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New Alpine 12-Pitch 5.13 on Grand Capucin

Nina Caprez and Arnaud Petit have made the first ascent of the 12-pitch L’or du temps 5.13 on Grand Capucin in the Alps.

Their new route took four days and climbs a clean south-facing wall on the famous peak on the Mont Blanc region.

Petit made the first ascent of the well-known Voie Petit 5.13 up the same peak two decades ago with Stephanie Bodet.

After climbing a few pitches of the classic Bonatti Route, it heads up and left up a steep section of the wall to the top. It required nearly 30 bolts to protect the crack-less section of face climbing, many of which were added after the first ascent.

See below for the stories from Petit and Caprez (scroll through the photos), click on the final video to watch.

"L'or du temps" Here are few more pictures of the route we just opened with @ninacaprez on Grand Capucin in Mont Blanc massif. It's 12 pitches and appart the first 2 and half and the top of the last one they are original. It's quite straight and very steep, most pitches are overhanging. Sure still some little cleaning to do to make it a classic. When aid climbing, our choices of retro bolting at 2 places do not make it a scary climb, even if spicy sometime. The cracks protect well and we used 27 bolts (2 compact pitches ask most of them) + belays. For the grades, it's sustained on the 7a-8a range. Time and proper free climbs will tell it. I feel blessed to have found this line -surprised to be as psyched as 20 years ago when I started another dream here, grateful to be fit enough despite my old bones and that Nina trust me and was curious enough to have a look. Reality was even better than expected and we were a brillant team, peaceful, hard workers and lucky to take the good decisions other the 4 days we spent on this superb mountain. @petzl_official @lyofood @patagonia_climb @totemcams @vertical.life.climbing

A post shared by Arnaud Petit (@arnaudpetit_climb) on

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