An evening of mountaineering with Nico Favresse

Nicolas Favresse was born in Brussels in 1980. From a very early age, he experienced the great outdoors through sports such as windsurfing, mountain-biking and skiing. It was at the age of fifteen, however, that Nicolas discovered a new and exciting world when he made his first forays in rock-climbing. He fell in love with it immediately and continued to train, making very quick and impressive progress. In less than a year, Nicolas found himself among Belgium’s elite climbers and he was able to climb Grade 8a routes. By the time he was eighteen, he had joined the world climbing circuit, won prizes and achieved success in both national and international competitions, earning sixth place at the World Junior Championships. He won the national title a number of times and became known in Belgium as “The Champion”.

In 1999, he went to study in the United States, but after six months away from climbing he decided to drop out and visit some of the best rock faces in western America. He returned to Europe with a new take on climbing and a long list of achievements, including a Grade 8a climb on sight. After graduating in Marketing in 2003, Nicolas devoted himself to his climbing projects and became a full-time professional climber. In  2004, he made a repeat climb of the Grade 9a Estado Critico in Spain, a feat that placed him among the few elite athletes to have achieved this difficulty. The same year, a trip to Yosemite Valley became an opportunity to discover another facet of climbing: scaling big walls traditional style. This discovery has led to Nico’s most recent achievements: a repeat free climb of Riders on the storm in Paine’s Central Tower, Patagonia in 2006; a free climb of Lost in translation (5.13b/c) in 2006 and The secret passage (5.13c) in 2008, both in Yosemite; climbs of faces in Charakusa Valley in Pakistan, including a free climb of Badal (5.12+) and of Ledgeway to Heaven (5.12+) on Nafees Cap; climbs on Canada’s Bogaboos and a recent trip to the mountains of Baffin Island with his brother Olivier, Sean Villanueva, Stephane Hanssens and Catalan mountaineer Silvia Vidal. While they were in Canada, the Favresse brothers also climbed the virgin tower of Mount Odin along a new route, Le Bic rouge de Odin (5.10), after which they climbed Mount Asgard, where they opened The Belgarian route (5.13), a variation of a 1996 aid line called the Bavarian Direct on the West Face of the South Tower of Mount Asgard. Nico and Oliver then opened Whisky Gonzales (5.11) on the North-East buttress of the North Tower of Asgard. For these climbs, American magazine Climbing awarded them the Big Wall Golden Piton 2009. Asgard Jamming is a film about this trip and it is competing in the 58th TrentoFilmfestival.