| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | French |
| Born | January 24, 1970 Le Panissaud, Charente.[1] |
| Height | 5 ft 9 in (175 cm)[1] |
| Spouse | Céline Rouhling |
| Climbing career | |
| Type of climber | |
| Highest grade |
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| Known for | |
| First ascents |
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| Updated on 22 June 2022. | |
Fred Rouhling (born 24 January 1970) is a French rock climber and boulderer, noted for creating and repeating some of the earliest grade 9a (5.14d) sport climbing routes in the world, including Hugh in 1993, the first-ever French 9a (5.14d) sport route.[a][1] Rouhling is also known for the controversy from his proposed grading of 9b (5.15b) for his 1995 route Akira, which would have made it the world's first-ever 9b-graded sport route; 25 years later, it was graded at 9a (5.14d).[1]
Rouhling grew up in the small French farming town of Le Panissaud. His neighboring village of Vilhonneur has a limestone quarry (which supplied materials for the Statue of Liberty).[1] Twenty minutes away is the larger town of Angoulême, where limestone crags overhang many of the roads, with the best-known being Les Eaux Claires ("The Clear Waters"), with 15 to 20-metre overhanging extreme routes that require strong fingers to manage the small pockets used to ascend them;[1] and contains nationally-regarded extreme routes such as La Crépinette (1983), France's first 8a (5.13b).[2] Rouhling began to climb in school, and by age 19 was climbing at 8b (5.13d) when the world's hardest routes were then at 8c (5.14b).[1]
In the early 1990s, Rouhling had moved to the south of France for college where he also had access to the leading sport climbing venues of France. Rouhling made the first ascent of UFO, the first 8c (5.14b) in the Calanques, and then completed Les Spécialistes Direct at the Verdon Gorge.[1] Les Spécialistes Direct was a variation on Jean-Baptiste Tribout's famous 1987 route, Les Spécialistes, which was bolted earlier by Alain Robert; with the downgrade of Les Spécialistes to 8b+, Rouhling's ascent remains the first 8c route in the gorge.[3]
Returning home in 1993, Rouhling wanted to create different routes from the long steep stamina crimpy routes of the Calanques and Verdon.[4] At his local crag of Eaux-Clairs, he freed a line he called Hugh with a double-overhanging bulge that required little footwork. Having climbed it, he made the route harder by filling in holds and chipping-out new ones that he graded at 9a (5.14d). At the time, there were only three known 9a routes in the world.[a][1] Hugh was repeated in 2001, and by Dai Koyamada (2002),[6] and Sébastien Bouin (2020), confirming the grade of 9a,[7] the first 9a in France.[5][8]
The use of chipping to create new extreme routes was not uncommon then in France,[9] and included examples such as Antoine Le Menestrel's famous Buoux route, La Rose et la Vampire 8b (5.13d).[1][10] Some major North American routes also relied on chipped holds for their development, with examples such as The Phoenix 5.13a (7c+) in Yosemite , and Just do It 5.14c (8c+) at Smith Rocks.[1] In a 2021 documentary, Rouhling said that finding natural new hard routes is difficult (particularly of the overhanging roof style that he was attracted to) and that the chipping of new "hardest" routes was far more widespread than was understood; Rouhling also noted that other leading French climbers had manufactured such routes in their own local quarries for their development and training.[4]
Home again in 1995 as his wife was recovering from back surgery, Rouhling began work on a new route he called Akira in the Vilhonneur quarry. Akira was a 65-foot long low horizontal roof (only circa 12 feet off the ground), that he estimated had an 8B (V13) bouldering problem, with a final 20-foot 5.13b (8a) vertical section beyond the lip (the only part for which he used a rope); such a route was unprecedented as a sport climb at the time.[b][1] On completing Akira, belayed by his recovered wife, Rouhling graded it at 9b (5.15b).[1][9] At the time, nobody had climbed 9a+ (Chris Sharma would climb the world's first consensus 9a+ in 2001, and the first consensus 9b in 2008).[11] In 1997, Rouhling added another chipped route at Eaux Claire, L'autre côté du Ciel, a spectacular high roof, that he graded at 9a (5.14d).[7][12]
Rouhling faced an unprecedented level of personalized attack for Akira.[11][9] Leading climbers publicly challenged his integrity,[7][11] and various unsubstantiated theories were promoted about Rouhling and his routes.[1][13][9] Those that tried Akira, failed to climb it.[c][7][16] In 2004, Climbing sent Pete Ward (a future American Alpine Club Board member),[17] to interview Rouhling over several days, and see him on his routes.[1][13] Ward could not opine on the grade but verified that Rouhling was able to climb his routes as they were.[d][1][7] Ward also believed that Rouhling should have classed Akira as a boulder problem rather than as a sport route.[1][13] Ward was able to debunk several of the criticisms about Rouhling and Akira, and expressed a positive view of Rouhling from the interview process.[1][7][13]
In 2020, Seb Bouin climbed three of Rouhling's routes in his local crags and found two of their grades accurate at 9a (Hugh and L'autre côté du Ciel), however, he felt Akira was also a "hard 9a", and that the roof was at V9 (7C).[7][13][16] Bouin said: "Anyway this route is hard", "and quite unbelievable for the 90's".[7][18][13] Rouhling was disappointed at the downgrade and felt that the requirement to hang from a pinch hold in the roof at the first crux, while familiar in contemporary extreme routes, was novel in 1995, and was why no climber of his generation could send the route.[c][7][4] In 2021, the climbing database 8a.nu agreed that changes in equipment and techniques for roof climbing could explain much of the downgrade.[19] In 2022, climbing author Sam Anderson attributed some of the vilification of Rouhling to the fact that at the time, he was not considered "the world's best climber", and thus would not be accepted as the person who climbed "the world's hardest route".[11]
After Akira, Rouhling's wife Celine needed brain surgery for a life-threatening illness, and Rouhling largely abandoned extreme climbing for a number of years to focus on his family and young children.[1][9] In 2001, on his wife's recovery, Rouhling repeated Fred Nicole's Bain de Sang,[1] that – after Fred's brother François – was the second-ever repeat of a 9a-graded route in history.[20] In 2002 and 2003, Rouhling visited Switzerland's leading bouldering areas repeating several of Fred Nicole's most notable problems including several up to V14 (8B+) (e.g. Eau Profonde), and one at V15 (8C), with E la nave va.[1][21]
In 2004, Rouhling established his fourth route above 9a with Mandallaz Drive at 9a (5.14d),[22][23] and in 2007 he added a fifth with Salamandre at 9a+ (5.15a).[24] Rouhling did not use any chipping to create these new routes, they were natural.[1] In 2007 Rouhling went on bouldering trips with French climber Romain Desgranges to Rocklands, South Africa and to Joshua Tree, California.[25] In 2010, the pair went on a bouldering trip to New Zealand where Rouhling repeated Chris Sharma's 2005 problem, Archilles last stand 8A+ (V12), which was Rouhling's 100th boulder ascent above 8A (V11).[26]
In 2009, one of the main online databases for extreme rock climbers, 8a.nu, asked the question "Is Fred Rouhling the best ever FA [first ascent] climber in the world?", noting that Rouhling's combination of first ascents for the hardest sport climbs and hard bouldering routes ranked him #3 in their All-Time High Combined rankings.[27]
In a 2021 interview, Rouhling said that he then only climbed a few times a year and that while as a climber, he was very disappointed with the reception to his 9a routes, as an artist (he sculpts in his spare time),[7] he was very proud of his creations, and the emotions and engagement that they still aroused in the climbing community.[4]
Rouhling is married to Céline with whom they have two children, Hugo and Chloe.[1]
9a+ (5.15a):
9a (5.14d):
8c+ (5.14c):
8c (5.14b):
V15 (8C):
V14 (8B+):