“We’re in the early days of mixed climbing in terms of pure difficulty”: Leo Billon after a new route in Mont Blanc Massif with Amaury Fouillade

Ct’s one of the best-kept secrets of the Mont-Blanc massif. Invisible from the valley, yet located in an ultra-frequented massif on the french side. And if you’re looking for a summit all to yourself this is the place for you. At the far end of the Argentière glacier, the glacial cirque is closed off by the slender pyramid of Mont Dolent, a boundary marker (between France, Switzerland and Italy) to the right of which are the Pré de Bar peaks.

The contrast between the vast, horizontal glacier and the austere walls of Pré de Bar is striking. These 500-metre-high north faces bear a striking resemblance to the famous north face of the Grandes Jorasses in the neighbouring Talèfre basin – twice as high. A slope of snow and ice lines the base of a dark, shaded granite wall.

In 2002, Patrick Pessi and Stéphane Benoist, the first high-end roped party, cleared the wall in five days. Their four icy bivouacs – of barbaric cold – gave them the name of the route, Les Barbares, and they named one of the Pré de Bar peaks they reached “Pointe Raphaël Borgis”. A tribute to the talented climber, glaciarist and skier from Haute-Alpes who had just died in an avalanche.

History doesn’t stop or repeat itself, but the mountains take it in turns to bring back their faithful. In 2012, pioneering mountaineer David Lama visited the Barbares solo, by the day! Then it was the Billon – Védrines team, fresh from years of scouring the Diois. “In 2015, we climbed Les Barbares with Benjamin in a hurry,” recalls Léo Billon.

When Léo rappelled down the last third of the face, he lost his glove, which plunged straight down into the rimaye. He then realized that the wall to the left of Les Barbares was very, very steep. And that one day he’ll be back.

Tell us about your new route.

Léo Billon : we set off from the Grands Montets ski lifts at 9am on February 4. We were loaded with bags weighing around fifteen kilos, but I’d made a drop-off at the bottom of the Argentière cirque two days before with twenty kilos. In fact, we had enough food for two nights, and quite a bit of scrap metal, with pitons, almost three sets of mechanical clamps and so on. On the first day, we reached the M4/80° belay, about a third of the way up the face.

And we slept well: we took along a “rigid” portaledge, the new super-light Edelrid dyneema model, weighing just three kilos on the scales, half as much as before. We didn’t want to take an inflatable portaledge, because with the crampons and all the other things you have on your harness, such as pins and pitons, it’s easy to puncture it. The next day, we made good progress and made the second bivouac two or three pitches below the exit, between the two M5+ pitches. We could even have hurried out in the evening, but there was no reason to do so.

The aim is to climb as much as possible free, dry tooling with axes and crampons?

Yes, even if from the bottom the upper wall looked steep and complicated, that was the objective, to climb free. On the second day, the rock wasn’t perfect, and in order to clean up and drop a few boulders Amaury [Fouillade] had to hide on two camalots. Hence the length in M6/A1 with a short passage in artif. I passed it free second, so it must be M7 or M8. When you climb to the top you have to clean up, you don’t know what to expect. In both cases, the difficulty estimate is biased.

At the top there are two lengths that you’ve quoted as M8/+. Can you tell us more about them?

Léo Billon: Yes, on the first of the two hard pitches, there’s an overhang, and below the overhang you have to move with your feet on a slab with no holds. By the time I got to the finish line, I was out of my mind – it’s physical! The second M8/+ is more technical and atypical, starting on a slab and then a large compact wall where it’s very difficult to imagine what’s above. In fact, I brought along an extra hammer. Hanging by my hand on an ice-axe, I was able to plant several bird-beaks with my other hand with my hammer, which is better suited to this purpose than the Nomics. Great lords, we left four or five pitons in the length for the next ones!

Aside from free climbing, what motivates you to open routes, summer and winter alike?

What I’m looking for is adventure, in the spirit, and steepness, in the walls. That’s how I remembered this place, having lost my glove here in 2015. What motivates me is the rock more than the ice. So yes, dry tooling these walls in winter is an adventure. It’s all about opening yourself up to something you don’t know. That’s why we set off quite heavy, and had plenty of time. In fact, I’d already tried to open in this corner, at the beginning of winter, with Enzo Oddo [ex-young top rockclimber]. Then he got the flu and we couldn’t come back. You have to accept that there are times when you stumble, or when you’re prospecting.

How do you see high-level winter mountaineering evolving?

Léo Billon: My approach is to open up as many difficult routes as possible in free climbing and rock climbing. For me, ice gullies even ephemeral are less rich in movement and less difficult. When we move the cursor, it’s on the side of randomness in ice (too thin, for example), not necessarily difficulty. We’re in the infancy of pure difficulty in dry tooling.

Look at the repeat of our BASE route at Les Drus by the French Virgile Devin, Esteban Daligault et Robin Vallet this winter. At the time, we opened the key pitch on sight (M8+), so it’s obviously far from maximum difficulty. And Esteban proved it today: before the Drus, he had little or no winter experience in this style. But able to climb 9a or 5.14d at the crag, he ticks off M8+ at Les Drus.

In other words, if one of the hardest routes in the massif can be repeated by someone with little experience, then it’s possible to do better, more difficult routes. After that, for our route at Pré de Bar, we based ourselves on the grading of the three pitches in the middle, those of the “original” Barbares, in M6. And I’m trying to match the Blade Stadium in Argentière.