Back to School - "La Rentrée en Montagne"

Roc de Pellegrin, Belledonne - "Le feu au cul" - 5.10b, 500m

Last weekend was a great reminder of why Hillary and I have both worked so hard to obtain visas to come back here this fall. Consulates, screaming/butter knife wielding Montessori school children, and statistics lectures all started to fall away as we headed out on a Friday evening to the eastern side of the Belledonne mountains. Despite my recently acquired weekend-warrior status, my hopes are high for being able to strike the balance between the master's program in ecology I just began and big climbing days. Now feels like the time to capitalize on a full year's worth of growth in the mountains and tick off those last goals of the fall. The way I see it, finals period in the mountains has just gotten underway...

Hillary on the summit of the Roc de Pellegrin

(2763m) after topping out "Le feu au cul," which 

would translate to something like "fire under your

ass." Notice the Mont Blanc doing it's thing on the

horizon. On the way down we ended up taking the

wrong couloir and spent three hours improvising

rappels and working through long stretches of

downclimbing. Live and learn... 

Our friends Sarah Butsch and Spencer Paxson, on tour in Europe for a world cup mountain bike race, took the train down from the Kona Bicycles headquarters in Geneva to join us for the weekend. It was surreal to say the least to go from sipping bloody mary's at Thompson's Point post-Goudi and Lindsey's wedding three weeks ago, directly to shared adventures here in the Alps. Being both generous friends and badass athletes, they casually carried our gear up the two and half hour approach before embarking on their own scramble in the surrounding peaks. They went the distance from the early wakeup to latenight all you-can-eat-flatbread in down town Grenoble - we couldn't ask for better friends and companions!  

Les Gillardes, Dévoluy - "La dernière tentation d'un été trop court" - 5.10c, 500m

                                                            
Last minute class cancellations allowed for a bonus midweek day out with Engué this past Tuesday. The guidebook describes the Dévoluy as a "petit et formidable massif," petit being of course small and formidable meaning "great" in the French sense of the word. After two days of climbing in the area, I think compact and fierce is a more appropriate description of the Dévoluy. Below is the view across the valley to the south face of the Obiou (2790m), the highest peak in the range.

Engué following pitch 6, 5.10a. The shade was highly appreciated for staying cool and hydrated for the first six hours or so of climbing.

Topping out pitch 18 close to the top, just before the sun went down. Thankfully the descent was a walk off and we didn't have to do 19 rappels in the dark...