A rather disjointed day! We managed to climb quite a few pitches of rock, but didn’t top out on a single route! Sometimes that’s the way it goes… After an early start, we were clipping the first bolts at around 07:30am. We thought we’d be climbing in the shade, but as our climb was on the edge of the cliff, it caught the sun immediately, and by 07:40 we were sweating hard. It also didn’t help that the bolts were quite spaced out, the climbing technical and rock route infrequently travelled.

After a somewhat harrowing pitch, (good climbing but a bit scary), I finally reached some belay bolts and clipped myself in with throat dry and hands sweating. Clare soon joined me and after a short discussion, we decided to beat a retreat.

Up ahead, the route was covered in moss and seemed to be lacking anything meaningful in the way of handholds.

We sat in the shade of a big boulder, looking up at what could have been a great route, while considering our options…

In the end we chose to head home for food and rest while the heat of the day passed overhead, then around 15:30, headed back up into the meadows for a second attempt – this time on a different cliff one that we’d climbing before years ago and by now was in the shade.

The shade on the cliff was lovely, but it was a real sweat walking up to it! We climbed the first pitches of a couple of the classic routes, but chose to descend from after the first or second belays, as the weaving nature of the routes felt a bit much at this point in the day!

As ever, the views from the ledges were magnificent.

Typically, having decided to do one last pitch, Clare arrived at the belay to find it wasn’t rigged to abseil from. Luckily, we carry a little bit of emergency kit, so we able to set up a good safe anchor from which a whopping 60m abseil got us back to the ground.

It was still mid-twenties in the shade and a wonderful temperature to stroll back to the car in…

Even this valley was hit by the floods last year – as evidenced by the path disappearing into the river in places!

Climbing Attempts of the day!….

Ribeyrettes:

• Le Crepuscule des Bureaucrates, 5b, 5c, 5c, 5c, 5a (abseiled down from top of P1)

Poire D’Ailefroide

• La Bonne Poire – 5b…. (abseiled down from here)
• Total Ecrins – 5b, 4c….. (Abseiled down from top of P2)