you start up. At Sydney Indoor Climbing Gym in St Peters, that ritual failed. The auto-belay didn’t retract. Gravity did the rest. Four years later, the ruling is a reminder to the whole community: safety isn’t just steel and nylon. It’s also habits, procedures, and a culture that has to be maintained—on purpose, every day. The facts, without the drama On the day of the incident, the workplace safety agency SafeWork NSW released an Incident Information Release with the basics: a failed auto-belay, a fall of around 13 meters (about 43 feet) at Sydney Indoor Climbing Gym in St Peters, and a death. No storytelling—just the official timeline of a tragedy. In August 2025, the Sydney court fined the operator 281,250 AUD, and two directors 84,375 AUD each . Total: 450,000 AUD, about €250,000. Some general-news coverage widely repeated 375,000 AUD for the company—a middle figure. But the final total, documented by specialized sources, is clear. In climbing and in court, it’s worth checking the last draw: that’s often where the outcome gets decided. In court, the uncomfortable obviousness The technical record doesn’t read like a freak failure. It reads like a list of warning signs that should never have been brushed off as “small stuff”: A worn lanyard with its wear indicator rubbed away. A strap jammed in the drum. Debris built up in the nozzle. A carabiner gate that no longer snapped shut cleanly. Add to that a major service overdue since July 2021, a last internal inspection dating back to January 2020, and a maintenance log that had already flagged faulty retraction in the last meters more than once. After the accident, the gym acted: it permanently removed all auto-belays, introduced daily inspections, and scheduled annual external testing. Proof, if any were needed, that fixes exist—and that they too often arrive after someone is already gone. What this says about climbers—and gyms An auto-belay is not a guardian angel. It’s not a harmless convenience, either. It’s industrial equipment, and it demands routine, rigor, and follow-through. Inspection, maintenance, documentation, training: without those four pillars, the tool becomes a trap. The judge put it bluntly: the risk was “extremely obvious,” and the measures were “readily available”—and they weren’t taken. The translation for climbers is plain: if the strap doesn’t retract, you don’t climb that line. Full stop. Safety isn’t a faded poster by the wall. It’s a system you actively run: repeatable checks, written procedures, and records you can actually produce. International echoes: “zero slack” isn’t paranoia In 2024 and again in March 2025, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recalled several TRUBLUE iQ / iQ+ models over a retraction defect—devices that “can fail to retract.” The guidance was simple and harsh: stop using them immediately and send them back for factory service. Different country, different legal system, same hard line: no slack tolerated. In France, the FFME updated its materials as well: a 2025 auto-belay safety poster and 2024 rules that keep hammering the same routine. Pull and release the webbing to verify retraction. Do a short hang-test about a meter off the ground on your first climb. Don’t use the unit if it doesn’t retract. Post those instructions in big, obvious places at the base of the devices. That isn’t decoration. It’s how you build habits that hold up when attention drifts. In France: tragedy, and a louder alarm On November 2, 2024, at Climb Up Lyon, a 72-year-old man died in a fall . According to local reporting, he may have forgotten to clip in. Not the same mechanism as Sydney: human error versus an operational failure. But the lesson converges anyway. Build layers—human, mechanical, procedural, technological—so that a mistake, whatever its source, never gets to finish its trajectory. Clear signage. Layouts that make clipping in unavoidable. Staff routines that don’t let a lapse slide. Alert technology that kicks in when attention drops. All of it is about the same goal: weaving more nets so a fall doesn’t turn fatal. In Nancy, more recently, another gym in the Climb Up network chose to add a loud warning before gravity gets the chance: installation of B.A.S.S. , a device that screams if someone launches without being attached. It’s not a magic fix. It’s one more behavioral barrier—a loud backstop that catches an oversight when fatigue and routine start dulling the mind. It doesn’t replace pull-and-release checks or training; it makes them more likely to happen. Three habits, one culture: zero slack The move. At the base of every auto-belay line, pull and release the webbing, test retraction over the first meter, and stop immediately if you feel any slack. It’s basic. It’s lifesaving. The eyes. Frayed webbing, a missing wear indicator, sluggish retraction? Climb down and report it. Safety is a team sport. The proof (for operators). A log for each device—photos, serial numbers, timestamps, corrective actions. Not bureaucracy. Memory that protects people, and documentation that holds up. Why write this now? Because Sydney isn’t some distant, one-off headline. It exposes a blind spot that’s everywhere: routine that lulls people to sleep. Auto-belays taught us to climb without a belayer. Now they have to teach us something else: never climb without a safety culture. And if there’s one last plain way to say it: in Sydney, the problem wasn’t just slack in the strap. It was slack in the system—habits, oversight, governance. Our job is to tighten the chain: clear checks, visible signs, regular inspections, and records that actually exist. No panic. No sermon. Just doing the smart things, on purpose.

In the United States, trans women are now barred from every women’s category in competitions sanctioned by the national climbing federation. Not after a sweep of podiums. Not after some slam-dunk scientific report. But after a political order from the top. Climbing—this sport that loves to imagine itself outside the world—just got yanked into a culture fight that has nothing to do with a simple rulebook debate. © David Pillet In a gym, pulling a hold is how you reset and set something new. But when the “hold” you remove means shutting down an entire lane and a spot on the start list, that’s not setting. That’s exclusion. This summer, that’s exactly what happened to trans women climbers in the U.S. In a curt email, the USOPC (the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee) directed every national governing body to bar trans women from women’s categories. USA Climbing —after eighteen months working closely with trans climbers on an inclusive policy that was nearly finished—had to shove it in a drawer. Not because anything had “gone wrong” at a competition. But because a presidential directive said so. And in Olympic-style American sport, politics isn’t in the background. It’s the head coach. “Keeping men out of women’s sports” In the American sports hierarchy, a national federation is tied to the USOPC the way a rope is tied into an anchor—your whole system depends on it. That tie is official certification and elite-sport funding. If the USOPC cuts the rope, the federation takes the fall. In February 2025, Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14201, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” —a policy framed as protecting women’s competition by systematically excluding trans women. Two words do all the work: Executive Order . This isn’t guidance. It’s a federal directive, and the USOPC’s job is to apply it across its affiliated federations. Refuse, and you risk losing recognition and funding—an administrative death sentence. USA Climbing, which was preparing an inclusive policy aligned with IFSC criteria (testosterone under 10 nmol/L for twelve months), was forced to abandon the work. Executive Order 14201 Signed:  February 5, 2025, by Donald Trump. Purpose:  Exclude any trans woman from women’s competitions in sports governed by USOPC-recognized national federations. Mechanism:  Compliance required to keep certification and funding. Scope:  Every discipline—from basketball to curling… and now climbing. Climbing didn’t have this “problem” Part of why this lands so hard is that climbing didn’t have a high-profile, messy precedent around trans women’s participation. To date, no American trans woman has competed in an IFSC World Cup, or in an elite national championship, or cleaned up podiums. The “problem” this rule claims to solve didn’t exist in this sport. And even on performance, the usual argument about a massive physical edge doesn’t map cleanly onto climbing. The men’s/women’s gap is smaller here than in many measured sports. Look at the outer limits: Roped climbing: the women’s benchmark is 9b+— Excalibur  by Brooke Raboutou (about 5.15c). The men’s benchmark is 9c (about 5.15d). Bouldering: the women’s benchmark is 8C+—Katie Lamb (roughly V16, with 8C+ noted once). The men’s benchmark is 9A (roughly V17). Some iconic lines were first climbed by women before men repeated them— Meltdown  (8c+/9a, about 5.14c/5.14d) put up by Beth Rodden, and Lynn Hill’s one-day free ascent of The Nose . In other words: the glass ceiling is real, but it’s cracked—and sometimes people punch right through it. Exclusion before evidence The International Olympic Committee recommends restricting participation only when there’s robust evidence of a disproportionate advantage that’s specific to the discipline. Plainly: if climbing could show trans women win reliably because of a clear, decisive physiological edge, then yes—rules could be debated on that basis. But that isn’t what’s happening here. No published study. No statistical record showing a huge imbalance in this sport. What’s driving the decision is a theoretical fear—and, more than that, a political signal. The implicit message is: whether the problem exists or not, we’re going to show we’re “fixing” it. It’s like installing a lightning rod on a blue-sky day. The consequence is immediate and concrete: a precedent where exclusion comes first, and proof is optional. In the current U.S. cultural climate, that sequence isn’t an accident. It’s the point. How does enforcement even work? Once the rule exists, you still have to enforce it. Right now, USA Climbing does not verify participants’ gender identity. Tomorrow, will they require medical letters? Hormone test results? And who collects that data, stores it, protects it? Here’s the problem: American sports federations are not bound by medical confidentiality. There’s no guarantee that a document submitted for a competition won’t be accessed or exploited by local authorities—especially in states where gender-affirming care is being criminalized. That means a trans woman climber could face legal risk simply by registering for a sanctioned event. And then there’s the part no rulebook can capture: gym culture. In climbing, people size you up by how you climb—your try-hard, your commitment—not by what’s on a form. Like that final where a trans woman competitor, frozen by the fear of actually winning, heard her rivals yell, “Go for it.” That kind of solidarity can’t be outlawed by a federal directive. Cracks in the wall Not everything is locked down. Local competitions that aren’t run by USA Climbing can still welcome whoever they choose. Groups like Trans Climbers Belong are holding onto the inclusive policy written over the last two years, ready to deploy it if and when the opening appears. And above all, there’s still the everyday culture of the gym—the one where performance is measured by the willingness to try, not by the sex marker on a certificate. That bond is the one thing no federal memo can strip off the wall. Timeline : September 2023:  USA Climbing publishes a first trans policy (testosterone < 5 nmol/L for 12 months). November 2023:  After criticism, the policy is suspended; a working group is formed with trans athletes. February 2025:  Donald Trump signs Executive Order 14201. June 2025:  The USOPC incorporates the order into its official policy. July 2025:  USA Climbing announces a total ban in women’s categories for sanctioned competitions. October 2025 (planned):  Enforcement details to be published ahead of the Youth Series.

Light like a skimo (ski mountaineering) harness, but kitted out like a do-it-all model, the WHISPER is trying to bridge two worlds that usually don’t mix. For years, ultralight harnesses have had the same problem: you put them on like emergency gear, grit your teeth for a couple minutes hanging in space, then bury them in the bottom of your pack and swear you’ll only pull them out when you absolutely have to. Whisper harness / Petzl © Petzl The WHISPER is trying to break that pattern. At well under 200 grams, it’s the kind of harness you can forget in your pack—and still actually want to use once you’re at the base. Long limestone multi-pitch, an alpine ridge with a handful of nuts and cams, or just the desire to travel light without going full monk: this harness is making a simple point. Ultralight doesn’t have to mean miserable or weirdly compromised. Light, but fully featured The first surprise is that the WHISPER doesn’t feel like it was designed in the “diet” aisle of the gear shop. In use, it feels like a real harness, not a skinny backup you tolerate out of principle. You get five properly sized gear loops: two big, stiff front loops that can handle a full set of quickdraws or a few cams without sagging; two rear loops that stay usable even with a pack on; and a fifth, softer loop for a cordalette or the small mess you always end up bringing. Add two slots for a CARITOOL—load them with an ice screw, a water bottle, or a pair of gloves—and the picture is complete. In other words, you’re not stuck playing Tetris with your rack. The WHISPER assumes you might climb with real gear, and it can handle it. That changes everything. At 170 g in a size M, you’d expect something you toss in your pack “just in case.” Here it’s the opposite: an ultralight harness that’s built for serious use, without turning climbing into a caricature of minimalism. It’s a welcome counterpoint in a world where shaving grams can become an obsession—often at the expense of what a climbing harness is actually for: carrying gear, and carrying it well. MATRYX®: the material that makes it work If the WHISPER pulls this off, it’s not magic—it’s MATRYX®, a textile that ditches the thick webbing and classic foam approach. The idea is straightforward: individually coated strands of polyamide and high-tenacity polyethylene woven into a thin but surprisingly tough grid. The result is a fabric that’s breathable, water-repellent, and durable—three traits you rarely get together in a sub-200-gram harness. On the wall and in the mountains, that shows up in the details. The harness doesn’t turn into a portable sauna when the approach is long. It dries quickly after rain or after you’ve sweat through your shirt. And it doesn’t fall apart the first time it scrapes against rock. Just as important, it packs down small—once folded, it takes up less room than a water bottle. That’s real, usable lightness. In other words, MATRYX® isn’t just a marketing badge here; it’s what lets the WHISPER be more than a “fast-and-light only” harness, and makes it legitimate for multi-pitch and technical alpine climbing. Minimal adjustments, demanding fit The WHISPER isn’t trying to please everyone. It sticks to a single waist buckle and fixed leg loops held in place by elastic. No extra adjustment points, no dangling straps. You put it on, cinch it down, and climb. The tradeoff is simple: you get a lot less wiggle room to fine-tune the fit. Sizing runs from XS (65–71 cm) to L (84–92 cm), with weight ranging from 140 to 185 g depending on size. Early feedback points to it fitting a bit small—if you’re between sizes, going up is the safer call. That isn’t a flaw so much as a choice: close fit, clean design, efficient setup. The WHISPER is dialed for people who land cleanly in the size chart, and less forgiving for in-between body types. Comfort, in the right context At under 200 grams, nobody is expecting an armchair. The WHISPER doesn’t pretend otherwise. This isn’t a sport-climbing harness you can hang in all afternoon while you work a move (working a route = repeated attempts with lots of resting on the rope). It’s a harness that disappears when you’re moving. Light, flexible, breathable—it stays out of your way on approaches and while you’re climbing. At belays, it does its job: you can sit long enough to handle transitions and rope work without suffering, as long as you don’t confuse “ultralight” with “plush hanging comfort.” The philosophy is clear. This is for climbers who value smooth movement and efficiency, not for folks who spend the whole day taking falls and hanging to suss out the crux. For that kind of repeated hanging, the SITTA still has the edge. The WHISPER is a reminder that you can’t have everything: going light has limits, and it’s better to know them before you buy. Between the FLY and the SITTA, with a real niche In Petzl’s lineup, the WHISPER lands right between two extremes. On one end is the FLY: 100 to 130 g, a stripped-down harness built for skimo and fast missions, but too minimal to carry a real rack. On the other end is the SITTA: 275 g in size M, designed to handle lots of hanging and long sessions—sport cragging, projecting, and steep multi-pitch—but less compact by nature. The WHISPER sits squarely in the middle: more capable than a minimalist harness, far lighter than a classic all-around model. It makes sense for alpinists trying to keep things light, and for multi-pitch climbers who want to cut bulk in the pack. A harness that can carry gear without feeling like an anchor—and one that hits a slot very few competitors really cover. Specs Model:  Petzl WHISPER Weight:  XS 140 g · S 155 g · M 170 g · L 185 g Sizes:  XS 65–71 cm / S 71–77 cm / M 77–84 cm / L 84–92 cm (waist) Construction:  MATRYX® (individually coated HMPE + polyamide strands), reinforced tie-in points and gear-loop zones Gear carry:  5 gear loops (2 very large rigid front, 2 rear usable with a pack, 1 soft rear) + 2 CARITOOL slots Adjustments:  1 waist buckle, fixed leg loops (elastic) Certifications:  CE EN 12277 type C · UIAA MSRP:  approx. €179.95 (sale prices around €150) Best for:  technical alpinism, fast multi-pitch, trad/adventure climbing, light climbing with a full rack