The Total Tower with bare hands: first free solo for Hérault climber Seb Bouin and a big fright for Alain Robert

Seb Bouin and Alain Robert during the climb. Jean-Guillaume Marchand

The man nicknamed the French Spiderman, Alain Robert, has struck again. On the occasion of his 62nd birthday, the climbing legend invited one of the best climbers in the world, Hérault native Seb Bouin, to join him for a first solo on the Tour Total in Paris.

190 meters high and window frames as the only holds. No harness. A full solo, on the Total Energies Tower, made famous in the world of urban climbing thanks to the climbs of Alain Robert. For his 62nd birthday, the climber from Pézenas climbed the building for the 16th time, in the company of a special guest, this Saturday, September 28 in Paris.

Seb Bouin, the climber from Hérault, to whom we owe the second (and most recent) 9c* in the world, joined forces with the climbing legend to climb his first building, and incidentally to achieve his first solo, understand, an ascent without any protection, where falling rhymes with death.

“I slipped, it gave me a good shock”

Alain Robert's signature practice, the experience was intense for Seb Bouin. “I asked Alain if he had an easy building that I could climb without falling”, he explains. But free solo climbing was completely new to him. “The night before I didn't sleep, it's a world I didn't know”.

Seb Bouin and Alain Robert during the ascent. Jean-Guillaume Marchand

The day after the ascent, Seb Bouin is still with Alain Robert, who despite his experience – “50 years of solo, including 30 in building”- and the choice of a relatively “easy” tower, gave himself a nice birthday scare.

“It had rained a lot, I took a rest, I stepped on something brown, I thought it was a dead leaf. As I was climbing again, I slipped. It gave me a good shock. I didn't realize right away that it was mud. There, I slipped again,” explains Alain Robert.

At this point, the climber has 70 meters of pure verticality left before a rest that will allow him to clean his climbing shoes. “The advantage is that I can manage stress, it doesn't bother me. I try to live, to fight,” he says.

In the end, all's well that ends well for the two climbers. Seb Bouin, moreover, does not say he is closed to the idea of ​​repeating the experience, after having tasted a “different shot of adrenaline, but which recalls the sensation of passing the crux* of a hard route that you have been working on for two years, after which you tell yourself that you no longer have the right to fall “.

The difference is that here, the fall does not have the same consequences. And these words from Alain Robert, to make a perfect fit for this story: “In solo you always have to win, it's a permanent conquest of life over death”.

9c: highest climbing rating to date. Corresponds to the difficulty level of a route.

Crux: key passage of a route.