Late fall limestone down south

        

         With short days and new snow in the high mountains, we've given in to the low hanging fruit of sunny sport climbing. And man has it been fun. Over our fall break we teamed up with friends Ian and Jono for a three-day trip to the Italian coast, a couple hours south of Torino and just over four from Grenoble. This past weekend, Olivier shared his favorite cliff in France with Hillary and me, the mythical Buoux crag tucked into the rolling hills of Provence. Overall we're doing our best to stave off homesickness and lack of turkey with beautiful rocks, which is turning out to be an increasingly less effective strategy as Thanksgiving approaches.  

FINALE LIGURE, ITALY

         I hope the following photo montage will communicate the essentials of our trip -- friends, wicked steep limestone, 14 pizzas in less than 3 days, social car camping, and the occasional heel-hand match just to round things out (see four photos down). The transition to Italy hit us all pretty hard, both in terms of the language and deliciousness of food. Climbing became a bonus activity for us, and I can certainly imagine a fulfulling trip here entirely focused on village wandering, gelatto, fresh pizza and perhaps the occasional bike ride.  

         

BUOUX, FRANCE 

Attempting the "French blow"

        This cliff is "majeur" in every sense of the word, and I am already eager for a return visit. Sweeping 30-40m pitches wind their way up perfect stone featured with a combination of horizontal "strates" and tendon-wrenching solution pockets. The cliff is vast, and includes numerous 3-4 pitch adventures that we didn't begin to explore.
        Here, the quality of the routes is matched with an equally rich climbing history. We found a plaque at the base of the cliff on the second day honoring Patrick Edlinger's revolutionary soloing done here in the early 1980s, which is documented in the film La Vie au Bout des Doigts. The three of us talked with excitement about Edlinger's scheduled appearance at the Grenoble mountain film festival this week, only to find out yesterday that he passed away over the weekend at his home near the Verdon Gorge. The news caught us and above all our friend Jean Mi off guard, who just finished a biography on Edlinger and who planned to be on stage with him this Thursday. Jean Mi's eyes widened when we told him last night we had been at Buoux the day before, and he responded
by saying that the best possible tribute to Edlinger is to take to the cliffs.

Olivier leads up through 5.11 "bi-doigts" (two-finger pockets).

     Hillary dancing her way up 6a limestone pockets. Her climbing really took off over the course of the two trips.

ABOVE: We celebrated my birthday with roadside fondue, which in combination with digestive wine and Chartreuse made for a slow start on the rocks the next day.  

RIGHT: Olivier disproving the "look good climb good" paradigm with his "SDF" outfit.

Hillary scrambled up onto an adjacent mini-pinnacle to get these shots - we're all psyched about her new camera!