Didier Berthod

Didier Berthod (born 1981)

Climbing career In 2003, Berthod came to international prominence when he pinkpointed the unfinished sport climbing route Greenspit in the Orco Valley in Italy, as a traditional climbing route. In 2005, Berthold returned to do the route without any pre-placed protection,

Berthod then made trips to America where he put up new traditional climbing routes such as Learning to Fly and From Switzerland with Love, both at grade 5.13+ in Indian Creek in Utah. followed Berthod's unsuccessful efforts to make the first free ascent of Cobra Crack, a -graded traditional climbing route in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada; which was at the time considered the world's hardest traditional crack climb (it was later free climbed by Sonnie Trotter). In May 2024, Berthod returned to Cobra Crack to make the 20th ascent of the route saying "It is more so the end of a book, than a chapter".

Religious life

After completing First Ascent, Berthod, then aged 25 and carrying a serious knee injury, decided to completely abandon rock climbing and joined 's Franciscan-community, the fraternity, in Saint-Maurice, Switzerland (close to where Berthod was born), as a monk. In 2016, Berthod was ordained as a priest, and shortly afterward began climbing again.

In a 2018 documentary on Berthod called Fissure, he explained his reasons for leaving climbing: "I felt like a junkie, someone who craved a daily dose of climbing. If I didn't get it, I got angry. I hated that feeling because it kept me from being truly free. I needed to be free, and that’s what my faith gave me – that and spiritual healing". On his return to climbing, he told German TV: "In recent years I quit this [monastic] way of being Christian and I embraced a way more humanistic way of being Christian". By 2020, Berthod had completed a new bolted route on Petit Clocher du Portalet.

Filmography Documentary featuring Berthod on Cobra Crack in Squamish, British Columbia: Documentary on Berthod: