“Barefoot Charles” Albert Gives Inside Scoop on New V17 Proposal

French minimalist “Barefoot Charles” Albert has announced what he believes is his hardest send to date, L’Ombre du Voyageur (The Traveler’s Shadow), proposing a grade of 9A/V17. The climb follows a thin limestone roof crack across and out of a cave in Salève, France, and is nearly 50 feet long, Albert told Climbing.

As his epithet suggests, Albert climbs monkey-style, without climbing shoes, and also eschews kneepads, crack-climbing gloves, and other artificial aids—save for chalk on fingers and toes. He first received widespread recognition after proposing V17 for his Fontainebleau project No Kpote Only (No Shoes Only) in January of 2019, and last year starred in a Reel Rock short film, “Barefoot Charles.” 

No Kpote Only was subjected to a series of downgrades, first with a V16 proposal from second ascensionist Ryohei Kameyama, and then V15, suggested by Nico Pelorson. (Admittedly, these sends were ignoring the whole “no shoes only” rule.)

Albert’s unique lifestyle was also part of his fame. Albert lived in a cave in Fontainebleau, amid the boulders, and scavenged for food. Today he’s moved into a normal house with his girlfriend, an arrangement that has significantly benefited his climbing. “It’s much better not living in the woods,” he told Climbing on Sunday. “It’s helped my climbing a lot. I’m not hungry all the time anymore.” 

Albert worked L’Ombre du Voyageur every summer for the last four years, putting the full line together this month. “The roof is a finger crack, there is only one spot where you have a hand jam,” Albert said. “Otherwise, it’s monos or bad finger locks. Painful,” Albert said, chuckling. 

The crux is a short sequence where the crack becomes too thin to use, which required Albert to use tiny holds in the roof for three moves. The line has scant feet, Albert said, and there’s no option to jam in the crack itself. “I’m just swinging my feet around putting them wherever I can on the roof.” After the roof ended, Albert used “a cool pinch and a crimp to pull out of the cave and onto a face for ten moves to the finish. The second half of the roof and the face went down for Albert years ago, when he first began working the climb, around V13/V14. 

Linking the start with the latter portion has consumed him for much of the past four summers. “I spent the first two years trying to figure out the moves. The third year I tried to link, and got really close, able to do it in sections.” Recently, a tough finger lock became a bit more positive when a small rock pulled out of the crack, making the climb a bit easier, and this fourth season proved to be what he needed to nab a full send.

No Kpote’s downgrade will naturally lead some to view Albert’s claims of V17 with skepticism. On Reddit, the top comment in response to L’Ombre du Voyageur was “No hate, but I’m gonna wait for the confirmation on this one.” But even at V15, Kpote is certainly a tenacious problem, and the Frenchman has climbed a number of other hard lines, notably La Révolutionnaire (V16), which he established in 2017 as Font’s first problem of the grade. “[L’Ombre] is certainly longer and harder than La Révolutionnaire,” Albert said. His other hard barefoot sends include Monkey Wedding (V15) in Rocklands and Gecko Assis (V14) in Font.

It felt like Nalle Hukkataival’s Burden of Dreams was the only V17 in the world for eons, but in the post-COVID era several have cropped up, first Daniel Woods’s Return of the Sleepwalker and later Alphane and Megatron from Shawn Raboutou. Other questionable V17s include the Font problem Soudain Seul from Simon Lorenzi, which has also seen a grade flux and today is typically considered, at best, a slash 16/17.

Albert said his friends actually tried to convince him to grade this new problem 9A+ (V18), a grade which does not yet exist. “I did not do this,” Albert said, admitting that this would’ve been somewhat outrageous. “I think this problem is hard to even grade [as a boulder] because it’s so long.”

Regardless, the whole issue with grading begs the question… Are traditional grades even relevant for a Charles Albert climb? 

Sticky rubber totally changes the game in most climbing scenarios. Some could make an argument that No Kpote Only probably is V17 when climbed “no shoes only.” There are few instances when climbing barefoot is actually an advantage, though Albert did manage to knock a couple of grades off another Font V16 with a unique barefoot beta.

Albert doesn’t seem particularly concerned with grades, explaining that his grade proposals aren’t intended as a reflection of his skill, but an impetus for others to come and hop on his rigs. “I grade my climbs so other people will climb them,” he said. “When you go climbing and get to the boulder and it’s way too hard or too easy [because there’s no grade], that’s frustrating,” he said. “That’s the idea for my grading. I just thought [V17] climbers would enjoy this boulder. That’s it.”

That said, Albert doesn’t see L’Ombre going the way of No Kpote Only. “I think this climb is harder,” he said. “When I graded No Kpote, I thought it could be 9A [without shoes] but I didn’t consider other betas. I didn’t realize could be easier with shoes. L’Ombre could be easier with shoes, but I still think it’s probably [V17].

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