Tomato

Behold the majesty of a tomato plant that have not been watered for two weeks

Stephanie here!

Videos added

To the Galibier road bike and mountain bike posts
road : http://moneycrushing.blogspot.com/2010/07/galibier.html
Mountain bike : http://moneycrushing.blogspot.com/2010/07/mountain-bike-down-from-galibier.html

A panorama

of the view from the front lawn of the Chalet

Col de Granon

I rode the col de Granon today while Chloe was climbing at Roche Maubert with Vero. It was a hell of a slog. Something like 8% minimum grade, 9.5% average for 12km. I think it was the most difficult of the high cols. When I was almost at the top, a car drove by and a window rolled down, followed by cheers of "Allez, Allez!"; France is so awesome for cycling!

Later on, we packed up, got some more crepes at chez Finette, loaded up the car, and drove back to Grenoble. Along the way, we were treated to some beautiful light in the mountains
Aiguillete de Lauzet

Roche Robert, contreforts

Agneaux?

Some guys flying an RC glider near Lautaret


Lauzet

Lautaret

Raining

so we went shopping in Briançon (alpimat) to buy a reverso for Chloe and some guidebooks. We also made a brief foray onto the dog excrement and trash strewn slopes of the fortress. I discovered that someone has bolted the slabs under the citadel walls:



which would have probably upset Vauban.

Later on, I took Zoe for a father-daughter crepe session in Casset, followed by a very cold dip in the nearby lake


Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, The Town of Art and History does not seem to have a real art museum!

GEAR

Climbing!

Today we split into two teams and climbed side by side routes on the Eperon de Chemin du Roy. François and I climbed "A la Recherche de Peter Pan", and Chloe, Barbara and Marcel climbed "Hélène et les garçons". Peter Pan is another short, but fantastic climb. It is on absolutely incredible yellow limestone with some steep moves and a slightly scary crux pitch at the end of a big dihedral. I was satisfied to do the super long and beautiful P4 on sight.
pitch 1

looking west on pitch 2

looking east on pitch 2

end of pitch 2

ptch 2 from Helene

crux pitch, crux moves

6c pitch




after the 6c

François on the final pitch


Chloe topping out on 'Helene', Barbara belaying

Hanging out at the summit

François at the rap station


Afterwards, it was a quick trip to Casset to the excellent creperie for Crepe Normands and Crepe Abeilles. Woo!

Mountain bike down from Galibier, Briançon

Today we did a mountain bike descent from the col de Galibier back to Monetier. The first section is a little bone jarring with my 10 year old Klein, but still very fun. You start right next to the memorial to Henry Desgranges (the founder of the Tour de France)


It's quite a wide trail on the rockiest parts, so you really just have to control your speed around the turns o avoid ditching down a steep and rock covered hillside. There were several fairly dramatic crashes, but the mountain bike gods were with me today, and I did not flat or crash, despite some very very near misses. I did, however roll through a kind of noxious yellow-green mixture of cow crap and mud which does not appear to come off of clothing. Delicious! The bottom part of the descent, well past Lautaret, was my favorite: quite smooth and narrow trails, with the occasional big rock in the way. Lolo had a nice crash, when he dropped of a small rockm couldn't get the bike pointing in the right direction, and ended up literally in the weeds.

Afterwards, it was into Briançon for more gaufres and a pinwheel for Zoé




Video here (crash at 6:09)

Ponteil

We climbed the excellent, but hard 'Role en Dalle' (~200m, TD+) at Ponteil today. The climbing is on excellent rock, and the approach is short (for once!). After freezing our butts off on recent climbs, this south facing climb was a welcome change. The only complication was that I only brought cold weather clothes, took my shirt off to cool down, and then got a ridiculous sunburn. Happily, there is a supposedly magic over the counter sunburn relief medecine called Biafine (will report back later if it works). The crux move on pitch 3 was pretty hard, and took a few tries, but I did it cleanly eventually. I even found a fantastic hand jam. I had my old long route shoes on (5.10 Ascents), which are now officially my most unfavorite shoes ever, since they expand a lot and become useless for anything technical. After struggling up the final two *beautiful* pitches, we did the long and slightly scary 43 meter/140 feet rappel onto the big ledge, and took the even scarier cables down to the base.

A nice sunset

in Monetier

Briançon

We went to the citadel in Briançon to wander around and get ice cream.

Tête de cuvée

Today Chloe and I did "Tête de cuvée" on eperon de la route: A very nice, but short (150 meter) route near Monetier. We had originally planned to do 'Du miel est des abeilles', but it was occupied by four very slow moving Italians (I had secretly hoped we could get on Tête de cuvée anyway!). It was a very nice climb, and I freed the aid pitch, so that made me happy. The Italians, meanwhile, were smoking at the belay stations on the adjacent route!