Fred Rouhling is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 rock climber

Rock climbing

Rock climbing also lightly called 'The Gravity Game', is a sport in which participants climb up, down or across natural rock formations or artificial rock walls. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a pre-defined route without falling...

, famed for his 1995 proposal of the grade

Grade (climbing)

In rock climbing, mountaineering and other climbing disciplines, climbers give a climbing grade to a route that concisely describes the difficulty and danger of climbing the route...

 9b/5.15b for his unrepeated climb Akira. (See Realization

Realization (climb)

Realization, or Biographie, is a sport climbing route on a crag on the southern face of the 2016-metre Montagne de Céüse near Gap and Céüse, France....

, or rather Biographie.)
Other notable climbs of his include:

• Hugh (9a) in Eaux-Claires, France, first ascent
  First ascent
  In climbing, a first ascent is the first successful, documented attainment of the top of a mountain, or the first to follow a particular climbing route...
  
   (FA) in 1993.
• L'autre côté du ciel, or The Other Side of the Sky, (9a) in Eaux-Claires, France, FA in 1997.
• In 2002, repeated Bain de Sang (9a, FA by Fred Nicole
  Fred Nicole
  Fred Nicole is a Swiss rock climber, notable for his numerous cutting edge first ascents. Nicole was the first climber to open a problem with the bouldering grades 8B, 8B+ and 8C....
  
  ) in Saint Loup, Switzerland.
• Mandallaz Drive (9a/5.14d) at d’Allonzier la Caille, near Haute-Savoie, south of Geneva, FA in 2004.
• In 2007, FA of Salamandre 9a/b at Saint-Pierre en Faucigny.

Problems

Although the controversy about his route Akira seems to have settled down with Climbing magazine and the popular website 8a.nu supporting his claim in the recent past, many of his boulder first ascents, like Soumission (V14), were destroyed for unknown reasons. Even boulder problems of some of his friends, like the test piece of Romain Desgranges Kaiser Sauzé with the breaking grade of 8C+, were destroyed, which put the bouldering community in stress and discussions about the existence and persistence of the boulder problems.

External links

• 2004 article about Rouhling and Akira (by Pete Ward photos by Tim Kemple)
• Pictures of Akira, Hugh, and L'autre côté du ciel
• Salamandre FA article in planetmountain
• Article in 8a.nu about the destroyed Boulder of Romain