Fontainebleau V15 ascent
- Elite climber Mejdi Schalck posted a successful ascent of a V15/8C boulder problem in Fontainebleau. (x.com) - The climb was shared widely by climbing accounts and labeled at the V15/8C difficulty grade. (x.com) - The social post highlights Fontainebleau's continuing role as a proving ground for elite boulderers. (x.com)
French climber Mejdi Schalck has posted a successful ascent of a V15 boulder problem in Fontainebleau, one of the sport’s top outdoor proving grounds. (x.com) The climb was shared from Schalck’s own account in a video post that climbing outlets and fan accounts circulated this week. The problem was labeled 8C in the European grading system, which is generally treated as V15 in the Hueco scale used widely in bouldering. (x.com) Schalck, 21, is already one of France’s best-known competition climbers. World Climbing lists him as the 2025 Boulder World Cup runner-up, and climbing outlets have tracked multiple V15 ascents on rock since late 2024. (worldclimbing.com; gripped.com) In bouldering, V15 marks the top end of what only a small group of climbers worldwide have done outdoors. Fontainebleau, the sandstone forest south of Paris usually called “Bleau” by climbers, has long been a benchmark area where hard grades are watched closely because so many elite climbers test themselves there. (gripped.com; kletterszene.com) This is not Schalck’s first major result in the forest. Climbing coverage from 2025 said he climbed The Big Island, another 8C/V15 in Fontainebleau, in November 2024, and later released a winter 2024-25 Fontainebleau video with other hard repeats including L’Alchimiste 8B+ and Kheops assis 8B+. (gripped.com; fanatic-climbing.com; kletterszene.com) His outdoor résumé expanded further in 2025. Gripped reported that Schalck added La Force Tranquille in Magic Wood in July 2025 and Defying Gravity in Colorado in late 2025, both given V15, before a 2026 ascent of Sleepwalker that he called V15. (gripped.com; gripped.com; gripped.com) Fontainebleau carries extra weight in climbing because its problems are old, repeated often, and argued over in public. When a climber with Schalck’s competition profile posts a hard ascent there, other climbers can compare it against a deep history of repeats on the same stone. (climbing-history.org; kletterszene.com) The new post does not settle every grading question on its own; in bouldering, grades are proposed by first ascensionists and refined by later repeats. But the immediate consensus around Schalck’s video was simpler: another elite climber had added a V15 in Fontainebleau, and the forest remains a place where the sport’s hardest standards are still being tested in public. (x.com; climbing-history.org)
