Exploring

We had seen ropes up near the pont de Valchevriere, in the Gorges de la Bourne several times on our way to Goulandiere, but had never had the chance to explore the site. Having been rained off la Maye yesterday, we decided to make an easy day of it and see if there were any bona fide routes. After a dicey river crossing in which Chloe head butted and bloodied my nose, followed by a death scramble up a dusty slope we arrived at an impressive cliff. It had a big flat grassy section which was perfect for belaying, solid looking rock, and routes .... that went no where! As we walked along the cliff it became increasingly obvious that the cliff was just being used for bolting practice. I think there are probably enough in this rock, for example:


Later that day, Mark and I scouted several locations near the Mont Aiguille for his HDR lighting stuff. Hopefully my chromes will look good enough to use. I felt very old school next to his shots which a)require no scanning and b)will have dynamic range many times greater than mine when they're done.

Rained off La Maye

We had to retreat off of Pecher Mignon because of a giant storm cloud rolling in. It was even more frustrating because we had gotten up at 5:00 AM to get to La berarde early! On a positive note, the Petzl Shunt which I have not had to used until today worked perfectly and is a very useful little gadget!
Heres chloe racking up at the base

Climbing the first pitch

and the big "Uh-oh"

Next time!!!!

Rocher de l'homme

Today I climbed Ghost Dog (ED-) near Chamrousse with my friend Francois. I picked him up at 6:30 and we were at tthe trailhead by around 7:15 or so. It took a little while for us to find the correct trail to the base of the cliff, and we ended up getting a little lost, but we eventually found it. It helps to have a landmark (a 300 meter tall cliff!)

Along the way we saw a chamois, and heard many more scurrying off down the scree. Part of the approach involves a 50 meter rappel down loose rock

The beginning of the climb was on a steep grassy slope, and wound its way over more loose rock and grass until we reached a big ledge after two pitches. From here, the climbing got steep and difficult. It was a very athletic and fatiguing style of climbing, but we made our way up it mostly free. We had to aid our way past the crux pitch (5.12a/7a+) after getting a little spanked trying to free it. More than half of the rope lengths had roofs and long moves which made it impossible to save very much energy. Finally, theres a difficult (5.11a/6b+) but short section one pitch from the top, which I was happy to do on sight. Here are some photos from our climb





Its almost 1050 feet from the base to the top, but you start 1000 meters from the valley floor, so it adds to the exposure and "ambiance"! Here is a panorama from the true, and not very impressive summit:
jpeg image
quicktime VR

On the way out, we got trapped behind barricades because there was a downhill roller blading/ street luge/bike race. Having played ESPN extreme games on my playstation, I consider myself something of an expert with the street luge, but nothing prepares you for the real thing


Not impressed? Perhaps some videos will do them more justice.
one
two

Goulandiere

Went for a short day @goulandiere today. The hike was painful after yesterdays long walk, but 220 meters seemed pretty short in comparison! It was another day that made me happy to be in france: a beautiful drive through the gorges du Furon, the grassy plains around Villard de lans, the gorges de la borne and then climbing on 35 meter perfect limestone routes... sigh

Lac Labarre / Valsenestre

Today was our one year anniversary of our wedding, and to celebrate we had plans to go on a hike near the Alpe d'Huez to an alpine lake. Unfortunately, the traffic was backed up to the auroute, and neither of us relished the thought of two hours stuck in traffic behind diesel belching cars. Instead, we quickly re-routed, and I remembered that there were two small towns in the Ecrins park near La Mure. We took the slow but pretty departmental routes up past La Mure, overlooking the lac Monteynard, through Valbonnais, and finally on to the small village of Valsenestre

We looked at the map, hoping to find another lake that we could hike to, but the closest one was a bit more ambitious than we had hoped for. Lac Labarre, at ~2400 meters was only 5.5 km away, but more than 1100 meters (2600 feet) up from the village and was estimated to take 3 hours and 40 minutes. Since we had gotten a late start, we arrived in the village at 2:30, and we didn't want to get back at 9 pm! None of the other hikes looked that interesting, and the thought of an ice cold glacial lake was too tempting, seeing as we had been enduring temperatures in the high 90s recently. We moved pretty quickly, but started running out of water at around 400 meters. I guess 3 litres isn't enough for a hot day! There was a spring on the side of the mountain, and since we hadn't seen any livestock, we threw caution into the wind, and filled our bottles with the freezing and delicious mountain water. We were both very relieved, because with no water we would have had to retreat! Around 100 meters higher, we reached a plateau which was teeming with sheep, crapping and peeing everywhere. We tried various rationalizations (the water we had found wasn't the same water, the rocks would filter the water etc etc), but neither of us were totally convinced. Here I am 2/3 up the hike:

Two hours and ten minutes after starting the hike we arrived at the lake via a small stream on a plateau


and after eating and resting for a while, continued on to the col de la romeiou (2439 meters officially, but not really)


where we took some victory shots




as well as a nice panorama (If you have a DSL connection you should definitely check these out! JPG format and QTVR format)
We congratulated ourselves heartily, and then started walking down again


and got back down to Valsenestre at 7:30.

It was a perfect way to celebrate our first anniversary, and hopefully we'll find something equally good next year!

Fete Nationale

Today was Bastille Day in France, but its interesting to note that very few French people refer to it as such. Many won't even know what youre talking about if you refer to it as such. It's called "Fete Nationale", and I'm guessing that "Bastille Day" is just an anachronism. We watched the fireworks from the stately Place Verdun. Here's a blurry photo of the grande finale exploding over "La Prefecture": the local branch of government that I have come to dread any contact with ("what, you dont have all the forms?").

Tour de France

The tour was in town today, and we went over to Amy and Marks' place to watch them all go by. There was a late start because of protests by farmers (or at least the threat of protests), but eventually we saw them all come by. Just by chance, I was in Paris in 1991 on the day that the tour finished, and again in 2003. The first time, my friend Keith and I were finishing our post high school Eurotour, and saw all kinds of barricades and police nationale. In very broken french, I asked one of the cops what was going on, and he told me that the tour was coming through, so we waited at the underpass right next
to the Louvre and watched Lemond go whooshing by. In 2003, I was in Paris bouldering (at Fontainebleau) and visiting my friend Glen, and happened to be talking to a Parisian friend of his about where the best place to watch the tour was. I always had assumed it was the Champs Elysees, but he told me that it was actually the corner that Keith and I had stumbled upon by accident more than ten years earlier! The reason is simply that the riders have to slow down because of the hard left turn and cobblestones, and they go by several times. So I was happy to be seeing the tour again, having never summoned the motivation to battle the hordes to see the tour go up Alpe d'huez!

As I was panning my binoculars down blvd. eduard rey, I happened to see a flash of red white an blue. Wondering if it had been an optical illusion, I started looking searching and was pretty surprised to see a guy in a big cowboy hat, blue jeans, and a shirt made in an american flag print like this:


Anyway, the first to appear was the promotional caravan, which provides a lot of the revenue for the Tour, then team cars, then the riders, then more team cars. We bought little tour de france shirts and caps for 15 euro.

Touring

I took Sue and Jon on a little driving tour of the drome, stopping first at Mazenc to walk around the old town. There's not too much to see there, but there is an interesting old communal bread oven. From there, we started driving south to Grignan. Along the way, we saw signs for goats cheese, which we dutifully followed and ended up at a newish looking farm house with... no one home. We turned the opel around and on our way out, a sleepy looking guy followed by a border collie came out of a house and flagged us down. It turned out that he was the cheese guy, and he led us back to the cheese barn, told us which door to go in, and appeared 5 minutes later smartly dressed in a lab coat, gloves and boots. He also was carrying three large trays full of goats cheeses in varying states of "ripeness". After talking to him for a while and buying a box full of cheese, he took us to see his herd of goats, which were apparently of Swiss origin. He also told us that some Americans from Colorado had been out to his farm earlier in the year to see his set up, since they were interested in trying to make their own goats cheese. We got a scary call from Chloes mom about "not flying", but the phone reception cut out before we could determine what was happening. A few minutes of french radio brought the news of the simultaneous attacks on the London subways and buses. Our mood a bit depressed, we continued on to Grignan, and walked along the ramparts, had coffee, and then hit the road again. We pulled into "Domaine de Lumian", and tasted their full range of wines several of which were excellent. From there, we made one final stop near Nyons for olive oil, which Jon and Sue bought us a bottle of as a present, and excellent olives. After a failed attempt to buy goats cheese at a small farm (the same place that had supplied the excellent cheeses to the Gite), we drove back to the gite.

Poet Laval, Nyons, etc

Today we had a lazy day exploring the surrounding villages in the Drome. We started off the day by getting buzzed by GIGANTIC wasps called fro-something in french:

that's my finger next to it for scale.

We drove south to Poet Laval (one of the official "Plus Beaux Villages de France"), wandered around for a bit



through the narrow alleys and then up to the chateau.

Near the top there's a fancy looking hotel restaurant called Les Hospitaliers.


We continued south, through Dieulefit (unremarkable) and stopped in Roche St. Secret, where we bought some Lavender and Oak honey. By now, our stomachs were growling, but we held on until Le Pegue, a pretty small town with no open restaurants. By the time we passed the beautiful villages of Rousset les vignes, we were too hungry to even stop and continued on into Nyons. In Nyons we found a nice pizzeria where I had a pretty unique pizza with tapenade, mozzarella, zucchini and eggplant.

Allow me to go off on a little tangent about a little experience I had in the restaurant. In many places in the world, people install what is essentially a glorified hole in the ground in place of a toilet. In fancier establishments, this might be a ceramic hole in the ground, perhaps even connected to a water source, but a hole in the ground nonetheless. The pizza restaurant had one of these in the mens bathroom (not in the woman's bathroom, Chloe has informed me). As it turned out, the little sprayer which dumps water into the hole in the ground was a bit over-tuned, and when I pressed the button, my feet, sandals and shins were sprayed with water of questionable provenance. There were no obvious clues regarding the path that the water had taken, but you can imagine my horror at the possibilities. At this point I panicked and actually considered flushing again as a rinsing procedure but quickly decided against it. I walked out of the toilet room and into the ante room with the sink, high stepped to the counter, and began soaping up my feet under the faucet. Then, hopping on one foot, I looked for paper towels, but discovered that the bathroom was only equipped with one of those useless air dryers. I leaned back and pulled a big section of toilet paper, and managed to dry off one foot and then began sponging down my sandals with pure liquid soap. During this time, I was nervously trying to keep my back or other foot against the door, since there was no lock and I didn't want to have to explain why the toilet room was inundated with "water" or why my foot was jammed under the faucet, or for that matter why my hands were filled with balled up toilet paper. I finally managed to wash everything off satisfactorily, but now the ante room was covered in water from my dripping feet, which I quickly mopped up with more toilet paper. Despite the soapy cleansing, my sandals were still speckled with water, which made it look like I had peed all over them. After a little more hesitation about how to avoid being seen exiting the bathroom with urine stains all over my sandals, I gave up and quickly and surreptitiously slipped back to the table. It was all pretty exhausting.

After all that bathroom excitement, we walked to the Roman bridge,

past a restaurant called "the cat drawer"

then up to the Tour Randonne,

which looks like a fort with a chapel stuck on top because that's essentially what it is. The placard indicated that it was first built in 1280 by la Baronne de Montauban as a dungeon, but was later converted into a Chapel. It's got a charming little enclosed garden with dense shade trees and benches which look out over the miniature ramparts over Nyons and the valley.
. Strangely enough, the local authorities haven't really put much effort into preserving the profound sense of history that comes with such a building and have installed basketball courts, low income housing and seagull murals right below the chapel


We bought some supplies for the Gite (gites don't come with toilet paper!) at a grocery store, and continued to our next destination: the impressive Trente Pas gorge.


From there, we continued north to Crupies to see the lovely Chapelle St. Jean. Yes they have a web site!, despite its being kind of in the middle of nowhere. The Colors of the rock that they used to construct it and its proportions blend in well with its surroundings.


We continued on to Bourdeaux to see the ruined castles



and wander through the old town, with very interestingly shaped buildings



and then hit the road for our final stop of the day: Poet Celard.

This is another hilltop fort which had been various peoples property including a Belgian lawyer (!) but is now owned and managed by an association devoted to its restoration.



after a modest dinner, we headed back to Grenoble, where I managed to park our car in probably the smallest space I have ever seen

oh yeah.