20th of august - France - Les Orres

Yeah, so this day ended up a bit different. We don't have very many pictures from this day due to the efficiency of our activities. ;)

The weather is a bit shifty in the Alps and again it seemed as there would be a thunder storm around Briançon. So we decided to head a bit more south. We were slow in starting though and drove off from Villar-d'Arêne just before midday. On the way we decided to stop for a coffee at our former town, L'Argentière de la Bessée. We had café elongé, a long coffee which is an espresso with a tad more water. Was pretty good actually, not at all like those horrific americanos.

Ben's sunglasses broke the other day and he has been borrowing mine a bit, but they don't fit very well so we figured we might as well go to the nearest Decathlon. There was a small shop near to Briancon. While he was trying out sunglasses I found a pair of gloves that I've been wanting to have for years!! Well, actually, I bought them like 3-4 years ago in Marseille. They're actually MTB gloves, but I've used them for all kinds of outdoorsy stuff until I lost one in ... Chamonix I think a couple of years back. I found the same kind in Decathlon now, so finally I have a pair of super well fitting gloves again.... Ben bought sunglasses and off we went towards the south again.

On the way the sky looked a bit ominous and there were some flashes of lightning. Also it was getting a bit late, but at last we reached Les Orres. We had dinner in the forest while we were trying to figure out exactly where the via ferrata was situated and after some searching on different internet sites we realized that Les Orres is actually two villages and we were at the wrong one as the GPS coordinates from one of the web sites pointed to the northern Orres. So we drove over to the correct one and right away we found signs that pointed us to the ferrata. The ferrata wall was facing east and by now the sun was behind the mountain. By the time we had ascended to the first cable it was already around 18:30. We decided to at least do the first part of the ferrata. We didn't have much time as the sun sets at around eight o'clock. We did the fastest climb ever, straight up a cliff wall, with only a few metal hand holds. It was a lot of rock contact and quite fun actually. By the time we reached a ledge I was dripping sweat. At that point the way turned to the left and was a traverse along the rock wall. There was also a loophole to leave the route. We were just about to continue along the traverse as we heard some angry rumbling from overhead. The clouds behind the top to our left were beginning to look quite black.

Logic clearly dictates that being up in the mountains or for that matter, hanging on a rock wall attached to metal wires during a thunderstorm is far from advisable. Backtracking was not an option as descending the same way would've taken waay too long without handholds. We decided not to take any chances and did an even quicker ascent along the escape route and took the walking path around to get back to our car. The rain hit us halfway down, but luckily no lightnings in the area. Just some ominous rumbling.
This ended up being the most efficient climb ever... or as Ben put it, a gym session.

When we reached the car, it was already getting dark. We jumped into the car, put on the audio book and started the almost 2h drive back to our hostel.