Camping in Apt; climbing in Buoux.

Just a quick note, that I figured out that there was a setting that controls who can comment on my blog. Previously the setting was configured such that you had to be registered. I switched this so its open for anyone to comment so if you didn't make a comment on something before because you couldn't be bothered to register, I don't blame you, you can now without having to go through that process. If you do comment please provide a name so I can start a dialog. Now for the update.

Adrian and I spent Thursday March 20th packing up our things and clearing out of our gite in Les Jonchiers. I was excited about the change in scenery and though I enjoyed my temporary home there I was happy to be moving to a new location and break new ground. Since I had so little to pack I'm pretty much self contained in one big backpack, a climbing pack and a pack for my laptop I was ready to go in under two hours. To keep me busy I cooked up some salmon fillets which we bought at the market the day before. Have time on my hands I crushed and pureed garlic and covered them in province spices and set them to cook. I made baked potateo wedges and a monstrous salad. Yes, this my way of packing food.

We didn't have to haul everything down to Apt, we were able to drop off most of the important things in Pierrelongue to be stored in the gite where we will be living for the next month or so. After divesting ourselves of unneeded weight and technical equipment made the drive down to Apt. To find a place to camp.

So one of the cool things about France is that the villages here all have municipal camp sites right inside the village. The all have nice washrooms with hot showers, and blow driers as I was to discover. Its interesting to see how they organize thing as well they don't have toilet paper in every stall. Instead there is one main roll and you get some if you need it before you go into the stall this way its easier to maintain.

We arrived late at the camp site so we set up in the dark. I had to negotiate with a stunned youth who was helping out with the camp site. The poor girl was so shy that she wouldn't answer direction questions and looked at my like I wasn't speaking French. After securing the camp site I had to get confirmation from Adrian that I had in fact asked her a few question to which I go no response just a blank stare.

In the morning the weather had turned to broken clouds and I wasn't feeling like I had recovered from the last two days of climbing so I decided to take another day off. Adrian wanted to get pictures of Buoux for the guide book so we drove up and hiked up to Fortress Buoux which is directly across form the climbing area.

Fortress Buoux is an ancient fortress that protected this cross roads during the middle ages. The place was amazing, there were walls, ditches, ramparts, churches and secret stairways. I have pictures and will post. I also found out those pictures of stairs carved out of the rock at Buoux are actually the village of Saint Germain which was located there between the 5th and 8th century AD. All in all a pretty amazing piece of history. The fort lays in ruins now as it was order destroyed by Louis the 14th to combat rising regional independence. I also can't relay quite how big it was, the entire plateau ran was about 500 meters long and about 60 wide.

When we finished up at the Fortress we hiked back to the car with dark clouds threatening we decided to head back into town rather than make the hike in for only a few climbs. As we started driving the 8km back to Apt it started to rain.

We bought some sandwiches from a street vendor for a very late lunch and bought food from the grocery story which is conveniently walking distance from the camp site and returned to our camp.

The other thing I forgot to mention about the camp grounds here is not only do they have good washroom facilities they also have a kitchen area with a sink, fridge and freezer as well as tables and shares and the best part its a room so you can get out of the elements for you dinner and socialize with other campers.

Since we had eaten so late I decided we skipped making dinner and just relaxed in the dinning room and read. it wasn't long before all the parties who had been on the rock when the rain had started began trickling back. In short order I found myself joined by a very friendly Irish man name Paul, his wife, Johny, Meg, and Rachel. I would later come to know this groups as Team Spoon. They reminded me of the Canadian Contingent from our trip to Kalymnos. They were all smiles, laughter and fun. The passed me a beer on hello and we were friends from there. This really was the first time I had had the chance to engage in mixing with people in the way I was hoping I would on this trip and I wasn't disappointed.

I talked a great deal with Paul the first night as he and I clicked right off the bat. I found out he worked for Microsoft in Ireland doing server migrations among other things. We got to talking about the environment and how to power off grid homes. He is super keen to get his house in the Alps to be carbon neutral or as close as he can. I won't bore you with the details but it was a very interesting conversation.

They taught me a card game called shit head which really is a cross between big two and Uno. We retired fairly early as team Spoon likes to make an early start.

One of the upsides of the rain is that it drove everyone into the dinner room so the loud Czechs who were keeping us up in the late evening and early morning were not outside for a repeat performance.

During the night the temperature dropped from probably around 8 to 1. I was really glad of having my -20 sleeping bag. The next day was clear and cold with the wind blowing. I made my way into the dinning room to keep out of the cold and wait for Adrian to get up (he's a late sleeper usually up around 10:30). Team Spoon was wrapping up their breakfast so I was not without entertaining conversation.

They left after not too long and Adrian and ate breakfast and headed to the Buoux. We joined Team Spoon at sector Scorpion where they were already clambering around on the two 6a's in the sector. I warmed up on a 6a (5.10b) called "Imitation Granite". The climb was a beautiful line that lived up to its name, an offwidth crack (this type of crack is to big for your hang or fist to fit into it so you can't jam your hands into the crack which makes it much harder to climb) that winds its way up the wall for about 30 meters.

After finishing this I gave Adrian a belay on a 6c (5.11b) for his warm up. I then did the first pitch of a two pitch route that leads into a higher tier. The climb was called "La Rut" and goes at 6a (5.10b) also. It was much easier than the first climb as it was a easy climbing up a dihedral (inside corner) to a short roof with a crack in the middle. You can stem your legs up and then get a bomber ring lock (ring locks are when you curl you index and middle finger over top of your thumb like you were making an 'Ok' sign) then make a big pull to jugs above the roof. Definitely a three star route.

Adrian and I said good bye to Team Spoon and went to sector TCF in search of harder routes for Adrian. He did TCF a classic 7a. I continued my activite recovery program and did a 6a+ three start 6a+ (5.10c) called "Zephir" which dances up 9 meters of easy slab to climb a pockets dihedral then steps right out onto a beautiful arete for the last 8 meters. Definitely a must do climb.

Next we made our way over to the Sectors No Man's Land and Bout Du Monde to see if we could get Adrian on the ultra classic "Le Minimum" at 8c (5.14b) but after working his way up it and cutting his finger on a hold we decided to bail out on that route. While we were in this area we met a couple of Dutch climbers who were there on holidays with their coach. The guy was working on "La Rose Est La Vampire". Share some chocolate with the coach and got to talking with the girl who wasn't climbing. She told me about traveling around and competing. They were a bit guarded which reminded me a bit of other Dutch I had encountered in the past friend and polite but not necessarily warm.

We moved on to the left side of the Styx wall where I got on yet another three star route, this time a 6b (5.10d) called "Melodie Gaelle" which works almost straight up this vertical walls on pockets and then moves through some slightly overhanging bulges. The route was amazing, flowing from one move to the next with good technical moves so that required some though but were not totally obfuscated. It was sustained to the top finishing off on 5 meters of technical slab at the top.

We wrapped up the day and headed back so we could be back in time to go shopping as the store would certainly be closed tomorrow for Easter Sunday. We got our groceries and went to make dinner. We hit a snag shortly into the preparation as Adrian was expecting me to have a stove which I did have but we didn't have fuel for it yet. So we made dinner and ate. Shortly after dinner a young lad from South Hampton University. He was there on a trip with a group of climber from and they were leaving the next day. He just so happened to have two cannisters of butane in the model that just happen to work for my stove. So the search for stove fuel wouldn't need to happen after all. They also resupplied me with pasta, rice, jam, nutella (not even openned) among other things. I guess a few encouraging words for your fellow climber can go a long way.

After another cold night which had me put on a shirt to stay warm I got up with the sun again. Met Team Spoon for one last breakfast chat and gathering of email addresses. I did the drying and packing up as we were moving back to our new gite in Pierrelongue. By noon we were on the road up to Buoux.

We made our way up towards No Man Land sector stopping along the way for me warm up a bit at TCF on a 6a (5.10b) called "La Conque" which I climbed one and a half pitches of the two pitch climb. I lowered off at the mid station of the second pitch because I couldn't see any more bots and figured the top half didn't look like it was worth the time of climbing and then having to pull the rope and rappel off.

We moved over to the Styx wall where Adrian did a warm up climb. After which we double backed to the Reve sector where I did a technical 6a chimney climb called "Tupinambis". We walked a back to No Man's Land sector where we put our stuff down. The Dutch climbers we had met the day before were working a 7c called "Pacemaker" so Adrian took off with is camera to get pictures for the book. I sat and enjoyed the time to relax and in the sun trying to keep warm despite the cold wind. When Adrian returned he said it was my turn to climb but I wasn't particularly interested in climb the slabs on the Styx wall as he hadn't recommended them. I said we could wait and he could get on the climb which he wanted to do on No Man's Land to which he replied he "doesn't do waiting for climbs".

So we packed up and headed down as I wanted to get on some climbs from different sectors to get a full flavour of Buoux. We hiked down and around to the Mur Zappa sector. This wall is less than vertical and pretty polished as I found out. After doing a 6a called "Bal Des Lazes" which was slippery the whole way up.

I wrapped up the day with one last route called "Skud" a 6a+ (5.10c) on the right side of Mur Zappa. The route was not particularly steep but surprisingly hard as it required a mantel move as the crux onto slopers. Very unique and uncharacteristic for the limestone I've climbed on this trip so far.

We drove back and settled into our new gite in Pierrelongue. I spent yesterday doing some light stretching to test out my forearms. Its looking like so far they are improving but in small increments. The right side that I tore is still sore/burns for certain motions but I'm going easy and the diet of easier climbs is making is not aggravating it so I'm going to continue on with this program.

Adrian is going to St Leger today which as climbs that are too hard for me to warm up on. He is going to meet a few of his clients who will be climbing there to get some pictures. Instead I'm going to take it easy today and stretch, meditate and maybe work on some another DJ set.