ORIANE BERTONE -FRANCE-

I love raising butterflies in a terrarium. I grow the plants that monarch butterflies feed on until they hatch. I love releasing them when they have spread their wings.

I also have a passion for drawing. I try to keep a drawing book where I draw my memories, my dreams and what I see every day.

I discovered climbing accidentally at the age of 8 during an internship in a holiday center. I was in a wrestling club at the time and I loved fight very much. After a day of different outdoor activities (swimming, trekking, bouldering...) the sports animator called my father and ask him how long I had climbed in a club. When he learned from my father that this was the first time I climbed in my life, he advised him to join a club. Since that day, I have not stopped climbing everywhere and all the time.
What I love about climbing is the happiness of conquering the top of the rock. I always have the impression that the climb does not end there and that I can continue to climb and fly over the boulder. I also love above all the moment when I feel that what seemed impossible to do for me, finally becomes possible and that I can succeed. It's a unique sensation when we find hope when I was close to losing it.

My childhood hero was Spiderman. I disguised myself as a spiderman when my sister disguised herself as a princess. I was often beside the usual models of little girls and I learned not to look like models. I do not have a hero or a model today and I do not consider myself a model to follow. In return I realize that some expect me to constantly perform and succeed all the time what I undertake. Sometimes it puts me under pressure, but for now it's still positive and it sublimates me.

In climbing the most important moment is probably the day when I climbed my first boulder in the 7th degree (I remember this boulder : "Pole dance pour vieux", 7B). I was 8 years old and I had been climbing for a few months. I saw in the eyes of my coach and my father that I had done something unusual and that there was a lot of hope in me. I later realized what it meant to them and that a door opened for me to do something different from the daily activities and games that all children usually do. This event of course also deeply influenced my everyday life.

I am still too young to have experienced major failures or injuries. I sometimes missed a few projects and it affected me, but not very importantly. For now I have not had very difficult experiences to cope.

It's definitely the ascent of "Golden Shadow" in Rocklands. The boulder seemed impossible to do and morpho for me. My dad told me that Ashima did it, but I was only 12 years old and I was smaller. I was short on all movements and the lower section of the boulder seemed unfeasible. My father had almost lost hope and for the first time after 7 or 8 work sessions I decided not to give up and work each section and move. 3 sessions after, when I managed to climb the lower (and hardest) part of the boulder, I felt a huge joy. I had kept hope and had succeeded in my project while the others around me no longer believed it would be possible.