Beauty and the Bolts

Charlotte Durif tells us how she got into the art of route development. Why, how and most impressively - where!? Greece, Serbia, Puerto Rico and Peru!

"How do you get the ropes up there?"
Every climber is asked this question by an excited onlooker. But often many climbers can't answer the real question, "Who put the bolts up?" Routes are created by highly skilled developers. Like sculptors these climbers create a thing of beauty out of blank rock. Petzl Team member Charlotte Durif is one of these individuals. In the past year she's enjoyed a fairy tale like adventure of travel, climbing, and development. Over the course of 2018 we tracked her progress around the world in emails with phrases like, "infinite rock, infinite potential" "we're staying a few more weeks," and "we need more bolts!" Thankfully Cold House Media was on hand to record the experience and pull back the veil from all the work that goes into a climb before the first ascent.

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