New gear! 70m 9.5mm Edelweiss bi-colour rope and a new pair of Testa Rossas. Best sport shoes I've had! A little cheaper in France than in the US, both the shoes and the rope. May make me a little heavy on the flight back to Canada, but I was well under on the way over so should be ok.
I climbed at a small crag near Olivier's house, with him, Clay, Julien Catalon, Julien's brother Stephan and his girlfriend, and a friend of Olivier's called Marie. Olivier is another close French friend of Clay's. We left at 5.30pm after everyone finished work, so we didn't have much time to climb. I think we did about 3 routes each, and nothing hard, although Clay did get up a heady 6a which had a tricky crux. It made me struggle a bit as well! Afterwards we all went back to Olivier's for a BBQ, which was a veritable feast; melon and Corsican saucisson, tomato and mozzarella salad, two different types of sausage, chicken, beers, red wine, and Muscat. We all talked into the night, and Olivier showed us photos from a recent catamaran trip he and some of the others took. Its evenings like these that make a trip special; with new friendly people, animated discussion, good food and good vocal chord lubrication, and a wonderful setting!
Finally got up a via ferrata after hearing all about it from Clay for years. Turns out its a well-protected jaunt up a ladder, more or less! Well, there is a little more to it than that, and it was fun even though it wasn't 'real climbing'. Apparently the system was invented in WW1 for getting troops with no mountain climbing experience across the Alps, and it became a popular easy alternative to rock climbing, to access places like the Bastille in Grenoble via the cliffs. A rope traverse and a suspended bridge (like from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) compliments the steel rungs set in the cliff face, and the line tracks around the cliff from the river up to the Bastille. Good fun to do once, but I'd rather technical rock.
DJ Nick's bucks party was held up in the mountains above the city, so a bunch of us hiked up with the surprised and clueless Nick in tow. He'd been drinking heavily after work with a couple of mates, so the hike really took it out of him (literally). Everyone had planned to camp up there, play guitar, have a BBQ and sink piss, but Clay and I headed down early in order to collect Steve from the train station. He'd arranged to fly in from London for a few days' climbing. It was great to see Steve again, but unfortunately we didn't get around to climbing anything really good when he was there. Logan came back for a few days (his partner for an Alpine trip had bailed) so we all sport climbed together. Late nights and later mornings, as well as an addiction to a new card game Clay acquired, meant that there was never enough daylight for a proper climbing adventure. I'm really a latte sport climber now anyway; multi-pitch adventures may be Steve's bag but they are not really mine right now. Steve and I did get up a 5 pitch sport route, but the man wasn't feeling the best and the day was a bit hot for slab. After Logan and I took Steve to the train station so he could fly back to London, we cruised out to Comboire to try some hard sport routes. I managed to onsight a soft cruxy 7b, but after that I was unable to make progress on anything harder. The routes here are hard, and I've lost some form over the wedding trip!
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