Steep climbing is like chocolate

Céuse :)

Céuse

Last week I drove Dennis back to his French hometown Crolles.
And I stayed for another week.
Not just in Crolles :)

I had a mission: get back to Céuse. Céüse, Ceüze, Ceuze, Céüse, Ce... whatever, they can't even write it themselves. (The cliff is called Céuse, the topo says Céüse, the roadsigns say Ceuze...)

Gaetan, a French climber (drytooler involved in the DTS) was willing to belay me for a couple days.
The weather was quite bad on Tuesday. So we decided to try another area. A secret area just a bit further South. Let's call the place G-Spot.
Florent, 'the real local' joined us for a really beautiful day of climbing.
I wasn't sure about what I could climb, so started with a 6b warm-up. But soon I was getting on the same routes as Gaetan and Florent and gaining confidence!
I climbed some really beautiful lines on perfect rough limestone. No chalkmarks, no slippery footholds, just pure climbing with an awesome view.
That evening we bivouacked close to the cliff and in the morning we drove to Gap.

Gaetan climbing at the G-Spot

Sun @ G-Spot

I forgot to bring shorts (stupid...) so I had an excuse to buy a new pair in the local climbing shop before we walked up to my favourite climbing area.
There's so much to climb there that I hardly knew where to start.
Geatan decided: Grande Face. Because there are a lot of new routes.
It was a good choice. So many lines that just asked to be climbed!
Gaetan is climbing quite a bit harder then me (and as he has mountains to do trailrunning and I only have tarmac his stamina was a bit better as well...)
I suddenly had a chance to climb and try whatever I wanted. There was always someone to climb it again or finish the line if I couldn't.
This somehow gave me so much freedom. I lost all pressure to 'achieve' and climbed harder then ever!
Gaetan also taught me something I forgot: chill and enjoy, the French style.
I'd often been climbing with people that had the idea to climb as much as possible, had daily route quota's, needed to climb at least one 8a per week, force warm-ups in at least 7a's and wake up early to start as early as possible...

Gaetan @Grande Face

On our second day in Céuse we climbed with Tania, an extremely enthusiastic girl from Cyprus. She had so much energy! 

She tries to finish her PhD in Computer Science in a Gîte in Céuse, is learning French, climbs with the locals and if she's finished her PhD she wants to become a French climbing teacher. 

I had some chocolate and shared it with Tania. Gaetan doesn't like bitter 70% chocolate :) We really didn't understand that. Tania came up with an explanation on why we like chocolate: steep climbing is like chocolate. And she's right. 

Chocolate...on our way to Crolles in a petrol station in Luxembourg

Tania

Bergamot

With the pressure that had disappeared and the 'French climbing style' (chill, relax and do whatever/whenever you want to) I suddenly saw myself doing a beautiful new 6a as warm-up, just because it looked so beautiful, then climb the route next to it, just because it looked good and then try another route that just looked challenging. Meanwhile (typical French) complain that it's too cold, too warm, too rough, too smooth but never worry about it and lay in the sun for an hour, just chat and wait till I felt 'ready' again to do another try in the route. Eat a bit of bread, sausage and some fruit, wait for another 30 minutes or more and try again. Or not. That just didn't matter because you should just climb to enjoy and like the route and the nature around it. Not because it's 7a, 7b, or whatever the grade might be.
And of course, if the climb is a challenge it's more fun, but if that challenge is a 6a then thats o.k. and if it's a 8a thats o.k. as well. Sometimes the challenge differs per day, like on our last day (Friday) in Céuse: we were tired. Too tired to actually climb in the sun. The sun was too warm that day and I could hardly climb a 7a. But it was o.k.









Friday. Time to head back to Crolles.
Dennis and I just had to spent some time together. 
So Gaetan left for a weekend full of trailrunning and Dennis and I drove up to St. Pancrasse close to Crolles.
Dennis had a headache and I was tired of all the climbing.
So we had a semi-restday. We climbed (French style) in the late-midday/evening.

Dent de Crolles, seen from Col du Coq

Anemone

Gentian

Chimney climbing, with on the background Crolles and Grenoble

One of the caves we found on our walk back to Col du Coq

Petzl is located in Crolles, the Petzl history lies in the caves of the mountain facing the village: Dent de Crolles. So as Dennis is doing his traineeship in Crolles it was logical to climb the Dent de Crolles.
First when I saw the limestone face I told Dennis "we must climb that thing".
And so we did.
A bit on the right side of the face as the direct lines would take you a couple days full of aid climbing (and we only had one day).

The 'JB Directe' (TD) was our alternative. A trad route.
We started with a walk from the Col du Coq traversing the cliff to the start of our route.
The route is basically a big chimney. And I realised that chimney climbing is 'not my thing'.
Maybe it was because of my shoes (didn't want to wear my climbing shoes in the warm weather so wore my 5.10 Guide approach-shoes) or maybe it was because I was a bit 'flammable' because I had my period (or maybe it was both).
But well...I managed...and Dennis managed me. Just a couple pitons and a big chimney guided us to the top.







We climbed it easily within 'guide time' and walked to the top of the Dent.
The walk down was even more amazing. The green grass, the flowers, the cliffs, the view, the sun and the caves that made Petzl famous. 
Together we happily walked down again.

Monday I drove back 'home' again. All the way to Bergschenhoek.
On the way I saw a truck with a slogan: "the craziest are the happiest".
Maybe I'm crazy but I'm sure I felt pure happiness this week.

...and now writing this I figured I could have been in Céuse today. Because of some communication issue I don't have to work today. So I drove all the way back to the Netherlands for...nothing :(

*looking for an big (ice)axe and a good piece of wood*

Altitude is a bitch, especially when you're Dutch

There I am again, back in 'the low lands'. After a big weekend in the real mountains (Chamonix).

I was fed up by being here, no climbing, no ice, no mountains. Just work. I needed to go out and I was reaaaally missing Dennis. He's doing is traineeship at Petzl right now and is living in France for half a year. (Really cool but sometimes France feels like a 'million miles away')

Then I was thinking... I'm working as freelancer so I can climb more and that's why I'm working. So...I should go out and climb as much as possible.

The possibility was there, right there. It just included some money and time. (Time enough and I didn't bother the money).

So suddenly on Wednesday I was climbing in the Netherlands and on Thursday I was on my way to France.

I met Dennis in Crolles. He already took off from work and I met him in style: Dennis driving his home/van.

We both felt weird, happy and yet after two seconds it already felt 'normal' again to be together. Though cute as it sounds, I had those tiny little butterflies in my stomach again :)

We did some 'Alpine-climbing-shopping' (candy bars and other food that contains loads of fat, sugar and other types of instant bulk-energy) and went for the drive to Chamonix.

We didn't even make it half-way. We enjoyed the sun (is was over 20 degrees in Grenoble!) too much. Dennis even started to show freckles already ;)

We drove on the next day, went for a pit-stop in the Decathlon store (where I heard Tania passed her Winter/ice guiding exams! I hope the cake was good ;)

We took the cablecar up to the high point at Argentiere. To skie down again (sort of). With backpack on this steep snow it was quite hard for me. I sort of managed to get down the slope happy that only climbing lay ahead of us for the next day.

We dug a snow-hole just under the route. Just deep enough to avoid hitting the crevasses.

It was quite cold but allright when I finally fell asleep.

I slept quite light but we both didn't hear our alarms that morning! One hour late we started on the route: The Ginat/Jackson.

The first bit was just snow digging. Easy enough to do without a rope. We dug ourselves a way up and were quite okay I found. On a certain point I guessed it would be better to use a rope so we wouldn't drop off the whole cliff if something would go wrong.

We both didn't question the use of a single string of the rope and just climbed on.

We went slower and slower fighting the altitude. The weather started okay. Cloudy but the later it became the more fog came in and eventually it was snowing.

The climbing was surprisingly easy and just seemed to go on for ages. In the start there was a small mixed section and then the big icefield.

That icefield seemed to go on for ages! It felt like a never ending story.

I really had to motivate myself to move: okay, just 5 steps more and then you place a screw... and then after those five steps I said to myself 'just 5 steps more'. And finally it were 15 steps before I placed the next screw. And then 100 steps again. Or 105, or 110 and then with 115 I was proud enough to place another screw.

I was slow, but Dennis probably felt even worse. On the start of the Jackson variant of the Ginat Dennis told me he wanted to go down.

Okay.

No choice. Just go down now.

Not that I felt good at the height. I was tired after just moving to axes :) So going down was an okay option.

We abseiled over the route and were just able to find the belays and abalokovs. Even our own newly made ones disappeared every time again in the huge spindrift (including ice and rocks) that came down every minute or three.

Sometimes I just had to put my axes in the ice again to keep myself stable because of all the snow coming down over the route.

Dennis got his on his cheek by a big piece of ice. Resulting in a beautiful bloody 'egg' on his face. We got used to the ice hitting our arms and legs and the look of the snowman abseiling next to me.

Beneath us there were two Swiss climbers going up still. When we were down again (without getting our rope stuck or failing belays or dropping gear/headlamps) we saw that they went back too. The soloist we met under the cliff didn't even start his climb...

We packed our bags and skied down the Argentiere glacier and the (horrible) piste on the other side.

For me it was quite hard to get down. I really had to go slow to be able to keep control and not disappear in a crevasse or drop down the hill. I just need to learn how to ski... But for my fifth time on ski's and with the backpack I found I managed quite allright.

Down in Argentiere we were both just tired. I was wondering why we bailed. Really it was just the height :) Altitude is a bitch... How much that stuff can affect your climbing. Note-to-self: try to acclimatise before trying things on 3000m+

In the end it was all love for the both of us: nice to hold the axes again and get freezing cold hands, two sleepingbags in a cold snow-hole, both closed up so we could hardly hear each other, running belay-climbing so we hardly saw each other and we got so tired that we bailed. How romantic! Let's go again this week!

Thanks Dennis for the climbing :)

Pictures: Dennis & me on the climb, ascent and descent.