Ombleze!

We did a day trip to les Gorges d'Ombleze, in the Drome with Simon, Vanessa and the kids today. After parking at the pullout right after the gorge, we set up the picnic cloth and had lunch. We then switched off climbing and corralling kids. Simon and I were up first, and we quickly decamped to a field across the river. Somehow, the kids seemed immune to the extremely cold water, and amused themselves for hours in it.

Alex, meanwhile demanded that I take him to the river and dip his feet in the water. This resulted in much anguish and crying; he does not seem to have the same cold tolerance as the other kids! Instead, he was quite content to grab handfuls of sand and rocks and spray the river (or whoever was unfortunate enough to be within range of his impressive throwing arms). He would also scoot closer and closer to the river, so I had to repeatedly reset him, to try to limit the range of his projectiles and prevent him from tumbling into the river. We set up the little tent,


and came up with other desperate measures, such as hide and seek, and eventually it was our turn to climb. The first climb turned out to be more mud and ivy than rock, so I opted to go up the via ferrata to the ledge and traverse out to the warmup. The rock in this sector is spectacular: a very rough and blocky orange limestone which climbs very well. The only problem is the slightly exposed belay ledge! We also hopped on a nice 6b+ with a tough overhanging tufa start (and a few too many bees for comfort). After switching off one more time at the Jardiland sector (nice 5a's and 7a's) we went to the Moulin de la Pipe for dinner. The food was excellent as usual, and a nice end to a long day. At the parking for the last crag, I found a fancy Android phone, which I dropped at the restaurant. The woman working there acted like I was crazy to be dropping off there. I guess I should have left it in the dirt to get run over or stolen, but I thought that since the moulin is the only thing for many km, and is frequented by climbers, that it might be a better place for it.