Tag Archives: Beach

Jun7

Spring Break 2014 – Climbing in En Vau: Take 1

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Sunday, 18-May-2014

Location: Cassis, France – Les Calanque D’En Vau (pronounced “onn vow”, if I got it correct)

 

En Vau is a Calanque right near the house we were staying at – literally only a walk away.  Thus, it was the first one that we headed to (And the last, though that story hasn’t been told yet), so after breakfast on Sunday everyone packed up their gear and started the walk over.

“The walk” consisted of maybe 5 minutes on the roads of Cassis, before we found the official parking lot for the trail head and started into the Calanques themselves.  We had to pass through a small one labeled Port Mieu, though the trails in that area were rather light and easy, before we actually broke into the real trails that worked their way through the mountains toward En Vou.

See, a Calanque is very similar to a Fjord, in that it’s a small strip of ocean that pencils in through cliffs and spires.  I think the technical difference is that a Calanque was carved by riverwater, but you’d have to check with a geologist for the actual information.

All I know is – the hike?  It was steep, and long, and really fun. The rock in this area isn’t the usual New England granite – instead, it’s a softer sort of rock (I believe a form of sedimentary rock).  That means that it wears a lot easier… which means that the thousands of people who hike these trails and climb these routes have slowly polished the rocks down – there are places where the rock is literally gem-level polished.  Kind of nice on the feet, but not really ideal for rock climbing… especially when that hold that you need is roughly the texture of oiled glass.

But we persevered – the hike down part Port Mieu into En Vou was fraught with peril and tourists (literally dozens of people clogging the trails), but once we made it in… well, the pictures describe it.  Jaw-dropping is a good term too. We set up out gear at the base of one of the larger spires, a good multi-pitch that comes highly recommended, and started up…

Climbs:

  1. La Saphir – five pitches (officially), ranging from 5.3 to 5.8
    1. Pitch 1 – 5.5 – Lead = Daniel.  This was a very fun route, though a lot of the rocks were super-polished from so much traffic going up and down the route.  It’s even got a nice little concrete basin at the bottom, so we could keep all our gear out of the wind
    2. Pitch 2 – 5.1… if that – Lead = Ben.  Just a simple traverse with 2 bolts, though it was a bit run out, so rope-drag actually became annoying
    3. Pitch 3 – 5.4 – Lead = Daniel.  Again, a simple traverse, not really much to say about it
    4. Pitches 4 & 5 – 5.7 & 5.9 – Lead = Ben.  I spun these two pitches into one, since the middle belay stance wasn’t particularly good.  17 quickdraws worth of climbing, maybe 30 or 40 meters high, and nice and steep.  Very small and polished holds throughout, but it was a really fun lead for me.  I think there may have actually been two belay anchors, but… yeah.  Better just to finish it all as one go.
  2. Descent – This is where everything went interesting.  Erin, Daniel and I got to the top.  Then Bjorn and Rebecca got to the top.  Then Johan and Magnus got to the top.  Then another two teams got to the top.
    Why didn’t we rappel off, you ask?  Well… the rappel anchors were being used by the main belay, and we were originally going to just descend the same way that we came up.
    But… that was obviously getting a little unlikely, since we were now looking at a third team coming up the face.
    So, shivering from the cooling breeze (we all had neglected to wear shirts, you see) we set a rappel down the main face with Daniel and Rebeccas ropes – a full 70m and an 80m, so we were quite confident that they could make the complete drop.
    Which, thankfully, they did!
Oct7

The beginning of the trip

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It’s finally started; I’m outside the borders of the United States and heading into the land of the unknown. Early this morning (criminally early, in my opinion, but that’s the price you pay) I said my goodbyes to my stepdad Steve, threw my bags into the back of my moms car, and we drove into Boston, aimed at Logan Airport. We parked, I checked in like a boss (since I knew exactly what to expect), said a tearful goodbye to my mom, and pushed my way through security and headed to the gate.

The first flight was pretty simple: I honestly just slept through 90% of it, even though I was finally seated next to some cool people instead of the usual creepy old dude. The two women next to me were in their mid-thirties I’d guess, and headed to a Bachelorette party in Cancun. Meaning that they had brought nips. Lots and lots of nips. When I finally woke back up they had dipped into their supply fairly impressively, and we spent the last 45min or so of the flight shooting the shit and chatting about nearly everything under the sun; from people being jerks and not giving up their seat to a nauseous pregnant woman who had been forced to fly facing backwards, to how amazingly impressive people who work in social work are. An interesting flight, to say the least.

At Miami we parted ways though, and I boarded my flight to Aruba. The flight itself was pretty smooth; I sat between an older woman and a dude who lives in Aruba, though I honestly spent most of the flight sleeping again, instead of chatting like my usual chattery self. After the flight landed I worked my way through the maze of customs (getting the stamp on the passport was the hardest; the actual “customs” part was literally just a dude asking me if I had corn. Seriously, that’s all he asked. Corn), and then went to get myself checked into the flight to Caracas. Normally I wouldn’t check in 7 hours ahead of time, but I had to get my bag from the baggage claim, and… man, I don’t want to lug that around. But turns out I got to anyways, since Gol Varig doesn’t allow you to check into flights more than 2 hours ahead of time. So I set an alarm on my phone, strapped my bag to my pack, and headed out to find a taxi.

I was able to find an official Taxi pretty quickly (thanks to the line of them outside the airport), and I was on my way to Eagle Beach. I chose Eagle based of a quick google search for “7 hour layover beach”, where the overwhelming majority of people said that it was the perfect combination of close-to-the-airport and awesome-beach-times. I grabbed a quick lunch at a place recommended by the taxi driver, and then headed onto the sand. Lunch was effectively a hotdog and fries, though it had a strange Dutch name, and the hotdog itself was… unique, to say the least. I don’t THINK it was dog, but I could be mistaken. Meh. It was tasty, and sitting there gave me time to call my Couchsurfing host to double-check our plans. Not complaining 🙂

The beach… wow. All I can say is that Aruba seriously is amazing for beaches, especially since Eagle beach is one of the mediocre ones in comparison to the rest of the island. The sand was that “nearly-powder” type, and the water was crisp and clear, but not freezing like New England. I set up camp with all my gear at one of the empty Cabanas, stripped down to my shorts, and hung out. I did some reading, some swimming, some gawking (seriously… I love mini-bikinis, and some of the women here were CLEARLY just strutting up and down the beach. I don’t mind at all :P), but most of the time just relaxing like I didn’t have a care in the world. Which is a lie, since I’m still nervous as hell about Caracas, but hey; if I fake not being worried hard enough, I’ll probably end up not being too worried, right? Right.