Thursday, 22-May-2014

Location: Cassis, France – La Calanque D’Sormieu

 

Today, we split up the party.

If D&D ever taught me one thing, it’s that you never split the party.  Thankfully, this area of France has been free of both Dungeons and Dragons for the past few hundred years, so I think we’re safe this time.

There had been a debate the evening before about what to do with Thursday – originally, Wednesday was going to be our mid-week rest day, to make sure people didn’t get too burned out too quickly.  But since our rest day was forced into a Monday (stupid rain…) we were now looking at 4 days of climbing straight… And Daniel had been climbing for nearly a week straight before that.

So, our rallying cry became;

Bjorn, Rebecca & Ben – “To Sormieu!”

Daniel & Erin – “To Marseilles!”

All – “To keeping clouds at bay!”

 

Short version – we all drove to Sormieu, where Daniel and Erin dropped us three off and headed off toward Marseilles to do a bit of tourism and exploring (the castle from Man in the Iron Mask is in Marseilles) while the three of us climbed through Sormieu.  Bjorn had actually climbed there before, so we had a pretty good idea of where we wanted to go.

As a note, the mantra for this entire day worth of climbing has been “climb fast, and be ready to bail off once it starts raining”.  As the day went on, we lost more and more of the distant mountains to clouds, then to rain.  It always looked about 10min out from a torrential downpour, but somehow it never actually materialized.  Just luck, I guess… that, and the amazing skill of our climbing.  Not even the clouds wanted to stop watching us long enough to drop the rain.

After finishing up the last route we headed back down into the town of Morgieu to get our first taste of the typical “French hospitality”… AKA, not at all hospitable.  We stopped into a cafe to grab some coffee and drinks, though they only had water, beer, or cold tea for us… <shrug>, cold tea actually sounded good, and tasted just as good as it sounded, so I wasn’t unhappy at that.  No, what caused the unhappiness was our attempt to close out the tab – the waiter just could not be bothered.  Bjorn ended up walking up to him (he was sitting at a laptop, I believe) and handing him a the bill and our Euros… to which the waiter grudgingly gave us a bit of change.

But it was a fun day – I guess the only thing left to say is that, if you’re ever in a long roadtrip with Erin… tell jokes about sawdust and poop.  I don’t know how it came up, but the poor girl nearly fainted from laughing so hard.  We had her in a constant state of gasping laughter for nearly 20min on that ride home, discussing how North Korea uses sawdust to balance their diet… and the “unique” effects that must have on their daily routine…

Crag Lou Spigaou

This was nearly straight above the town, a very nice short approach… a lot different from the previous days.  We tramped our way up the scree field, set up shop, and started in.  With Jackets.  The sea breeze was quite noticeable here, and I was actually quite glad to have my nice orange jacket with me… I was comfortable, but I know that I would have been quite unhappy without it.

1. La Balade de Gecko – 5.9 – Bjorn and Rebecca Lead. Really fun route; starting out clean, with a rather interesting overhang near the top.
2. L’Hiver Menace – 5.9+ – Bjorn and Rebecca Lead.  Almost the same as the previous route actually, though more slabby than previous.  The top bulge was still the more interesting though.
3. Ceci N’Est pas une pipe – 5.9 – Bjorn and Rebecca Lead. Again, roughly the same rock and same basic route.  Dangers of climbing lots of routes on the same huge face…
4. Pierre De Folie – 5.8 – Bjorn and Rebecca lead.  Nice change of pace; this was a super-slabby route that got a bit boring halfway up.  No real memories of this one, to be honest.
5. La Prima – 5.6 – Ben and Rebecca lead.  I… actually forgot that I was leading on this one.  Thankfully, I had already racked up from muscle memory, and Bjorn reminded me that… you know… maybe I should clip a draw or something.  If I feel like it, of course.  The climbing was more of the same – a slabby route with a few interesting moves.  But not many jugs or real holds, so quite reminiscent of Whitehorse… except a lot shorter.
6. Boum chanka – 5.9 – Bjorn and Rebecca Lead. Ohh man!  This is my jam!  A good handcrack, a dihedral, a few good stemming moves, and even a chimney section.  With just enough off-width climbing to make it interesting, this climb was by far my favorite of the day.  Bjorn kinda disliked it, but that’s just because he’s roughly a billion feet tall.
7. Le Vi Au Bout Des Doigts – 5.10b – Bjorn leads.  Tough route; Rebecca takes the first few clips, but Bjorn finishes it out.  tough slab climbing, very tough slab climbing.