Fred Nicole

There are no two ways about it: think of bouldering and Fred Nicole immediately springs to mind. Ever since he first started bouldering in 1987 together with his brother François, there have been few climbers who have dominated and influenced this tight-knit scene as convincingly and consistently as Frédéric and the countless beautiful and difficult problems put up all across the globe during the last quarter of a century are testament to the Swissman's vision and ability. But his main love remains linked to a crashpad and toothbrush, and important stepping stones obviously include La danse des Balrogs, the world's first 8B in 1992 and Radja, the world's first 8B+ four years later. This boundary was extended further still at the turn of the millennium with Dreamtime at Cresciano, which first broke into the mythical and unheard of 8C grade and, a bit like Midnight Lightening at Yosemite in its heyday, has come to represent a benchmark, must-do problem for the best of the best. Fred, you've been climbing for over a quarter of a century... Yes, but I've always had other interests beside climbing and bouldering such as drawing, painting, reading and even writing a little. I’m also worried and concerned about the current environmental situation as well as the social and humanitarian issues we are facing in this world. I think that we are living through crucial times and we need some new values to evolve. You've climbed plenty of new lines. Tell us about your beginnings My brother François first brought me to the rock in 1983, freeclimbing wasn't really developed back then in our region. During the early years we experimented in mountaineering, sport climbing and some kind of bouldering, but this was used more as a type of training. The first time on real boulders was a few years later in Wallis, in 1987 with Lucien Abbet, an iconic climber from there who showed me Branson and a few other spots. The local climbers had already been bouldering very actively for years and this was one of the first times I saw real boulder problems. Before that I'd been more into traversing, doing some some eliminating games and buildering. In Wallis I had the chance to meet a real climbing scene: the driving force was Filou Scherrer, a great person and climber from Geneva very active back then. Unfortunately he died a few years later with his brother Mark in a massive snow & ice avalanche at Peak Lenin in Pamir where 43 people lost their lives. Of course other people played an important role in my early development, too: Kidet (still really active and always looking for new rocks), the infamous Peponne, the Scottish Graeme Livingstone who taught us the British way of bouldering, Benoit Dorsaz and many more. Their experience contributed to widening our vision of what climbing could be. Which rapidly rresulted in La Danse des Balrogs, the world's first 8B La danse is on a specialy steep face on one of the main boulder in Branson. We all considered this crazy overhang, it looked futuristic but at the same time somehow possible. I went back a few times but mainly to climb the existing lines since at the time we were more into rope climbing. In 1989 we started trying some moves on this intriguing face and this resulted in the first modern problem, La traction céleste stand up, graded 7B+. One year later the sitdown was added at 8A. Two more years went by and then along came La danse des Balrogs and finaly Radja in 1996. It was not only an important time because these were the first boulders I established in these grades, but above because of the people we met and the great moments we were lucky to experience there. In that same year you also established Oliphant's Dawn in Rocklands, a problem which is in the limelight now thanks to Nalle Hukkataival's recent rpeat.. It's a really cool problem I opened in September 2000. Three hard moves, the first one being the hardest of them with a real special gaston crimp. For the grade, I'm not sure since the effo