Go back to Europe.
Arete du Belvedere.
Provence.
Having found some cheap Europe tickets, we set our sights on a classic alpine rock route in the southern French Alps over an extended Labor Day Weekend. A week before the trip we started seeing some disturbing trends in the long range weather forecasts which, despite many rituals and sacrifices performed to the weather gods, were not blowing over but solidifying.
.
Verdon Gorge.
At three days out, we cancelled the alpine hut reservations and set our sights on plan B which would be the Verdon Gorge. Unfortunately that too was not fully trouble free – all days we had allotted to climbing were showing pm thunderstorms. Nevertheless, we decided to roll the dice and give it a go.
.
La Palud Sur Verdon.
How the cookie crumbled..clicky, clikcy.
To sum it up: we hardly climbed. We started up a classic (polished) line on day 1 only to be scared off by the rumbling of thunder and bail off. An afternoon thunderstorm followed. On day 2, we ran up a quick easy climb called Arete du Belvedere (5c, 7 pitches) in good weather and then an afternoon thunderstorm followed. On day 3, we woke up to moist and misty conditions and, by the time things started clearing off, we were worried that we did not have enough time before the afternoon thunderstorms arrived. We did some driving around and sightseeing between and during the storms. We drank a shitload of wine and ate some local fare (good in a simple, country cooking sort of way). Think that trying for a quickie alpine fix in Europe in late August or early September is probably not the best way to go: we’re 2 for 2 in terms of failures. Or perhaps it was just time to pay up the weather gods as we had been very very lucky on our last 2 or 3 longer trips…
Photos
Shirley digging into a traditional Provencal breakfast on our first morning in France (a highway motel & this fine establishment; Aug. 2019).
Shirley and our little Clio (Aug. 2019).
Some village we stopped in on the drive to Verdon Gorge. Weather was perfect that day (Aug. 2019).
Same village (Aug. 2019).
Village church (Aug. 2019).
View of the village from the road (Aug. 2019).
Welcome to La Palud Sur Verdon (Aug. 2019).
La Palud Sur Verdon (Aug. 2019).
Our Auberge at Point Sublime outside of La Palud (Aug. 2019).
Scoping out the Verdon Gorge scenery on our first afternoon (Aug. 2019).
Checking out some approaches (Aug. 2019).
Headed for the village of Rougon above our auberge; scenic and with a nice creperie that served up some killer apple cider (Aug. 2019).
Rougon (Aug. 2019).
More Rougon (Aug. 2019).
In the looong tunnels approaching our first (failed) climb the following day (Aug. 2019).
A fist sized resident of the tunnels (Aug. 2019).
Condensation on the ceiling (Aug 2019).
Shirley following pitch 1 of La Demande (Aug. 2019).
Views from low on La Demande route (Aug. 2019).
Arriving at the belay (Aug. 2019).
Starting the lead of pitch 2 of La Demande (Aug. 2019).
Promising looking patch of blue in the other direction (Aug. 2019).
Higher on the sparsely protected opener of pitch 2 (Aug. 2019).
Shirley starting up pitch 2 (Aug. 2019).
Shirley on pitch 2 (Aug. 2019).
Rumbling of thunder scared us. Hiking back through the gorge (Aug. 2019).
From one tunnel to the next (Aug. 2019).
Back into/through the tunnels after we had bailed (Aug. 2019).
A sidetrip inside one of the tunnels (Aug. 2019).
La Palud Sur Verdon. Will it blow over?
No.
Heading down for our one successful climb of the trip on the following morning (Aug. 2019).
Sketchiest part of the climb (by far) was the 4th class approach – a descent to the bottom of the gorge aided by some steel rods installed in the rock (Aug. 2019).
Arete du Belvedere (Aug. 2019).
Shirley topping out on pitch 1 (Aug. 2019).
Starting up pitch 2 of Arete du Belvedere (Aug. 2019).
Looking back at Shirley from lead of pitch 2 (Aug. 2019).
Leading pitch 4 or so (Aug. 2019).
Views from low on the route (Aug. 2019).
Higher on the same pitch (Aug. 2019).
Shirley somewhere mid-route (Aug. 2019).
Shirley on Arete du Belvedere (Aug. 2019).
Shirley at a belay (Aug. 2019).
More views upriver (Aug. 2019).
A touch of wide on the upper pitches (Aug. 2019).
Looking back at Shirley at the belay (Aug. 2019).
Somewhere near the top (Aug. 2019).
Shirley topping out (Aug. 2019).
You end up on the road, 50 meters from your parked car (Aug. 2019).
A working farm outside the village of La Palud (Aug. 2019).
La Palud Sur Verdon (Aug. 2019).
La Palud Sur Verdon. We ate, we drank, we barely climbed and we got drenched at time. Kind of fun (Aug. 2019).
Here we go again (Aug. 2019).
Strolling through the rainy (and touristy) Moustiers Sainte-Marie village (Aug. 2019).
Moustiers Sainte-Marie village (Aug. 2019).
Moustiers Sainte-Marie (Aug. 2019).
Moustiers Sainte-Marie and its waterfall (Aug. 2019).
Moustiers Sainte-Marie village (Aug. 2019).
Moustiers Sainte-Marie (Aug. 2019).
Village of Bauduen in Provence (Aug. 2019).
Bauduen and its corrugated roofs (Aug. 2019).
Village of Bauduen (Aug. 2019).
Shirley at an overlook in Verdon (Aug. 2019).
A wet Verdon Gorge (Aug. 2019).
Looking for an abseil point (in hopes of better weather the next day; Aug. 2019).
Weather seems to clearing up – must be time to go home. Setting out for Marseilles for our flight home (Aug. 2019).
Verdon Gordge – one last looksee. Will we be back? Maybe as a side trip but not as the main dish (Aug. 2019).
Verdon Gordge (Aug. 2019).
Verdon Gorge (Aug. 2019).
Morning moisture burning off (Aug. 2019).
Shirley at one of the overlooks (Aug. 2019).
Quite scenic (Aug. 2019).
Verdon Gorge (Aug. 2019).
Take off (Aug. 2019).
Arete du Belvedere as seen from across the Gorge on our drive out (Aug. 2019).
A closer look. Arete du Belvedere is at dead center I think (Aug. 2019).
Some random village on our drive back to Marseilles (Aug. 2019).
Another charming village (Aug. 2019).
Get that camera out of my face man!! At least that’s what I assume that the cat was yelling at me in French (Aug. 2019).
Village of Trigance (Aug. 2019).
Provence (Aug. 2019).
Provence (Aug. 2019).
Another Provencal village on the drive back to Marseilles (Aug 2019).
And one more (Aug. 2019).
At first I got it in my head that we had a 90 minute layover on the way back. When we actually checked, it turned out we had 6 hours in Frankfurt. Took a train downtown to kill time (Sept. 2019).
Wandering aimlessly through downtown Frankfurt in the morning…well, not totally aimlessly: we were looking for beer (Sept. 2019).
It might be 9am in Frankfurt but it’s midnight in Portland (Sept. 2019).
Downtown Frankfurt (Sept. 2019).
Go back to Europe.