Tip of the iceberg...

I was feeling pretty trashed still when I woke up yesterday, but it wasn’t until I picked up my morning brew that I realised I wouldn’t be doing any climbing that day. I’d left a lot of skin up on Salathe and it was another roasting hot day, so I decided not to waste any more.
I took a stroll round Apremont in the evening though and checked out a few problems that I’ll be going back for another day.

This morning, I headed out with Neil again, this time to Franchard Isatis. It’s another area I don’t really know too well so it was good to have Neil with me to show me a few of the classics.
We warmed up on a bit of the red circuit and then while Neil began working on ‘Sur-Prises’, I was trying the wall just round to the left – ‘Rognures d’Ongles’. I didn’t get too far as the starting crimp for the right hand was a fingertip crusher and to get established you just had to take the pain and pull through on it. It didn’t take too many goes for me to decide it just wasn’t worth the agony, so I packed it in and, as Neil wasn’t managing to latch the last hold on Sur-Prises we moved on for a look at ‘l’Angle Ben’s’.
It’s a striking, square-cut arête; Very balancy and on some really poor footholds. Again, I didn’t make too much progress, but after a few goes Neil somehow managed to get his feet to stick to the blank slab on the right and topped it out.
After giving me a few pointers for ‘el Poussah’ Neil had to leave me to it and go and do the school run. I had a quick play on another wall first – again no success – and wandered round for a look at el Poussah. It looks a good problem, but there was quite a crowd already working it, which never helps on a sloper problem, when you want to keep the holds as cool and grippy as possible, so I went off to look around the rest of Isatis.
I found a cool little problem called ‘Tequila sunrise’ which went down in a couple of goes and it was nice to top something out.
I carried on the search for new projects and as I did I came across ‘Iceberg raccourci’. It’s an undercut wall that’s climbed on small but positive slopers, the kind you can really pull down on, while rocking over your right foot. By now it was cooling down and with a breeze blowing and in the shade of the trees, the small slopey holds were feeling in prime condition. Every time I pulled on I was making a little more progress, which is a really good feeling, and it was only around made fifth attempt that I found myself topping it out fairly easily.



There are a couple of other variants to the problem – a sit-start, and one that traverses along a low rail into the sitter. The moves on both feel well within reach, so watch this space – this might just be the tip of the iceberg!

I packed up as the light started to fade and had a quick recce around the other problems at the far end of Isatis.
As I was walking out, down the ‘Route de Gorges de Franchard’ I heard a rumbling to my left and suddenly a huge dark beast thundered across the path not ten yards in front of me, quickly followed by two slightly smaller shapes. Boar.
No time for photos i’m afraid, they’re pretty damn quick. But with my first confirmed sighting of the trip, and another excellent problem crushed, I walked out a happy man.