Jérôme St-michel, Undercover Crusher
One of Canada’s Undercover Crushers
Jérôme St-Michel
is bold. Not bold in the shield-your-eyes-while-you-belay-this-psycho way, but in the way that makes you fired up to reassess your own risk tolerance. A quick scroll through his social media feeds will paint the picture of a talented photographer – taking beautiful photos of hard rock climbs that he has probably sent ages ago. The truth in his climbing lies, partially, in the 500-odd ticks he has uploaded to mountain project.com. Reading sections of the 14-page list sounds like a Who’s Who of classic and challenging rock and ice climbs in the Northeast – a list growing exponentially each time you hit refresh.
The 32-year-old Québécois climber was born in Saint-agapit and began technical rock climbing when he moved to Montreal to study and work. But rock climbing was almost ruined for St-michel before it even began. A colleague at work would talk about climbing incessantly, the sort of non-stop spraying that made St-michel think he would never want to try it. He would ultimately succumb to the hype however, and was instantly hooked after a day of top roping in Val-david. St-michel was first truly blown away a few months later when he saw a video of Mason Earle flashing the roof crack Le Toit de Ben (5.13a) in Valdavid. Seeing cams placed for the first time, he dreamed of all the places trad climbing could take him.
Since his formative days around Mont Royal, Montreal, learning trad placements and rappel techniques on chossy rock outcroppings, St-michel has accumulated quite the tick list. He has climbed sport up to 5.13, dangerous trad climbs to the same grade, M11 mixed pitches, and hard WI5 ice pillars.
St-michel’s most recently completed project is Fun With a Gun (fwag), a 5.13b R at Mont Larose in Quebec. The 40 metre A3 was established by Bob Cartwright in 1993, a line which Cartwright said he risked his life on. It follows discontinuous crack systems up a slightly overhanging wall, featuring blind ballnut placements and a penultimate crux protected by a nest of rurp pitons, a copperhead, and a #1 Knifeblade driven one quarter inch into the rock. In recent years, as freeing aid climbs became trendier than the softest 5.12a at a sport crag, St-michel said the list of un-tapped aid routes with free potential grew smaller and smaller. As plums were picked, you could imagine it was only the obscure – and often dangerous – lines which remained.
Despite his successful free ascent of Fun With a Gun, St-michel does not consider himself a bold climber, or even an especially brave person. “I have a very scientific approach to risk,” St-michel said. “I’m not the guy who would take a random guess and risk breaking his legs.” He said he believes his mechanical engineering background helps him analyze each dangerous element of the climb and decide if the risk is warranted.
Along with this engineering approach to dangerous climbs, St-michel’s greatest strength may be his boundless psych to just try really hard. While some climb their best when roped up with a strong partner, or with a cheering posse below, St-michel doesn’t feel the need to outsource his motivation. This fire burns bright whether anyone is around to watch the flame or not. “I would never climb something just to impress someone or maintain a reputation,” he said.
Perhaps this sort of resistance to influence comes from his climbing mentor, Patrick Prénovost. Their partnership began in 2015 on the Quebec climbing forum escaladequebec.com, where St-michel made a post searching for a trad climbing mentor. As a university student in Montreal, St-michel looked at the cost of hiring a guide, noticed it was almost the same price as a used trad rack, and decided he would scout out a mentor himself. Prénovost said he noticed early
on how committed St-michel was to climbing, and the meticulous nature he brought to challenging routes. Prénovost said he made a point of encouraging St-michel to climb hard routes for himself.
While studying at Université de Montréal, St-michel became interested in pursuing first free ascents. Using the university’s extensive library database to access outdated guidebooks, he would highlight aid routes with free potential. Years later, once St-michel felt he had built up enough trad climbing mileage to actually make an attempt, he asked several local strong climbers about Fun With a Gun. He could not have been more discouraged. Some said it was not too hard but incredibly dangerous; others were adamant that the line would simply not go. Perhaps most disheartening was his conversation with climbing hero JP “Peewee” Ouellet, a crack climbing phenom with multiple sends of 5.14, who had made several strong attempts on the line. Ouellet told him that the climb was often soaking wet, and, after wrapping up a multi-year project which sometimes required five hours of towel drying to attempt, Ouellet wasn’t eager to jump on another janitorial project.
In February 2020, St-michel hiked in alone to the south-facing crag to finally confront the obscure line. St-michel described the climbing in the area as very tricky and off-balance, where certain moves can drop by a whole number grade once you have figured out the body positioning. “The more I discovered the moves, the more I thought that at some point I’d have to lead it. That [thought] was very scary.” St-michel knew the line would become much safer with one bolt to protect the crux, but the first ascensionist wanted the dangerous climb to remain unchanged. Ouellet told St-michel he too had hoped to climb it without the addition of bolts, and encouraged him to adopt the same style. When your climbing hero gifts you his old project and tells you the style that he would like you to climb it in, adopting a lesser approach can be difficult.
St-michel spent approximately 10 days on the line figuring out which holds stayed consistently dry and refined his beta accordingly. He printed a map of the entire route to hang in his office, causing him to lose focus at work. To distract himself from an impending head-point attempt, St-michel harnessed his engineering background and calculated the ground fall potential if the RURP -nest blew. With rope elongation, there was about one metre to spare. His findings didn’t exactly soothe his nerves.
A combination of yoga, meditation, and self-hypnosis helped refocus his mind leading up to his successful ascent, a process he said felt more akin to preparing for a hard solo. Ultimately his boundless energy and meticulous preparation brought him to the chains, a winning combination that already has him looking for a new challenge.
St-michel said he finds the most motivation in the freedom and esthetics of a challenging crack climb – and is now eyeing one of the hardest in the northeast: La Zébrée 5.14a. The call of a hard crack rings differently from others, “I remember doing [sport routes] and spending so much time and effort on [them]. By the end I would only want to do it because I just wanted to get it done.” St-michel said he knows he will be having fun during each burn on La Zébrée – maybe not from the pain, but because it is so inspiring.
St-michel said he would like to gain a half-decent skill level of free climbing – he thinks La Zébrée should do the trick – before heading out on “properly difficult” objectives. Next up? Big walls in Torres del Paine, Patagonia. St-michel said his naturally apprehensive personality influences his inclination towards portal-edges and a capsule-style approach. While a free attempt on Riders on the Storm VI 5.12d/5.13 A3, 1,300m, on Torre Central may sound like a tall order in itself, St-michel reasons that, for him, coming back to a portaledge with food and water each night is much less committing than a night out on Fitz Roy.
Whichever way St-michel chooses to approach his future climbs, it is sure to be with the same mix of rationale and confidence that have brought him this far, “The mental aspect of climbing is very important. If you don’t have confidence [in your abilities] you won’t be able to do anything.”
WHEN YOUR CLIMBING HERO GIFTS YOU HIS OLD PROJECT AND TELLS YOU THE STYLE THAT HE WOULD LIKE YOU TO CLIMB IT IN, ADOPTING A LESSER APPROACH CAN BE DIFFICULT.