Deep in the Gorge

Ever found yourself on a route and realised you are totally ill-prepared for what you’re trying to climb? It happens to the best of us. Sometimes you underestimated the route, sometimes you use more gear than you thought… And sometimes the guidebook is just plain wrong.

The Girl and the Gorge. 

Top tip. When heading to a destination like the Verdon Gorge, do your research. Speak to experienced folk and build a ticklist based on recommendations rather than what looks good in the guide. Trust me, it’s for the best. I'm usually a 'local guidebook' kinda guy, mainly due to a desire to support the local scene - but my recent trip to the Verdon was pretty impulsive so I decided to grab an english guide from a popular guidebook publisher (I’ll name no names), figuring that it would give us a good coverage of the popular routes in the area.


We were only planning on heading to popular areas and well travelled routes and so figured it couldn't do us any harm to have the english guide... Right?


In retrospect, perhaps poor choices were made. On the first day, we abseiled into Falaise de l'Imbut, an intimidating 200m buttress that towers out above the white-blue water of the gorge to check out a f5c trad route called ‘La Decize’. Now, the guidebook did state that a ‘rack’ was needed, so we took around 8 cams and a set of wires. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a 'rack'.


*plot twist* it wasn't a rack.

Yours truly mistakenly believing I was racked up.



The first pitch was bold, dodgy and had one rusty peg and a poor cam protecting committing moves onto a flake that looked like it vanished after a few metres. The second pitch, presumably climbed after gaining a bushy flake some metres above the blankness, didn't look too easy either. The peg was one of those inspiring pieces of fixed gear that could be flexed with the gentle application of a single finger - pretty much what I expected from Verdon, but my partner wasn't too happy about my taking a massive whipper onto the belay and so after wobbling around looking for kit for 40 minutes or so I decided to call it and head up the route to the left for a couple of pitches, a well bolted 6b+ ‘Ras lebolchoi’, with the intention of regaining the trad line and heading to the top on well defined cracks.


The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say.


Having climbed two pitches of classy 6b/+, I was happy to continue up onto the 6c pitches and get out of the gorge. The light was starting to drop (we didn't abseil in until after midday) and what with the previous faff on the lower pitch, we were running low on time.


Cora had other ideas. "Let's do the trad route! It'll be so much better."


She may be German, folks, but she learnt in the UK. #proud


The pride was strong and the line was clear, so I quested off up the crack in search of glory and the next belay. I didn't find glory, but I did find a brilliant pitch at around HVS/5b striding boldly through good jams and laybacks with the occasional cheeky bridge and just enough gear to keep things safe but spicy - now this was the stuff! I moved boldly upwards, stoked that I was finally finding the climbing I’d heard about from this region; high quality, compact rock and flowing climbing in a brilliantly exposed position. There was a part of my mind that was conscious that I should probably be reaching a belay at some point, but whatever - it’d turn up.
Right?


The route ran higher, and the gear ran lower. At somewhere between 30-40m I reached a thin horizontal flakeline with a single rusty peg. The only other gear was in the crack to my right, now reduced to a narrow vertical break that looked like it might take a small friend or two - if I hadn’t placed them several metres before. Cora’s voice floated up from below with the dreaded words:


“You should be at the belay now.”


Shit.


I tested the peg; it makes the previous one look bomber. I rifle through my remaining rack - one no.3 friend, 5 big wires and a single lonely extender.


Shit shit shit.


The sun was dropping steadily lower against the wall of the canyon to my left, casting a rich golden filter onto the orange rock. It was beautiful, but terrifying. We had enough time for one more pitch, seconded in the dusk. Above my head the crack continued; easily climbable, but not manageable with the remaining rope and gear. I checked the peg again, still abysmal. Couldn’t belay off that. Skyhooks would have done at a pinch, but I didn’t have them with me as they’re hardly standard trad gear.


The realisation steadily sank in; The only way was down. I started down climbing the pitch, removing the gear piece by piece and trying to move as fast as possible. In the fading light, encompassed by the walls of the Gorge on all sides, the moves that earlier were a path to freedom now felt like an unwilling journey into dangerous territory.

The Gorge, before drama ensued. What a place! 

When I finally reached the belay, dusk had fully set in. We discussed our options: it was now too dark to climb the 6c, and we couldn’t aid it as the bolts were too spaced. There was no walk off from Falaise de l'Imbut, and the abseil was too long to leave a fixed rope in place. We were there for the night. We simul-abseiled down the remaining two pitches, neither one of us wanting to be left alone on the wall. When we reached the final belay ledge, the ropes stuck whilst pulling. After ten minutes of useless whipping back and forth and some enthusiastic swearing we just left them. It wasn’t like we were going to be climbing out anyway.


Everything was done in the dark. We had no headtorches, having abseiled into the gorge with a good six hours of light remaining for what should have been a three-hour route, and the water was running low. A stock-check was made: One whistle, one foil blanket and one of those weird clicky things for numbing insect bites. Well, at least we wouldn’t be itchy. There was no phone signal and the rescue teams wouldn’t have come out anyway - they don’t fly to the gorge in the dark.

We knew the temperature was due to drop down to around 4° - far from the balmy 25° of the daytime, but better than it could have been. Verdon is actually a relatively high region and it’s not unusual for the spring nights to get properly chilly. Regardless, it looked like my days of shelter-building with the Scouts were finally going to come in handy - I only wish I could have been more enthused about it.


Everything is harder in the dark. The short scramble access with fixed ropes that we’d danced along earlier felt gripping when moving almost blind, and ascending the 6m fixed abseil rope was similarly awful. Eventually we teetered down the final plateau and into the small copse of trees that grew in the bowl valley on this side of the gorge. We headed for a cave we’ve spotted earlier on the abseil descent, a shallow overhang fronted by trees and carpeted with a bone-dry combination of sand and dead leaves. The air was still warm, but a breeze had picked up and we knew we needed to get as much shelter as possible. We gathered branches, leaves and dirt, layering them on top of each other against the rock wall to form a makeshift shelter. Whilst definitely not waterproof it would help keep the remaining wind off, and more importantly building it kept us warm for another hour.

We wrapped ourselves in the foil blanket and shuffled awkwardly into our shelter. Through a gap in the branches above I could see the sky was absolutely plastered with stars. Normally this would have been utterly beautiful, but right now it made my heart sink. A clouded sky would have meant a warmer night. I pulled the foil blanket over my head, adjusted the position of my chalkbag pillow, and closed my eyes. Two hours later, I woke up shivering. The night had somehow descended into an even deeper level of pitch, and the air was chilled. We got out of the shelter and stamped around, getting the blood moving and our hearts racing. It didn’t feel like much had changed, but once we got back in the blanket we could feel the heat building up again.


So the rhythm went. Sleep for an hour or so, get up, stamp around, wrap back up and doze off again. Eventually after the second or third iteration, light started to appear on the horizon. We’d nearly made it through the night.


Yours truly after a chilly night under the stars.
The next time we awoke was to sunlight. Not the warming, golden light of the full-bore Verdon day, but a more fragile dawn illumination. Cast in a chilly white glow, the Gorge was less threatening than in the dying light of the previous day. Still, we didn’t get our hopes up too much - we still had a long way to go. The stuck abseil ropes easily came free in the daylight, the knot having stuck in a short crack just below the belay of the first pitch. I managed to belay myself along the ledge below until directly underneath the bolts thirty metres above, before a few sharp tugs freed the ropes from their captor. Spirits instantly rose: Now we could get out.


No time to waste, as we were already knackered. 4-5 hours sleep had softened matters somewhat, but we still hadn’t eaten or drank anything for around 15 hours. We started enthusiastically up the next easiest route out of the Gorge, a 6b+ called ‘Liberté surveillée’.
The first few pitches flowed smoothly, well bolted climbing on perfect rock offering everything you could ask for in limestone multipitch. Why hadn’t we got on this yesterday?


Oh yeah, trad. Right.


Still, it seemed like we might bring a smooth end to this extended epic. The third pitch was a punchy layback, and upon reaching the belay ledge I could feel the dehydration seriously kicking in. This route was much closer to Cora’s limit which meant I was leading every pitch, and I could feel the fatigue starting to bite. Nonetheless, I pressed upwards onto the fourth pitch, dreaming of dinner. A strenuous groove evolved into a steep traverse on undercuts to a small cave, followed by a horribly tenuous traverse out to a belay in the centre of the wall. After this pitch we were both pretty destroyed, and things might have taken a lot longer if not for the handy arrival of a pair of Swiss climbers who were more than happy to offer some water and chocolate wafers alongside assistance for the last couple of pitches.


Collapsed on the top, we breathed the air of freedom and thanked our lucky stars that we were finally out of that gorge. A day of cake and hammock was definitely called for.

Recovering after an extra-epic epic.

Later on, we made it into the local village of La Palud su Verdon and in between buying baguette and enjoying the sensation of being hydrated, checked out the route we’d attempted in a copy of the local guide. It was listed as an aid route at 6a/A2, and followed by a warning to bring everything on your rack including skyhooks, pegs and various other aid paraphernalia. A far cry from the straightforward f5c we’d been promised by the guidebook.


This definitely ranks as one of the most intense adventures I’ve ever had. Slightly poor preparation combined with an incorrect guidebook led to some pretty epic times. Still, we’d learnt our lesson. The rest of the trip would be free from old trad routes - we’d stick to the popular routes in the popular areas. It’d all be smooth sailing from here.

Right?

Thanks to Charko and Out There Gear for their continued support! 

Comments

  1. Christ Mischa , I hope your Mum doesn't read this. Glad you got home safe,

    ReplyDelete

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