A Demande'ing' Day Out.

Cora hanging above the open void of the Verdon

I haven't been writing for a while. I've been finding it hard to put my thoughts onto paper and whenever I do it doesn't seem to flow the way that I would like. When you live a busy life and often struggle for the time to do normal things it can be hard to justify taking moments to put words on paper or, in this case, fingers to keys.

Despite that my enthusiasm to talk to people about things I've been up to and to tell various stories is completely unaffected so it's clearly a case of laziness or at least a lack of application and concentration.

With this in mind I decided to switch up my tactics and instead of trying to type and constantly format the perfect story and situation in my head I would simply talk to my computer, let it type via voice to text and have a quick glance through afterwards to make sure the formatting is okay. Maybe like this I'll get the chance to tell stories how I’d tell them to people and not be shut down by writer's block and putting fingers to keys instead of just letting my mouth run as I usually do.

Anyway, I said I was going to tell a story so I’d best get on with it.

Cora and I recently had a three-week trip to Verdon where we were planning on hitting up the various long multipitches and a few of the harder single pitches in the area. Anyone who knows anything about world-class sport climbing can tell you that the Verdon is one for the life list - its massive rearing limestone walls present such an obvious challenge to any climber. I’ve personally spent countless days in work or even occasionally guiltily whilst climbing at other crags dreaming about the vast expanses of rock that can be found there. This trip was no different - Blue skies perfect conditions and an unreasonably long list of routes to try, we were absolutely set.

One of the major targets for the trip was the ultra classic route La Demande - the first major route in the gorge and possibly the most travelled chimney crack in existence. The brilliance of the line combined with the ultimate commitment of the first essentialists makes this route an absolute must tick for any Verdon initiate and despite the fact that the first ascent was done in the 1960s the route still presents a serious undertaking and a very long day out even for strong teams of modern climbers.

I decided to have a go at this route three years ago but had never really looked into the logistics too much - when I did I was horrified to find out that the start and finish were actually incredibly far apart; the route, not easily accessed by abseil, had to be approached from a point some 8 km drive away from the endpoint at the top of the cliff. Some desperate googling followed, and I was thankful to discover that despite what might be stated in the guidebook there was at least the possibility to walk down a slightly shorter way along the edge of the cliff line. Still this would mean a good 40 minutes walk minimum after having already completed what looked to be a proper day out on unfamiliar terrain.

Sod this, I thought. There must be some other poor bastards out there who don't fancy missioning off the hill after doing that route. Thankfully a cheeky post on UKC revealed that I was right. We found some other climbers who would be more than happy for the chance to meet up, share vehicles and avoid a long walk back to the car. I gave myself a pat on the back for my successful laziness and noted down the other climbers numbers.

After a long drive down to the Verdon we were pretty knackered but still managed to get a route in the next day. Despite my driving eight hours and Cora only driving two she still managed to be more tired than I was which just goes to show how focused I am on the road. A quick six pitch route shook some life back into her and the psyche built quickly for bigger lines. The Verdon is full of incredible routes and it's so easy to get distracted from any ticklists you may have previously made. One of the first routes that we did was a brilliant 6c called Ras Le Bolchoi, five pitches of perfect climbing in the Falais d’Imbut sector that we managed to get benighted in last year. Perfect crimpy climbing on bullet hard limestone pockets, in beautifully intimidating surroundings. The grading in Verdon tends to be a little harsh and it's safe to say that this ‘6c’ had more than a bit of spice to it. 4 to 5 meter runouts, 40+ meter pitches with tiny footholds that knackered your feet, crimpy, technical cruxes… what a line. Anywhere else in the route would be graded 7a, but this is Verdon. If you're not prepared for a spanking you shouldn't have put on the harness.

The next day we were feeling pretty knackered so we decided to chill in the van and let our sore muscles and skin recover. Resting has always been a tricky one for me, my mind being of the more eternally psyched variety that can't bear to sit still, but I've learnt to treat it as an activity in its own right. This works pretty well because instead of constantly thinking ahh man I could be doing something you know that you are doing something and it's just as important as climbing - well, somehow. It's important to the climbing process at least which is basically the same thing and gives your mind a good excuse for sitting around for long periods of time.

Resting as an activity came to a complete halt when I got a call from the chap I contacted over UKC.

Tony, how's it going?

Hi mate, good. You up for doing the demand tomorrow?

I glanced over Cora, wrapped up in a blanket and reading a book, clearly already looking forward to a more relaxed day.

“How do you feel about doing the demand tomorrow?”

She turned her head to me with tired eyes.

“Um, I guess… doesn't that mean in an early start?”

“Naah, not that early.” I lied, setting my alarm to 6 AM. Not that early at all.

By morning I was already regretting that decision. The van was too comfy, my sleeping bag was too warm, I wasn't even hungry yet - how was I supposed eat breakfast? What a terrible idea. Still, the necessary incentive of two other people expecting us to get up that morning finally dragged Cora and I out of bed and we found ourselves shivering in the cool morning air in the upper belvedere above the gorge, chewing morosely on granola and thinking about how multi-pitch is really overrated compare to lounging around in bed and then going to the wall.

Tony and Bran turned up which meant we had to actually do something, so we shook hands, chucked our bags in the back of a car and headed down to the Couloir Samson from which we could approach the route via a series of long unlit tunnels. The other guys had decided to use head torches in the tunnels which made for a distinctly surreal experience as we walked along behind them, their small puddle of light the only visible thing within the pitch blackness between the tunnel walls. With no light ourselves, and moving at roughly the same pace, the experience was that of a nightmare where you run but don't get anywhere, forever pacing through the darkness, never catching the gleaming light ahead. Eventually we stepped out of the bright sunlight, the walls of the gorge now rearing around of us fiercely, orange and grey rock illuminated by the morning sunlight.

We scrambled through a few bushes and slipped around on loose rock for a while before we finally located the base of the route which already had a team at the base, the leader just starting to lead off up the first crack line as we approached. Fuck. After approaching closer it was clear that he was moving at a pace that could only be described as glacial. Double fuck.

After a quick whispered conference I approached the belayer at the base of the route, a Polish bloke with a thick accent.

‘Would you mind if we went past? We might go a bit quicker.’

He wriggled his black moustache and gave me an amused look.

‘Are you fast and furious?’

I shuffled my feet awkwardly.

‘Might be a bit quicker, yeah. But obviously no pressure.’

He gave me a wry look, and then nodded.

‘It's fine by me.’

I nodded, relieved.

“Cheers mate, I'll try not to get in your way.”

We racked up quickly, tied in, and I shot off up the first pitch, desperately trying to look like someone who deserved to ask to get past. This quickly became a rather tricky task to achieve, due to the fact that the route was polished, technical and a crack, all of which being areas of climbing that I neglected in the past year. After some solid whimpering and udging I reached the first belay, rigged it up as quickly as I could and hoped that Cora didn’t flail as much as I did. Thankfully she performed her usual trick of finding a bunch of excellent holds that had somehow escaped my field of vision and was soon clipping into the belay.

By this point though, it was looking like my fast and furious effort was not fast and furious enough. By the time we got done changing over our gear for block leading, the second Polish climber had already reached the belay and set off dynamically up the groove as if desperate to prove that he too was worthy of the attentions of Vin Diesel. However, it turned out that he was the faster half of the pair, and after a bit of back-and-forthing we finally overtook them properly at the third belay.

At this point I'd like to make it clear to anyone who hasn't done the route that the 6a grade is bollocks. Not that it’ll ever change, but it's worth being clear if attempting this route you should be solid at 6b+ unless you fancy having a bit of an epic. Of course this is partly related to the nature of the climbing and of course the high level of polish on the route, but even aside from the chimney pitches many of the lower hand cracks are fierce. For these, at least, the grade HVS seems appropriate. I was slightly surprised but absolutely delighted at the quality and sustained nature of the lower crack climbing - I had assumed that due to the date of the first ascent that the climbing would be perhaps less fitness related and more focused on the technical aspect, but I couldn't have been more wrong. The third fourth and fifth pitches all follow a long rising diagonal crack line, with stunningly few options for cheating around the difficulties. The gear is good, the jams are clear and the route just keeps coming. However we were both aware that this was just the appetiser. The real meat of the route a.k.a. the chimney climbing was still to come.

By this point we made some distance between us and the Polish team and were starting to feel the classic exposure of the gorge. Tony and Bran had decided to bail after the first pitch, reasoning that with two or three teams tangling up in close proximity they would stand a far higher chance of getting benighted. This left the route in a relatively quiet state; just us, the Polish guys and a French/German team up above. The other team had already started on the chimney pitches and were lost in the shadow of the grooves, only the occasional shout marking their presence.

The next few pitches went relatively smoothly, and I was starting to think that this chimney lark wasn't too bad after all. Unfortunately, I was about to get an uncomfortable surprise in the form of pitches 10 and 11. Polished, rounded and gearless, the upper chimneys are, combined, both the most impressive and most insane aspect of the 1960s ascent. In those days, there was no gear other than a single peg to keep you from being held directly by the belayer, whose position you would fall well beneath. Even now, with three 3 bolts on the pitch, a fall from high up would still mean falling past the belayer and clattering into the groove below. In my opinion, these pitches deserve solid E2 - although perhaps I've simply been softened by two years of predominantly bolted sport climbing. Either way the experience was harrowing, scraping up the groove with very little idea of whether the foot placement you’d just put on was going to stick, or whether it would send you exploding out of the chimney and taking a long and lonely fall. In other words it was brilliant - the perfect antidote to the clinical difficulty of modern sport climbing. Perhaps this is the result of starting climbing within the British community, but I still find that I value a bold and mentally challenging ascent much more than that of a clean bolted route - there's something about that process of rolling the dice and coming out favoured that makes the experience stick in the mind, hungering for further tests of faith in your own ability.

Of course, with all such experiences this kind of realisation tends to only come later. I was deeply thankful to reach the belay, clip my guide plate into the power point and shout:

‘On belay!’

Cora proceeded to wriggle up the pitch with suitable style, although she did explode out of it several times in a fashion that made me deeply thankful that it hadn’t been her lead. I scrambled up the final pitch of easy climbing, proceeded to miss every single bolt at the top and built a questionable trad belay amongst the limestone pavement that tops the gorge. The high walls were awash with orange evening light, the lower walls now shadowed by the angle of the sun. Cora topped out and victory dancing commenced, although this may have been due to the relief of getting out of climbing shoes after nine hours on the wall. We sorted the gear, coiled the ropes and got ready to go.

I paused before putting my backpack on.

‘Did you hear anything from the Polish guys? There's not much light left.’

Cora shook her head.

‘Not since pitch eight, when they were a couple of pitches under us.’

I frowned. There was only around half an hour of light to go until dark.

‘Might be worth hanging around, you know, just in case.’

‘Sure, I'll go and grab the van. I think the guidebook said that the other car park is closer’.

‘Okay. If they don't come out by the time it starts getting dark I might drop a rope down.’

Cora wandered off to fetch the van and I sat down in the chilly evening, munching on a piece of salami. The light was dropping fast. After 10 minutes I decided I was going to chuck my rope down a little way and have a shout around to see if they were near the top. Uncoiling one of the half ropes, I clipped in my grigri, fastened the microtraxion to my harness and ventured downwards into the gorge once more. After around 25 m of easy angled terrain the ground started to steepen and drop into the gorge proper. I tied off my grigri, turned towards the drop and stared around for any sign of the other team in the dimming light.

“Hello? Are you guys okay?”

“Hello?”

“Yeah, are you ok?”

“We are stuck at the bottom of pitch 11. Can you throw us a rope?”

“Erm… Ok, sure. Give me 20 minutes.”

I quickly jumared and scrambled my way back up to the top of the gorge. The bottom of pitch 11 was around 80m down, being the last crux chimney before the easier final pitch. Accessing it would not be straightforward with the gear I had to hand - we would need more hard-wearing kit. I dropped Cora a call and asked her to bring the static rope, jumar and grigris from the van.

20 minutes later I was abseiling back into the gorge, this time on a 100m static rope with a hefty knot in the end. At this point it was fully dark and the full moon was rising above the gorge, putting my little headtorch to shame with a lunar illumination. In retrospect, I think I would have preferred it darker; the moonlight offered just enough visibility to see the cliffs dropping away beneath me, whilst the base remained inky black and impenetrable.

Soon I was dropping down into the chimney of pitch 11 and spotted some headlamps below, glinting back and forth between the flaring walls of La Demande. The two stuck climbers were tucked into a notch at the base where the belay sat, looking a bit glum to say the least. They perked up a bit when I got near them though and it was pretty clear that they’d already accepted that they’d be stuck there for the night.

“Right, so we’ll just jumar back up this rope one at a time and we should be out of here pretty quickly.”

“Jumar?”

“You know. Climb the rope. With this.” I gestured to the ascender on my harness.

“Oh. Ok. We have not done this Jumaring.”

Thus commenced the most condensed introduction to rope ascension I reckon has ever been given, whilst around us the breeze whipped through the small trees that cling to the side of the gorge. After a bit of faffing, we got the system sorted and slowly but surely climbed back up the rope, making a few intermediate stops where I’d fixed the rope to prevent it rubbing on edges.

The experience was, on some level, a hauntingly beautiful one. To be suspended high above the river in bright moonlight, wind catching at my jacket and stealing the breath from my lungs, every element of an epic that you’d never remember because you’d be too freaked out… And above, the sweet line, the safety net guiding us out from the depths, fixed freedom - it’s safe to say there were grins on our faces when we finally topped back out.

There’s something momentous about finally weighting your feet on solid ground after hours on the wall - and lucky me, I got to have it twice in one day.

Back at the van there was tea, baguette and laughter. A good deed done, and a proper adventure had. What more do you need, really?