Ascensiones en Francia por mike

We climbed the first 3 pitches of the "intégrale", then the "classic" chimney (1 aid move for me...).

Superb rock.

First two pitches of "quarante", last four pitches of "le fossile...". Nice rock - especially in "le fossile".

Crux move has a sling in a bolt just in case. The rock is great and surprisingly shows only little polish.

We linked up some of the upper pitches as they are pretty short, but I don't exactly remember which ones.

The "original" grades are a bit too stiff (5b max), but the most recent ailefroide topo is a bit too soft (two pitches of 5c+).

Crowded route. Party before us bailed because of an injury and we still caught up to the next one... Rain caught us before the last pitch, but the real wet shower fortunately only came while we were preparing the abseil.

One extremely slippery foot rained on my parade.

Not sure if we climbed that exact route, but probably we did.

Was unable to free the one crux move after way too much time...

Definitely "moins fort" than the one to the lef5.

Not entirely sure if I climbed that one. My topo suggested that it is further to the left, but the one that looked like it was had the name "murmur..." written at the start.

The first three pitches are marvellous and very varied. 1. and 3. felt significantly harder than 5c, while 4. felt softer than any of the three first pitches. I had to pull on bolts in the second pitch, but it's doable...

Well, this was not a good day.

Two of our group climbed L'arête à Francis, while the other three of us started with Pilier du levant. Onfortunately our designated leader for the easier pitches fell in P4 and hurt her knee. So the other two of my rope team abseiled while I joined the others in L'arête à Francis.

The grades from the guide didn't really correspond to how hard we perceived the pitches to be.

P1,P3 (one move) and P7 felt a bit harder than graded while P2 and P6 werea bit easier.

The route is really beautiful and varied with laybacking on flakes in P1, a slight traverse and overhang in P2, the Z that probably gave the route its name with a short delicate right-traverse in the middle. P4 is a left-traverse and P5 follows along a beautiful arête. P6 is a short and steep wall while P7 ends with a left-traverse onto a super delicate slab.

I had the honor to lead the final pitch. I did manage to get the moves of the actual crux sequence right (well, with dogging them), but I failed at the last bolt because I did not manage to read the move in the dihedral.

A right-traverse on the slab to a jug and then a boulder move and mantle would have been my preferred way to solve this problem, but I did not have enough confidence and the bolt was way too far on the left for this solution.

Einstieg vergeigt.

Easy for the grade.

2nd pitch is tough for the grade.

Trekkingschuhe, sturztraining