Rains have finally left; now some challenges with Visas.

(Picture is a panorama that I stitched together using autostitch. This doesn't do the climbing justice but its of the North face of the Chaine de Clapis in Les Dentelles de Montmirail this place is simply amazing, so many climbs)

After the deluge of the last few days Adrian and I finally made out way back out to St Leger. Equipped with the 100m rope we decided the only place to go was to Al Andeluze as there are several new 40+ metre routes to the right of the sector.

The hike in was relatively uneventful and we were the first people to arrive at the sector, which was somewhat surprising since we had gotten a late start.

Since this was the first day back after starting my forearm recovery program using the weights I started out on the easiest climb in the sector a stiff 6b (5.10d) that I had climbed several times before called “La Maitre et son disciple”. I could really feel the pain in my forearms but it was somehow different; it felt more like a muscular pain than the burning from lower down near the connective tissue.

After completing this climb I moved on to “Le Deux Boeuf en Vacances” the 6b+ (5.11a) next to it which I had also climbed before but fallen off of. I made my way through the bottom half to the second roof where I found myself at a loss for the sequence and decided I wasn’t warm enough to pull hard so I sat on the rope to recover and figure out the sequence of the climb. Getting back on I climbed to the upper crux which pulls over a small bulge and as per my usually self as soon as I loose sight of my feet I fall apart. There was a great hand ledge below the bulge for you feel but you can’t see it after you move up so with my poor memory of the climb and uncertain of my foot placement I fell off. I quickly realized my mistake and finished the climb with ease.

Adrian went and warmed up on “Gourmandise” an overhanging start and a slabby finish makes this three start 6c a great choice but perhaps not for a warm up, at least not for me. At my request Adrian left the quick draws in the climb so I could try to flash it with him passing on beta to me.

But first things first, I wanted to red point “Le Deux Boeuf en Vacances”. I moved back over and easily dispatched the climb, executing the moves I had done the last time and the sequence that I had forgotten at the cruxes. Happy I came down and belayed Adrian on one of the many 40m routes around the corner. Toby if you are reading this, the 100m rope works wonders, you can lower to the ground without a second thought.

For my first attempt on “Gourmandise” Adrian suggested I go bolt to bolt and check out the situation. The climb had a few big move and a very sustained nature, if it wasn’t for the no hand rest after the overhang I would expect the climb would have been two grades harder. I thought I should just try to flash it so I told Adrian I would go to the crux at the overhang and see if I could pull it and if not I would go bolt to bolt. Well I moved up to the crux and made the move but couldn’t figure out how to get my feet up to pull over the steep overhang and onto the headwall. So I sat on the rope to figure out the sequence.

I jumped back on and climbed through the crux to a no hands rest. While recovery in this stance I noticed that one of the French women from Grenoble was climbing next to me on the next route over. I didn’t think this would be a huge problem even though the climbs shared an anchor at the top and the fall line would be right over top of where I was climbing. She passed me on the left as I moved into what felt like a tricky face climb with very little feet. Once she reached the top she lower off and cleaned, again not a problem until the need where she unclipped her last clip which sent the rope she was lower off of sliding across the rock as she swung into me. I didn’t fall off but was a bit annoyed. Then as I was trying to figure out the rest of the climb she starts to pull the rope which is passing over my back. So I’m sitting on this face hanging onto the rock trying to adjust my body position to keep the rope from melting the shirt I’m wearing while not falling off. She finally get the rope through the top without saying anything and the end whipped through the anchor and hits me in the face. I more than a little cheese, could they not have waited a mere 5 minutes for me to finish the route. Talk about situationally unaware! The rest of her group was really nice and I enjoyed talking with them but this person was pretty self absorbed.

After a brief break and verifying that the climb next to me was free so that I wouldn’t get a rope in the mouth I got back on for the red point attempt. The climb flowed from one move to the next. It felt really good to execute the moves cleanly and smoothly as I had planned them out on my previous attempt. After finishing this off and cleaning the climb I was happy with my day as was Adrian so we packed up and headed home.

Monday, April 14th, was a hard day, I woke up feeling exhausted from a restless sleep. The sleepiness that you experienced followed me like a shadow of lead. I felt tired and couldn't move and the rock, my limbs weighed down by some unseen force (gravity I think they call it). I feel exhausted even now and will likely go to bed soon after a shower. The climbing was a little frustrating as I seem to get tired after every move now. I only managed to do 3 climbs on the day. One of them I had climbed before and fell off at the top. I tried it again and got right to the anchor but I lost site of my feet when I pulled above an overhang and fell again. Very frustrating.

For the second climb I tried to flash "Des Titis des Grisette" a pump 6c (5.11b) as Adrian had climbed it first and left his quick draws in. I climb with Adrian giving me beta form the ground. I pulled through the crux move after which he had no information. On my own I couldn't see where to go after that so I fell off. When I got back on I pulled through the crux and made the last clip but couldn't get any higher than that as the rock above was frighteningly weak and there were no feet for me to easily stand on. After thrashing a bit and hanging on the rope a lot I managed to find a way through it. I was feeling defeated and exhausted. I had pulled two fist sized holds off the top 3 metres of the climb and was not interested in repeating that experience so I setup to clean the route.

As I was lowering off I cleaned off the first clip and noticed that there was a traverse possible to a different set of bolts out on the left. This traverse could be done on good holds and had reasonable foot holds. I got Adrian to take and then worked the moves on top rope. They were good so I put the clip I had just cleaned on the bolt on the left and lowered to the grounds so that I could red point the climb.

The Red Point attempt went flawlessly and I pulled through the deadpoint (where you make a move and if you don't catch the hold you are going for you fall) at the crux and through the top sections just as the sun came back out. though I succeed on the climb, I decided to call it a day. My heart and my head were telling me it was time to go home and take a break. So we packed up and headed back into town.

Since the day before was such a gong show, I decided to take a day off while Adrian went off to photograph the South face the south chain of les Dentelles de Montmirail. Instead I took the time to relax at home and map out climbing crags I want to visit as well as look into buying a car in Italy and finding accommodation and ways to get to Milan. After spending a few hours on the couche surfing website I found a really helpful guys from near Milan who just put up a social networking site for climbing called 9b (here is the link for the climber out there). Its a pretty cool site because its just like Facebook but for climbers. I ended up talking to the guy on Skype for a about and hour and he taught me a bunch of Italian. I'm looking forward to meeting him when I get to Italy. I also had a great visit with my dad on Skype to top out the day.

As of the morning April 16th, that has all changed. I was doing some research last night into if it was possible to buy a car in Italy and finally piece together something that has been making me wonder this whole time. My visa, it seems is a Schengen tourist visa which lasts only 90 days. What I thought was a visa that was for the country I was in and could get renewed by leaving that country and moving into the next is not in fact true. The Schengen space is made up of all of Western Europe and now as of this year most of Eastern Europe. The visa granted to tourists on arrival to this area is valid for only 90 days and can be applied for only once every 180 days. Thus, when my visa runs out on May 5 I will not be able to return to the Schengen space (mainland Europe) for the following 3 months (90 days).

Now that is a scary or expensive prospect given that I'm flying out of Marseille in October. I called the Canadian Consulate in Paris to find out if I had any options for applying to get another visa or an extension. I wasn't impressed with the level of help I got, the suggestion was that I only had two options: stay and keep a low profile and hope no law enforcement ask to see my passport or keep traveling in other countries outside of the Schengen space for 3 months and then come back.

So my options for destinations are fairly limited at this point. As far as places I would like to go and won't cost me an arm and a leg are: Morocco, Turkey and the UK. So it looks like Adrian might not be ride of me yet. My new plan is to go up the the UK where you can get a tourist visa for 6 months at the border and maybe spend a few weeks there and then head to South Africa for a month or two. Return to Britain and spend a bit more time climbing there till August when I can get another 3 month tourist visa for the Schengen space.

Simple plan, just need a get a few things taken care of like Malaria drugs, Typhoid and Yellow Fever vaccine and a plan ticket. I've also sent off an email to the French Consulate in London to see if I can apply for a long stay visa from them, contrary to what I was told by the Canadian consulates.

I've been dealing with the feelings of embarrassment, like I should have known that or I should have done more research on visas. I feel like a child who made the most obvious mistake. Ultimately, I recognize that these feelings are not helpful and I'm only going through the old habit of punishing myself in order to learn. I'm working on letting go of that feeling and choosing a more effective learning script by seeing the experience as a moment to learn so that I associate mistakes with learning instead of with negative emotions like embarrassment or fear. I'm also moving on to the more immediate and fun aspect of trying to figure out what I want to do. I think this is a harder decision but life has been telegraphing a trip to South Africa for a while now as my wonderful sister is going to be down there as is Karina.

I also have some wonderful support from my cousin in London who has offer me a couch of his for the beginning of May which is where I will setup for my trip South Africa. I will fill you all in on the details as they become more clear to me.

So naturally I was a bit stressed over this development so Adrian and I went climbing in the Dentelles de Montmirail as he needed to get pictures of the North Face of the chain de Gigondas. He hiked up and around getting pictures the on an overcast day which is what he wanted for the North side because it would otherwise be in the share and make for bad pictures. I dozed in the car as I hadn’t slept well for obvious reasons.

We then packed up the 100m rope and our gear to hike up to the “La Breche de la Pousterle”, a gap in the giant fins where you can cross over to the other side. Adrian wanted to photograph the North Face of the chain de Clapis. After a 20 minute uphill hike we reach the break. Adrian hike to the other side and got his pictures while I wait at the break. We then hiked in and linked two climbs together as warm up. We chose to do the first two pitches of “Oceane” at 4c and 6b+ then linked into the upper pitch of a beautiful dihedral crack line called “Diedre de Provance” at 6a (5.10a). Not having read the topo on the first “Oceane” I jumped on thinking it was a nice looking climb and it appear to have spaced bolts but I wasn’t concerned as the holds looked good. I was mistaken and after climbing the route head on instead of stepping right at the crux I found myself hanging from the rope. After a brief rest and finding where I had missed the transition right I jumped back on and linked the two routes right to the top of the fin for a single pitch of climbing of 55 metres. It was quite fun when we found that the we could rappel all the way to the ground once all the direction changes were taken out of the route.

Since it was cold we decided to hike back over to the break where I saw a climb I wanted to do from the previous days hike called “Je Suis un Communiste” a slightly overhanging 6c+ (5.11c). I put aside the any thoughts of what the climb would be like or level of difficult and just focused on wanting to do it and enjoying solving the challenges along the way. Once I started in it was amazing, my mind got quite and started to move with precision and confidence. The crux sequence was amazing, a pull off of a sidepull and a mono (one finger pocket) on a 5 degree overhanging bulge to a soso crimp with slabby insecure foot holds. The climb continues in a sustained mediocre holds as you progress through vertical and overhanging sections till you pull up onto a slab head wall to finish. It was 30m of pure pleasure, the guidebook under rated this one giving it only one star. Its easily 2 and a half.

Adrian decided to lead it and he felt it was a pretty stiff 6c+ so I would have to say this is the hardest onsight I’ve done on the trip so far. The best part was I wasn’t in any great pain for the lock-offs I did with my right arm. I guess the rehab I’ve been doing is helping.

I spied yet another route I really wanted to do just to the left, another 6c+ (5.11c) called “Ourdes 96” which was even more steeply overhanging. The guide gave this climb two stars which as I would find were well deserved. The climb starts out stiff off the ground with a few thin moves at 5 meters up then starts walking straight up a face moving through good holds and head on climbing for the most part. The moves are big and sweeping and the footwork as your get into the crux is of a technical nature. The climb then works left up into a no hands rest where you can recover after pulling the crux then another 4 meters of jugs get you to an alcove and the anchor. I fell off at the crux because I didn’t see the sequence but it will be an easy red point if I get to come back. This finish off surprisingly good day of climbing and clean out any stress I was feeling from the visa situation.