Roaming around France

Musketteering in the Gorge du Verdon 

This summer it seems, the Gorge du Verdon is the place to be. Everyone we met it seemed had flocked there from elsewhere in the Alps to escape the bad weather, as had we, for the blue skies of the Verdon. The summer in the south of France, however, can get quite toasty! We could usually wait out the morning for the walls to come into the shade before climbing, but it made trying some longer routes quite challenging, as we were to discover. We went to investigate a route I’d noticed in the guide a few years ago, El Topo, which looked to climb some nice rock and included many challenging pitches. The hardest are at the top and we went down to have a look at them in advance of any ground-up efforts. The crux 8a is actually relatively easy, while the 7c below felt much harder!

Once we were satisfied we could probably wing our way through the upper pitches we went down for a go from the ground, which meant climbing the ‘easier’ pitches in the sun. We couldn’t take the heat, by the time we got to where El Topo leaves Les Marches du Temps (the start of the route!) both of our hands and feet were in agony! Our luck – or is it planning? – shows no signs of changing. We descended to the ground and ambled out through the tunnels for a refreshing swim and a hitch back to camp. On other days we climbed Au Dela Du Delire and Les Naufrages that were both awesome, tried highlining with Olivier and even saw the world’s biggest toad.

Wild abseils in the Verdon

Low on El Topo

Au Dela Du Delire

Brilliant 7a pitch on Topo shared with Marches du Temps

One very serious toad

The Etape du Tour 

Every year the Etape du Tour sportive is held on a mountain stage of the Tour de France a few days before the Tour passes, making use of its infrastructure. This year something like 12,000 cyclists took part and the course included the Col du Tourmalet and the Hautacam covering 148km of road. I think that it is probable that this year, I was the cyclist to take part who had done the least road biking and the least training for this event, maybe even by a large margin; I was not well prepared. On the few occasions I had used my road bike this year, however, I had really enjoyed it. So, while a part of me was dreading the Etape, another was quite looking forward to it.

I’d heard that the atmosphere of the event would be amazing and that the scenery should also be stunning as well and the weather, of course, would be good? This was mostly true, except the weather was a disaster! The first 75km, up to the start of the climb of the Col du Tourmalet, is relatively flat and I arrived at the feed station already having done the longest ride of my life feeling a little tired. This is also when the rain properly arrived and the next 20-30km up the Tourmalet was one of the more gruelling experiences of my life so far. I was soaked to the skin and cold, but being surrounded by a few hundred people in the same boat made this easier to endure. Cat had caught me up at the feed station and so we got to tackle the Tourmalet together which was also nice. We were looking forward to an amazing descent, but this was worse than the ascent! So wet as to prevent any speed and very, very cold, we were both worried about shivering ourselves off our bikes. We passed many people on the descent who I assume had given up due to the cold and had abandoned their bikes, stopping to help wasn’t an option though as we also had no way of keeping warm.

At about 120km, shortly before the start of the final climb up the Hautacam, the route passed our campsite. We were in no doubt when we arrived here that what we needed was to put down our bikes and get into our sleeping bags to try and get some warmth back into our bodies. This event was a mighty challenge for me, and not one I was equal to given the conditions, I am very pleased to have gotten as far as I did. Now that my arse has stopped hurting, I am starting to consider taking part again next year, on the assumption that I get out on a bike in the months before the event. Hats off the all the finishers of the event, it was a very tough outing in my opinion!

Cat is very excitied about the tour!

The Tour passing our campsite

Grande Vignemale 

Here are a few photos from our ascent of the Classic Route on the north face of Pique Longue on the Grande Vignemale. This is a really stunning mountain in the Pyrenees and the route is D+ and around 900 metres long! This was a great and tiring day out and the climb is in incredible surroundings. 

Early on the North Face of Vignemale

The upper ridges on the Vignemale

Upper ridge of the Classic Route on Vignemale

Back in the Verdon! 

The rest of our time in France was spent in Gorge du Tarn and Gorge du Verdon, which are both some of my favourite places to climb. We had hoped to get back to the Alps, but without an outstanding forecast, I was reluctant to head back into the mountains. Our final few days in Gorge du Verdon were great; perfect (but hot) weather and classic long routes. Me and Cat climbed almost endless chimneys on La Demande and laybacked our way up Caquous. I also teamed up with a young French lad called Joel, just back from Sheffield, to climb Le Marches du Temps, a long route with loads of great wall climbing on pockets.

Cat makes a belay in an interesting location

Joel on Marches du Temps

Cat on Caquous

The Alps

The Alps is a tough place to climb; massive walk-ins, unpredictable weather, loose rock, cold and worst of all, snow. At least, this is the impression I’ve come away with after a week or two climbing there with Calum this month. I hadn’t been to the Alps for many years, since an exciting hit-and-run on the Eiger north face with Tony when we were students, and before that, a few months spent in Chamonix more than ten years ago. That first encounter I was still relatively new to climbing, but managed to find partners willing to show me how to walk in crampons and had a great time climbing classic rock and some mixed routes.

Unfortunately, my alpine skills have not had many opportunities to improve over the years, so this trip I was quite happy to follow Calum’s lead, not a risk I would be willing to take under most circumstances. Actually, I’m impressed at how much Calum has managed to achieve in the Alps over just a few years. I was relieved that at least one of us knew their way around and about how not to get avalanched or fall in a crevasse. I did, however, have to contend with the Calum’s wild climbing ambitions as well as a range of terrible cheese jokes, all of which I’d heard many times before.

Since Calum is much more familiar with the climbing in the Chamonix area than me, I let him come up with some possible climbing objectives for us while we were there. I think that this meant Calum gathered up his guide books, searched for the absolute most difficult routes in all of the Alps, and those were the ones he thought we should do. Luckily the plan did accommodate an ‘acclimatisation route’ which was to be the American Route on the Aguille du Fou, a gentle ED5 that is difficult to access and includes rock climbing up to French 7c+ and is 800m long.

The Fou

American Route

At our bivvy below the Refuge Envers, our alarms got us up at around 4am and we had a leisurely breakfast before walking the hour or two needed to get to the south face of the Aguille du Fou. It was a stunning day and we quickly made it to the start of the couloir used to access the south face. I gather that this has a reputation for being a bit dangerous and contributes to the route not being as much of a classic as it should be. I believe we were fairly lucky, there was still a lot of snow in the couloir that was pretty solid and we made it about three quarters of the way up very easily. The final section, roughly a rope length from where we thought the route would begin, becomes narrower and is more mixed terrain. We swapped the lead here and I set off up the icy corners.

By this point the upper walls had already come into the sun and chunks of ice were continuously being funnelled down the couloir. This made climbing quite tricky, as whenever I tried to look up I was punched in the face by several pieces of ice and the ice in the corners started streaming with water. We were too late, and very close to the ledges at the start of the rock climbing, we made the difficult decision to bail. We were concerned that the falling ice might be followed soon by falling rocks. If we were even 30 minutes earlier I think we would have made it up the couloir without the slightest difficulty... we’re going to need to work on our alpine starts.

Nice Envers bivvy

A bag-eating Marmot

The jaws of a bag-eating Marmot

Rewarding views from Envers

Bivvy scenes

Retreat from the Fou

Great weather for retreating

The Fiz

???

Objective two, we decided to take a break from the big mountains and try something a bit more convenient. So I don’t know why we ended up walking for hours to the base of the Fiz and then hiking up a loose, choss filled gully from hell. I actually can’t remember what the route was called, a shame because it’s very good and impressively difficult. It has about 15 pitches, up to 7c+ and is very sustained, hardly any pitches below 7, I think Calum had woken up thinking he was Adam Ondra. Happily, we did make it to the start of the route and amazing climbing did follow, amazingly hard climbing. The route consists of rippled slabs and without any particular line and no chalk I found the climbing hard and even harder to on-sight! We made slow progress up the wall, not bothering to red-point all the pitches after falling, but being pleased with a few good flashed and some great pitches. After doing the hardest climbing, a bit over half way up the route, our fingers were fried. I dogged my way along a 7b traverse pitch, with fingers quickly uncurling on small holds. Calum took the next pitch and had a similar experience, having a very tough time to find a way between the spaced bolts. We realised we had bitten off more than we could chew with this one, it was a very big undertaking. We were disappointed not top out again, but it had regardless been a very good day of climbing.

Calum flashing desperate 7c pitch

Last pitch of the day, 7b

Grand Cap

Les yeux dans le bleu

After the past week I think we both felt like we had put quite a lot into climbing in the mountains and not gotten a huge amount out. It may have been time to put our mountaineering ambitions to one side for while and relax with a bit of cragging. We were in two minds and since I had been listening to the smug economist Steven Levitt on more or less toss a coin as a way to aid decision making, I suggested we do this – it turned out to be a stupid idea. So we got on the Aguille du Midi cable car bound for the Grand Capucin.

That afternoon we trudged along the glaciers on our way to the plateau below the Grand Capucin. We nearly didn’t make it because the snow was very soft, visibility was poor and our way was blocked by crevasses on several occasions. We finally found a way when I think we were both pretty close to calling it a day and bimbling back! I don’t think our hearts were in it. However, we did reach the plateau and had an awesome bivvy on the glacier once the weather cleared; I watched Monty Python’s The Life of Brian while Calum watched Batman The Dark Knight.

The next day dawned beautifully and we were briefly filled with hope for a good day of actual rock climbing. However, by the time we were out the tent and on our way, a thick bank of dark cloud had already started to roll in. It was forecast to crap out, but much later. We were worried that the ming had heard we were out and had decided to come over early. We decided to continue since we could retreat fairly easily if necessary. At the cliff twenty minutes later I realised that I’d left my rock boots at the tent... For two psyched individuals this would have been a non-issue, the tent was less than 200 meters away along a flat glacier. I could have been there and back in under 30 minutes. But, like I said, our hearts weren’t in it. This was the final straw along with the deterioration in the weather and so we ran away from the mountains once again!

We needed to get out of the mountains for a while, not only because the weather forecast looked terrible! So, after a brief visit to EpicTV and a few movie deals for Calum, we got back in the C1 and took off for Gorge du Verdon!

Morning below the Capucin

Worrying developments

Evening below the Capucin

Calum considers how to keep track of Gabby on the grounds of their new estate in Nant Peris

Cold belaying on the Grand Cap