28th of August - France - back to the north

Last day, heading home. We got up early today, or as early as one can and still sleep late, 8AM. Our check out time was 10 AM so we had time for packing, having a weirdly spartan breakfast after this exercise vacation, making lunch for later with whatever we still had in the fridge and even chatting with the owner, in French. Turns out there is a via ferrata in the town too, although I suspect it's one of those commercial ones for paying customers.

We drove to the nearest serf service car wash and did a quick cleanup of our rental car. Annemasse is quite close to Chamonix and it took less than an hour to drive there. To our irritation, the car rental office had a 2 hour long lunch break! Well, that wouldn't hamper our chances to get to the airport in time, so we took the opportunity to go eat our lunchbox and some added french fries from Burger King.

When the car was returned we walked to the train station, thinking that we could get tickets for the bus there, but alas, only train tickets are sold at that train station. Go figure...

So, we trudged on with our luggage to the bus stop, got some cash from the ATM and hopped on the first bus to Geneva. The trains between Geneva and the airport is frequent, every ten minutes or so. Getting to the airport went pretty smooth., but we were already in a bit of a hurry. We weighed my bag again and it was half a kilo too heavy. After a bit of reorganizing between bags it got to the right weight and we checked in our bags. When packing my hand bagage, I missed that I was carrying a knife in there. Funny enough, the airport personnel didn't notice it when we passed through the x-ray. Well, no worries there.

After a bit of delay we finally lifted off the ground in Switzerland and a couple of hours later we landed in Copenhagen. I had left my car on a free parking space and I was a bit nervous about what state the car would be in. Luckily nothing had happened to it, no one had towed it or anything else. We hopped in and headed homeward. :-)

27th of August - France - Via ferrata des Evettes

Our final full day in France we had planned to do Aguille du Midi, the needle near to the peak of Mt Blanc. We had a fantastic weather, not a single cloud as far as the eye could see.

We got up early to warm clothing (planning on the cold wind at the station) and headed off to Les Gaillards (the climbing wall) where we left our car and walked the rest of the way to the cable car station. (Parking in this area is free for 24 hours!!)

26st of August - France - Bellevaux

Our day today was shaped by the fact that we hadn't had the chance to try out our tandem pulleys yet.
We looked up the closest via ferrata that included a tyrolienne - a zip line, and drove northward for over an hour. It was very chilly in the morning. I looked the temperature up for Chamonix and according to the forecast it was around 4 degrees at 8 AM. Omg! We were wearing merino under sweaters, fleece sweaters, buffs and I even brought my gloves. And so we headed off towards our destination.

We passed small, picturesque villages and lush forests, serpentine roads and high peaked mountains until we ended up in the little village of Bellevaux. On the way we stopped at a supermarket and had a coffee as ours had run out at breakfast. We only had half of our normal coffee amount this morning. No worries, I was in a fabulous mood and kept singing and hooting all the way, as Ben mostly tried to ignore me and napped until we reached the place.
We arrived at a river passing through a forest area, right below a rock wall. There was an accro park - akin to high adventure, tree climbing, a zip-lining park for people of all ages. There were lots of kids having fun there together with their parents.

By the time we arrived it was already lunch time and we began by preparing dinner on the storm kitchen. After lunch we finally set out to do the via ferrata secteur de la cascade des Nants. As we got to the start, though, we were surprised to see that it was a very simple route, class AD. The ferrata went straight up a dry canyon and had an abundance of hand holds. Ben was almost insulted by its ease in the beginning and kept repeating: "WHAT is THIS??". Turns out Cascade des Nants was the easiest of three ferrata in the same area. He did most of the route without using the handholds and instead did a rock climbing variant using mostly the rock face.
The canyon seems to be used for canyoning events too and we saw anchors for rappelling on the way.

At the top we decided to try find the tyrolienne. It was quite close by. The zip line is 70 m long and crosses a ravine. We hadn't used our pulleys before, so this was our maiden voyage, pulley baptizing run. Ben started and I filmed him. I saw that the speed was quite high upon reaching the landing platform and he made quite a hard landing.
After a bit of jostling with my gear I was ready to go and indeed the speed was substantial. I tried breaking by spreading arms and legs out (air resistance) but this had no effect what so ever, thus I (screaming) more or less crashed into a break thingy which was mounted on the end of the zip line. That done - and survived - we were psyched to end up there again, upon completing the next via ferrata.

We descended back to the starting point and discovered that the other via ferratas' starting points were rather close by, only 10 or so minutes of walking.

We came to the junction, a class D(ifficult) ferrata to our left called Secteur du Chatelard, and a class TD (very difficult) to our right. This one seemed more interesting, already by its name, Secteur de la grotte de cristal. Naturally we decided to go for this one. There were no others heading that way, but the other one, we could see, was quite popular with climbers, the first part being occupied by several people. So the two of us headed the other way. Walking around in this area it was actually quite warm. So no need for all our furs in Bellevaux.

The rock was quite interesting, limestone, which almost looked like cracked and eroded white clay. It made for lots of interesting hand holds and it was actually possible to climb most of the route just by using the rock. Ben did that on a large proportion of the ferrata. I myself, though, had to use the handholds as there were some places with slight overhangs. This route could actually have been quite a fun multi-pitch climb (real climb, without metal bars).

At one point we reached the space that has given this route its name, a cave like formation, where the route had two alternatives. One up a slight overhang, and another up a more aggressive overhang. I went straight up, but Ben of course took the aggressive path.

After a while our route converged with the Chatelard ferrata. On the junction there was a couple hanging in their slings and resting. It seems like the girl had used up all her arm energy and they couldn't move on. As we passed the guy was explaining all my moves for her, it seemed to me.  Especially as I was hanging in a slight overhang and moving my carabiner from one wire to the next. Many noobs start out by clinging to the handholds with flexed arms, thus using up their energy way too quickly. The trick is to minimize static muscle work, and instead hanging with straight arms.

We reached the top and headed for the tyrolienne again. This time we did in twice, which meant climbing down the ravine and up the other side to get back to the start platform.
So, our pulleys have been baptized. We did two via ferratas and the sun was shining.
It was still quite early in the evening, so we still had time to do more this day. We quickly drove back to Chamonix and Les Gaillards. We had a cup of coffee watching the wall and the sun on the top of Mt Blanc. This time I was the one who did most of the climbing. I charged a grade 5-ish route and spent some considerable time solving it, which I actually managed to do, almost without a scratch (I have bruises all over due to this vacation).

I rappelled down and next Ben tried a more difficult, but shorter climb. He also tried out one of the trad gear, a nut, into a crack in the wall. It actually held. By this time it was getting really dark and we saw the only others who still were climbing using headlights.

When he came down we gave up for today and headed back to the hostel.
One more day to go  :-)

25th of August - France - Les Gaillands nr 2

Today we woke up to a preview of an approaching autumn. The air was much cooler today - some 12 C when we got up. The forecast said that the weather would stay cloudy all day, so we decided to visit the nearby crag in Chamonix again and try some routes we didn't have time for yesterday.
When we got to the crag there were lots of people climbing on the rock, albeit wearing a bit more clothing than yesterday.
It was a bit chilly, but nothing that some scrambling up a rock face wouldn't remedy.
Ben started out with the climbing and chose a route that began pretty straight forward, up along the rock, but at about 10 m, there was a serious overhang. Due to the cold he couldn't feel his fingers and therefore needed to come down again. During the second try he got his pulse up and body working as it should. Then the route suddenly was pretty easy for him. While he was struggling and complaining about the cold I was chatting with a couple of Spanish guys who were doing the route right next to ours. I started out talking to Oriol, who spoke English quite well. When he was up climbing I tried to talk to Jonathan, he's friend, he one only understood single words. I did make out that they were gonna do the Mt Blanc summit, starting tomorrow, though. They were beginning in Aguille du midi, and staying at a refuge there. The day after tomorrow, or rather beginning in the night at 1-2 AM, they're heading towards the summit which they anticipate to reach in 17 hours, 6 PM. After that they will return more or less right away.

Funny guys,.. as it began to drizzle just a fraction from the ever present clouds they decided to pack their gear and head to their hostel. They don't like rain. It was too much, as it more or less never rains where they come from, according to Oriol. 5 times a year, he said. The really funny thing is, as we were chatting it turns out they like the north and their next big expedition includes cross-country skiing with sleds for weeks in Lapland. Seriously... guys who dislike a slight drizzle.
We ended up exchanging FB-info as we talked about climbing in southern Spain.

We switched climbing routes as the guys left. This time we ended up doing a 3 pitch climb. This was our first ever multi pitch climb so we had stuff to figure out. I really had to think about the securing of myself and knots to tie while sitting up on the rock. Belaying wasn't super easy either, because of the auto-locking system in  the guide ATC. But all went well in the end and being a multi pitch climb, we also got to do an almost full rope length abseil down.
After our first climbing session we drove to central Chamonix looking for a café, but ended up eating at a Chinese restaurant.

After our food break we were back at the crag. There is a part of the rock that we've seen attract many climbers. It seems quite popular. Now, due to the relatively boring weather these routes were finally free. One of  them is graded as a 6a and right next to it around the corner is a extremely flat rock part graded as a 7a. Ben of course wanted to try both so first he did the 6 lead climbing and then tried the 7 around the bend as a sports route.  The 7 had tiny crimps and a single (evil) one-finger pocket. He said that the rock in this route requires thick skin for it to be easy (he describes he's finger skin as baby skin... hahaha).

I tried another route, but this time I really couldn't get my body temp up. Climbing and being cold doesn't really mix well...
Ben did the same route, during which a narrow beam of bright sunlight suddenly popped out accompanied by two rainbows.

Our evening ended with dinner at the hostel and another movie :-)

24th of August - France - Les Gaillands

Yeah so today was not about via ferrata at all, but rock climbing.
Ben had found some nice crags around the Chamonix area and we decided to try some of that out today, starting with some nice and easy climbing.

The day started a bit slow though, as both of us overslept. The clock was actually close to 10 AM before we woke and I thought OMG! and bounced up in a flurry.

Before long we were having breakfast and even tried out the garden, sitting in the sun for the "morning" coffee as the next door neighbours were painting a house. They looked to have fun and all guys were talking constantly. At one point a chubby guy on the really long ladder, instead of getting down to move it, actually jumped and bounced it to the side. It looked really funny.

It was sunny, but not too hot as we headed off toward Chamonix. At first we checked out the station for the cable car to Aguille du midi. On the way we stopped at a really interesting alpine-climbers store. There were so many things we would've bought - for really fair prices, really, but again, we have no space for added weight in our luggage.

After checking out the cable car, which we'll explore further another day, we went for lunch. Steak and fries, yummie (no vegetarians here...)
We sat watching people and mused about their gear and injuries. It's funny how people in a place like this are so much alike. There are four sorts, the regular tourists with regular city clothing, walking around, looking at stuff, shopping, having coffee, taking pictures and wearing sun hats... and then there are the locals of course, the ones who don't take pictures or look around.. and the third group, the adventurers, who wear backpacks, alpine boots or other hiking boots, walking staffs, move with MTBs, dusty and limping after hours upon hours in the mountains or fresh and just about to head out. Oh, and then there is the fourth group, the wanna-be's with newly bought outdoors sets, fresh over the counter. This group may go either way, some becoming the latter (dusty mountaineers), some turning into regular tourists again. Fascinating to be in these kind of places where mountain clothing is the regular style and normal city wear is unusual. :D :D :D

After lunch we headed to Les Gaillands, a quite big and very popular crag with loads of climbing routes. It's easily accessible, just next to the road. There's a big grass plane in front of it and a nice, blue pond right next to it. Also there are cafés close by for a break snack if you haven't brought your own. 
There were people everywhere on the wall, every age. I think the youngest must've been 3 years old or something. I did the first lead climb along a fairly easy route. There were a lot of nice handholds in the rock and my shoes got a good grip on the granite. I'm not very experienced with lead climbing so I had to think on the direction the quick-draw should face each time and also to double check the direction of the rope through the quick-draw. Would not be fun to fall if the directions get messed up.

Going up I reached a ledge where there was a guide teaching two small children and bringing them with him upwards. It was really fun listening to them, the kids speaking British English and the guide's French accent. "Allez, allez!", guiding them up the rock wall. I would've loved this kind of activity as a kid. Or rather, we climbed as kids too, but I think it would be relatively safe to say, the security could've been optimized... (Mum, dad... we're still alive so no worries.)

I went as high as I could, but my route was blocked by the kids so I tried going to the side instead, crossing over to another route. This though, gave me a moderately clear experience of what rope drag consists of. Wooh, seriously, I had no idea the rope friction could be so obvious. That added to the weight of the rope itself. I was more or less fighting the rope every cm of the way. I realized I had to give up and went down again... or tried to, but the friction almost wouldn't let me. It took a while to get down as the rope simply dragged too much.

Ben went up next. He removed all my quick-draws and continued even higher, this time in a straight path, instead of my friction zigzag. He found this route to be quite easy and didn't even break a sweat, but I was having fun and a little bit of a challenge and needed to think on some moves.
When he came down I went up again and continued one step higher. At that point the wall was vertical and had some hand holds that required a bit more strength than I could muster so I came down again. Ben ended the climbing session by going all the way up, this time bringing another rope, in order to be able to rappel back down. I was standing on the ground and wondering about why it took him so long to get back down. When he finally came back it turned out he had forgotten to bring his ATC and instead went with an old fashioned panic solution using a prusik and a carabiner break method.

Afterwards we decided to go check another wall out, but it was getting late and the evening clouds were descending down the mountain side. Instead we headed into town for a coffee, more people watching and then back to the hostel for dinner and a movie.

23rd of August - France - To Saint-Gervais-les-Bains

So, today we checked out of our tiny studio apartment in La Toussuire and headed off towards the north. Staying in a private, albeit very small apartment was quite nice actually. No one to take account of. Just us. We've had a couple of nice and relaxed evenings watching movies and yesterday we topped it with some wine and snacks.
We got up really early today in order to have time to clean the apartment before check-out time. During our stay there we couldn't help but wonder if it could be an investment to purchase a small apartment like that and rent it out during the ski season. Who knows...

We took the small (toll free) roads towards the higher mountains. First by mistake, the GPS was set to toll free and I was wondering a bit over not being led to the highway. After a while we figured that we might as well continue on those roads. Its not like we were in any kind of a hurry.
It took more than two hours to reach Saint-Gervais-les-Bains and still we were too early for check-in. It was really warm, arriving in this area. The temperature was close to 30 degrees Celsius. A bit more than in La Toussuire where I had actually been a bit frozen. The evening temp there had been as low as 14 degrees.
Well, instead of sitting around and waiting for check in, we decided to go for a drive. We ended up at a restaurant, Le Four, where we had lunch. Ben wasn't very hungry and had a salad, while I myself went for some grilled meat.

Afterwards we found the local Decathlon, which was quite huge compared to the ones we visited previously. This one was fittingly enough called Mountain Store and also was surrounded by the silhouettes of the alps in all directions.
We looked through every single isle, tried jackets, shorts and climbing shoes and a slack line they had in the climbing section of the store. I've decided to post order a pair of new climbing shoes at some point (my club is rebuilding at the moment and is closed for now). We bought some carabiners. You can never have too many of those ;)
I would've bought huge amounts of stuff now if I could've transported all of it back home, but our luggage was already almost at maximum weight on arrival to France, so some patience is warranted.
We had a coffee at the  store's diner too before finally heading back to Saint-Gervais-les-Bains for our check-in.

Our place for the stay in this area is a hostel, Gite les Cristaux, with a fairly large room, shared kitchen and a view of the hills through the windows.

After "moving in" with all our luggage and stuff we made some dinner and then headed off to see a near by bolted cliff wall with some easier grade multi-pitch routes. It's located in Chamonix. As we drove there, we watched the ever looming Mont Blanc massif closing in ahead of us. It's a fascinating mountain. The visible top, Aguille du midi, is a full kilometer lower than the actual top of the massif.

The cliff we were going to has routes of around 60+ meters. There were several people climbing and practicing there. One group was using the longest rope I've ever seen. Must've been 100 m long... The girl climbing looked tiny on the huge wall.

Tomorrow we'll be heading back there. Today turned out to be a genuine resting day. No climbing, no hiking and hardly even any walking. I bet I haven't walked more than a hundred meters today and most of that within Decathlon... :-)

22nd of August - France - Via ferrata de La Chal

So... today was a bit weird... Started out pretty ok in our tiny studio in La Toussuire. We had a full breakfast with müsli today (levelled up from mere cornflakes yesterday) and of course coffee made with a coffee machine instead of my trangia.
Ben had found a via ferrata nearby with a zip-line and we've been wanting to try one of those for a while. 
We had to skip the zip-line in Les Orres due to thunder, but now we had good weather.
We packed the gear and headed off setting the GPS to the right coordinates. First down towards  Saint Jean de Maurienne, the town below La Toussuire. After a while of slow driving through serpentine mountain landscapes there was a "road closed" sign a few km further down the road. We figured better go check it out. It turns out it was our road that was closed, so new GPS route and off we went in another direction. After a while we were back in  Saint Jean de Maurienne again? I thought, that's weird, we're heading back up? So I checked the GPS route and to my surprise it was sending us in a weird GPS circle!! A CIRCLE! I exploded in laughter and was half choking and crying as Ben, in frustration plotted a new route for us.
Seriously, I think I used up all the breakfast energy there.
So we drove on, this time going around the other way to get to the via ferrata. Down to a larger road, right next to the freeway, then back up a winding serpentine, up, up, up, right turns, left turns, right turns, left turns. And then.... another sign saying "road closed"! Argh! Sooo we'd been driving for more than an hour and had gotten NOWHERE! Ha hahahah!

Ok, now so we tried to find an alternative ferrata in the vicinity as this one so obviously tried to stay unreachable.The cell phone service was really bad up in that mountain so we started to head down. Comically enough, though, we only made it a couple of minutes down the road until we stumbled upon a sign for a via ferrata. Not the one we were looking for, but one we had overlooked on the way up.
So, in the valley Villards, close to St Colomban we stopped by Via ferrata de La Chal. It's a fairly new via ferrata and has a fun variety and a fascinating view off the rock face (and of the rock face). 
In the bottom there is a practice area for initiation to this type of climbing. 
The ascent to the start was short, but a steep uphill walk along a trail. 
Unlike many other via ferrata, this one starts off hard core from the first step. The beginning is a vertical rock climb. I realized quite quickly I hadn't had enough to eat since our long haul yesterday. I didn't feel energetic enough for burst moves or static elements. But what the duck, the body is always capable of some extra if needed, so we kept on going.
 
The first part of the ferrata I was lead. Ben was checking all my moves and offered some fruit after the first straight ascent. That was good, because I was actually getting hungry.
  
He had had a huge dinner last night as well as large breakfast, so he was psyched.
 
After the next break Ben took the lead. At one point we reached a quite horrific climb up along a thin, traversing, overhang crack. There were long, slick handholds and the feet were supposed to go into the crack. The first half went fairly ok, although it was quite strenuous and we had to keep our weight as close to the wall as possible in order to spare the arms. The second part was really slippery so the previous method didn't work. We couldn't get our boots to stay put, they just kept sliding so we had to use arm strength to somehow jostle ourselves up and ahead. I got quite warm and felt my arms glide down the metal bar as I was trying to sweat myself upward. It was quite a jumble for a moment and hopefully no one saw us up on the flat mountain wall (in plain sight) like a fumbling lump of climbers half panicking. Both of us had some sweat on our brows when we finally got passed that point. I had to just stand still and breath for a while and Ben gave me his second banana that I devoured in an instant. Quite an athletic stunt. 


The rest of the ferrata was more regular kind of climbing, luckily. When we finally hit the top I downed my water in a straight gulp. We enjoyed the view from the top for a minute before heading back down again.


As we set out to drive back to La Toussuire Ben suddenly said, "Its weird, it feels like I've driven here before... all the roads look the same" I was a bit dumbfounded. Was he joking? "You did, we came up this way". . . he's face... I've been laughing the rest of the evening.

It was still quite early in the evening. Only somewhere after 5 PM. So we went grocery shopping and decided to make REAL food today. Turkey with tomato sauce, rice and veggies. Yummie. Next we ended the evening off with a movie.

(I'm still laughing)...