Ailefroide

From Istanbul we took a cheap easyjet flight to Switzerland, and from there a train over to France. Ailefroide is in the Ecrins National Park, the southernmost tip of the french Alps. Its not much of a town, but in the summer it gets really busy with climbers and campers. It was nice to be camping in cooler temperatures again, during the day it could get quite warm in the sun, but nice and cool in the shade, and at night we'd have to wrap up warm. We were there primarily for bouldering but we also got some routes in. The rock there is granite, similar to Squamish granite, but with more featured boulders. I had the Blocheart bouldering guide to the Alps, and I bought the local Ailefriode bouldering guide, neither of which are very good, but together we just about figured out what was what.

Laura in a fields of wild flowers

On our first day there we made the most of our fresh skin and went to the main sectors 'Surprise du Chef' and 'Cahutes'. The first problem we got on was a font 6b on a slightly overhung boulder with positive but very small crimps. I managed it in a couple of go's using big moves between the good crimps. Laura was also trying it as well since it suited her style, powerful small holds. She worked it for half and hour figuring out a different sequence, and eventually got it using a completly different but just as hard sequence, doing 7 moves where I took 3 to get to the top. Previously she had done one V4 (font 6b) in Squamish (and came very close on a few others), so this equalled it, and it wasn't to be her last one here. Later in the day, I managed a 7a+ in the Cahutes sector which i was really pleased with cause it felt quite hard. It was a sit-start on a small boulder to a couple of crimpy sidepulls then a snatch to the slopey top and mantel. I didn't manage anything harder than that in Ailefroide.

Dom on a 6b at the reception boulder

As the time went on we checked out different sectors, I was actually a little surprised how few good boulders there were, considering the popularity of the area. There are 7 or 8 different sectors spread out within walking distance of Ailefroide, but at most of the sectors there was just 1 or 2 worthwhile boulders to climb on. Maybe it was becasue the last place we bouldered at was Fontainebleau which is huge, but this seemed like quite a limited area. As for the grades I found the 7's to be really hard, even compared with font, I tried a lot and failed a lot. The 6's seemed a lot more doable than the grades in fontainebleau though. Laura managed five 6b's in total, which was an amazing effort by her. Maybe one or two of them were soft, but for the most part they seemed about right.

Dom on Rocco's Dino 6b

The routes were a fun diversion from bouldering since they didn't really hurt our skin as much. I was surprised to find everything was bolted, the gratine on the cliffs is quite compact so theres not many cracks for gear, but even where there are cracks theres bolts everywhere. Although the routes are bolted they didn't really have the feel of sport routes, bolted granite was very different from what we were used to so we stuck to mostly easier stuff. One day we hiked up this gully full of loose blocks, which was quite scary to do some routes, but all the easy stuff was already taken. I didn't want to walk all the way down without doing anything so I got on the easiest available route which was a 6c+. It started out alright, but where the route goes out of sight there were 20ft runouts between the bolts and I was breaking off footholds with every other step. In the end I got it clean, I think I was crimping to hard to fall off, but needless to say after that we just stuck to bouldering.

Laura sending Yougo Slab (font 6b)

After almost 2 weeks there we had climbed pretty much everything we wanted to, laura was pleased to have done so many hard bouler problems, and I was just happy to be back bouldering on granite again. But we were ready for more limestone sport climbing, and what better place than Ceuse, probably the best sport crag in the world just a couple of hours down the road.

Dom on a hard 6b in Ailefroide