Well, it’s been a little while since my last blog post. My life is so crazy at the moment that I wasn’t able to find a quiet moment on my computer.
The spring in France has never been so wet and humid since a long time. I wasn’t far away to fell into a little depression because all my projects were wet and my motivation for indoorclimbing was not big.
On the 20th of mai I finally found the perfect partner who was as motivaded as me to find some dry rock. We drove to the best destination in the world for pure climbing and adventure: the gorges of Verdon.
On our way to the south, we took a little loop direction Buoux, where I still had a bill to pay with ‘Bout’chou’. The conditions were more then perfect, the sector ‘au but du monde’ went into the shadow at two in the afternoon and the friction was perfect due to the ‘mistral’.
I only needed one try to remember all the moves (I alredy did a session in the route earlier this year) and on the next go I climbed this ‘Bijoux’ with a big portion of motivation and determination. A pure ascent, also thank’s to my friend Seb which gave all his heart and energy in my redpoint.
Next day, we woke up in the gorges of Verdon and took a breakfast on a view point on the top of the gorges. Vacation time! We’ve had 10 days on this beautiful place, and we were enjoying every minute.
Seb has never spent much time in the Verdon, so I proudly took the role of the guide and I showed him everything which Verdon has to offer.
We climbed a lot on the classic, verdical gorges and did routes like: ‘Surveiller et punir’, Paul pot, and some more 7b’s. We also tried to freeclimb a new 8b roof from Graou, but a hold in the crux section was always wet.
On the more rainy days we went to the huge cave of Galettas by a little boat. Cédric joined us there, because he wanted to try ‘les 3P’s’, 9a. This winter, the most important hold in the crux session broke down and since then, the route hasn’t had a redpoint. Cédric found a new solution for this problem and after three sessions in the route, he was able to redpoint. In his eyes, now the grade of 9a is correct.
Anyways, beside climbing we’ve had a lot of fun out there, specially on our little rubber boat. One day, the mistral was so violent that we weren’t able to paddle back to the beach and so we had to cross the river to find a way out of the gorges by climbing, scrabbeling and nuzzeling in the bushes and scree slopes…to end up the day we did a nice barbecue on the beach and we were enjoying the early summer with a good bottle of wine.
The most important reason why I went back to the gorges was my motivation to finish my project ‘les spécialistes’. This really physical and overhanging route resisted to me since more then a year and this time I felt more then ready to crush the line. Together with Seb, se spent once more three days in the route and each time I felt better and better. On my last day in the gorges and after 1000 trys I was finally able to clip the chain and you can’t imagine how happy I was at this moment! The spécialistes was for me personaly the hardest sportclimbing route I ever did in my life.
Once more I clipped the chain thank’s to a big friendship; Seb was pushing me to try really hard and I felt his big energy and joice while I was climbing. For me this is the most essentially thing in climbing and this was the feeling I was missing so much!
Pictures Verdon: Sebastien Richard
Only two days back at home and once more on the road. This time direction Spain, Margalef. Start of june was the last cronometer to try Era Vella, before the big heats of summer.
Together with a couple of friends from Lyon, we moved to the land of pockets. When we arrived, I quickly realized that temperetures were climbing faster then me!
To be honnest, it was summertime in Spain. We spent our hole week in shorts and top and it was almost to hot fro climbing. I spent two more days in Era Vella but then I gave up because my skin was hurting to much and while I was climbing I was slippering on every hold. But hey, I will not give up, I hust have to wait a little bit and then I will go back in autumn.
This week was really cool, more vacation then something else, but I was climbing hard all spring long so it was cool to climb some easier stuff and to take life easy.
Pictures Margalef: Axel Ballay
Beside climbing, Cédric and me, we have another huge project: Two months ago we were buying a ramshackle appartement here in Grenoble. This poor piece needed a 100% rennovation and this is what we are doing on every free minute, rennovations! For me, this is one of the most coolest and satisfying thing I ever did in my live: The creation of my own 4 walls….;-)
This evening I will move to Chamonix for the Arcademy’x Academy and the I will be on the Rock Trip and Naturalgames in the gorges of Tarn. After that, I will spent mostly of my time here in Grenoble to finish my new home, I will climb a little bit less but there are moments like those in life which are much more important then climbing…I’m psyched….life is great!!!