As part of our somewhat theme this year of improving our climbing skills we decided to do a concentrated week of climbing with a group. Last time we tried this we had fun, so we figured why not try again. This time the destination was Provence...
We met the gang in the cold drizzle at the train station in Bern on Sunday, piled into the van, and then drove down to Eygalières (with an amusing shopping stop in Avignon, the only place we knew a supermarket would be open) and the nice weather. After installing ourselves in the villa we had a nice apero, did a real round of introductions, and then talked about what was to come during the week. We followed up with dinner prep, a good meal, and then headed off to bed.
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| Villa Las Rosas |
Intro day, make sure everyone knows the basics and that the guide has some confidence that we're not going to kill each other while climbing.
Climbing in Orgon, Sector Beauregard Mur du quatre
Droit:
Lots of easy routes and general practice
Gauche:
G, F, E, C
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| Orgon, Sector Beauregard, Mur du quatre |
Unusual day since we didn't climb together. Nice location with some longer routes and good views, though it did end up getting rather crowded
Aureille, Sector Latran
Andrea:
E, H, I, J (top rope), K (tried and failed top rope), R (tried and failed lead and top rope)
Greg:
A, I, E (lead and top rope with approach shoes), J (top rope)
Sector Rue du Moulin
Greg:
C, D (top rope speed - there unfortunately wasn't time to do it in lead)
For dinner we did some grilling. We didn't actually have any charcoal or wood easily available, so creativity was required. :-)
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| Climbing with views |
Drive down to Calanques, hike into Le Pouce, climb, long drive back.
Topos from the new version of the Calanques book, we only have photos.
Fun climbing with nice views on limestone that was almost white; plenty of other people around.
Sector Le Pouce gauche:
N, O
Sector Le Pouce droit:
B, I, F, A, C
I again as a crack climb and to downclimb
F again, top rope in approach shoes
A with downclimb by us bothand, again quasi-speed from Greg
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| Calanque de Sormiou, Le pouce in upper left corner |
Mouriès Nord, Prairie
Idyllic location, great slab climbing and we were mostly along (just one other pair in one of the other sectors).
It rained gently for a bit less than an hour just after Greg finished the first route, but we waited another hour (doing knot practice and drinking coffee) and everything dried out and was great.
U right, U left, S, T, X, Z, A (top rope Andrea, Greg failed on top rope), X again (greg)
Nice dinner in Eygalières afterwards.
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| lovely meadow and rock at Prairie |
Today we did a bit of projecting.
Orgon, Acteur's Studio
Nice place to climb, only one other group near us.
V (lead and toprope), P (project - we were supposed to do this redpoint, Andrea made it to the second to last bolt, greg flashed after watching Andrea), I (greg failed), H (Andrea failed, greg lead), M (greg failed on lead)
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| project at Acteur's Studio |
packing up and heading back to Bern and, once again, crap weather.
Fazit
Not something we'd want to do every year, but we had a lot of fun and learned a good amount. The group also worked really well and we ate well, neither of which is a given. :-)
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