Train to Grandval, an easy approach, and then we're at the foot of the route. The blue dot helps. We probably would have picked the same start, but it's nice to be sure that we're at least starting on the right route. We put on all the gear and then start the climbing.
G does the first pitch. It's easy climbing, lots of care required due to loose rock, reasonably opportunities to set protection (though it's easy and not so steep, so lots of protection isn't necessary), and there's a good tree for the belay (the second big tree... the area under the first one was full of big loose rocks). It looks like we can go either up a bit to the right or a bit to the left, on the topo the line looks straight... A starts off to the right towards a piton+carabiner in a steep slabby bit. There's another piton along the way, but once she gets over to the second piton it becomes clear that the climbing is significantly harder than the 5a it's supposed to be. So she leaves a clip carabiner there, comes back to the belay, and then heads up a bit to the left. Here the climbing is easier. A short bit of climbing with decent placements, then a long traverse to the right through trees on loose gravel (of course) before setting a belay on a tree. Once again it's not immediately obvious from the topo where the route goes, but we know that we need to get up to some kind of ridge/shoulder and just heading straight up from where we are looks manageable and easy to protect, so G does that.
This is a nice pitch, there's some actual (easy) climbing, plenty of spots to place gear (including a good hole for the big blue cam!), and there's even some decent rock along the way. The belay is, once again, a tree. A leads the next pitch, which once again has some climbing on decent rock (after the first bit, which is just awful) and good protection. Another tree belay at the foot of a rocky rib. It seems obvious to along this, but after a couple meters the left side is more inviting, so G heads around the side and realizes that the rib ends in a spike. So he continues around the left, basically walking, to a tree and A comes up. It's a very short walk to the foot of the next bit of rock, which looks like it leads to the top, so A belays from the tree where we are and G does the last pitch. This again has decent rock quality and protection is easy. There's a tree belay a meter or so below the very top. A comes up and we're done.
Climbing time: 3:15. We're generally a lot faster on bolted routes, but between looking for spots to set protection and the route finding, today was slow. No big deal... we had all day.
After a lunch break enjoying the views from the top, we pack up the gear and follow the climbers' trail down to the marked path which takes us back towards Grandval. We've got 45 minutes before the next train, so we just walk the rest of the way to Moutier. It's a nice walk and we get there in time to buy a yogurt drink before the train to Basel arrives.
This was a good day. This kind of climbing, where it's not completely clear where the route runs, definitely has an element of adventure to it that adds to the fun.
Notes for future planning:
- Given the amount of loose rock, including some big stuff, it wouldn't be a good idea to do something like this above (or really close to) other climbers. We did end up knocking one big rock loose that would have been very bad for anyone under us.
- It's nice to have loads of trees around to use as belays
- If we did get stuck in terrain like this, abseiling down over the route is really not an option. There's so much loose rock that abseiling would have been dangerous
- For G this was mentally easy (despite the uncertainty about route) because the climbing was all easy, there was basically no chance to end up "stuck" (the topo made it clear that we just needed to head to a ridge and then take that to the peak), and we could at almost any point have traversed over to the bolted route if things got to be too much.
Aside: La Ballade, the bolted multi-pitch to the left, looks quite good and is really popular: we saw at least four teams underway on the route. It can also be done clean; it likely has a lot less loose rock, but the adventure bits would be missing.
