Climbing in France

As the sun heads south for winter and the days start shortening I just managed to squeeze a few days with the rock god of the Ecrins National Park in the French Alps. Following the previous week’s exertions tramping over the length and breadth of the Cairngorms, more hill-walking was not high on the agenda. Instead, and much to the good doctor’s pleasure, we close to get up close and personal to some French rock.

First up was a local via ferrata (Italian = iron road), a system of ladders, rungs and cables that are run up vertical rock faces to enable mere mortals like me to put there soft pink bodies where they have no earthly right to be! They were developed by the Italian army to help wage war against their Austrian counterparts in the South Tyrol, particularly the Dolomites, on the Austrian/Italian border (a moveable boundary for some of the 20th Century)! The doctor knew of a suitable local cliff to start on, it’s only disadvantage being it’s position on the shadowy side of the valley. At this time of year you need all the warmth of the sun you can get. Having donned our via ferrata climbing harnesses and strained our necks peering up at our stairway to heaven, I followed the man up the ironwork pretending I wasn’t at all phased by the rapidly disappearing valley floor below my feet! The GR54 long distance footpath runs close to here but there were no witnesses to my deft climbing skills alas! Half way up we changed over and I was given the honour of leading us out into the bright (and, thankfully, warm) sunshine! That was quite enough for one day so it was back to the car and off to find a restaurant so I could start boring folk with my tales of derring do high on a sheer cliff face.

A day and autumn storm or two later, the sun came out again and the doctor decided it was time to return to the rock, but this time without any accompanying ironwork! So we drove south and found a suitable (completely hold-less), sun-kissed (hot), and accessible (5 mins walk from the car) crag on which to spend the afternoon posing for photographs. There followed a series of climbs of French Grade 4/5 standard which typically took the good doctor no more than 5 mins and yours truly about half-an-hour to complete! It was all very enjoyable until I lost the use of my arms through chronic fatigue having used them to cling to the rock all afternoon!

It was the last of the sun – and the heat – for the week, and probably the year. It certainly was for the doc who is about to leave for his 3 months stint on the ice of Antarctica – which was almost the same amount of time we experienced snow for in much of Scotland last winter. What will this winter bring? Better days, that’s for sure...

Check out my future plans for this winter on: http://www.hillways.co.uk/winter/winter.htm