summer 07

I told you that after my trip to pakistan I climbed in Italy and I was about to leave to France. So what did I really end up doing with the rest of my summer?

Arco 2007-08

Well my plan worked out quite good. I went back to Grenoble and climbed with Cyrille and Dave in Céüse. Then I did an amazing multi pitch route in Omblèze with Dave. After that I went to Chateauvert with Dave, we climbed a couple of days there and did a multi pitch in the Gorges de Verdon; Luna Bong - a classic.

Céüse 2007-08

Omblèze, Hirondelle des Faubourg 2007-09-04

Luna Bong, Verdon 2007-09-08

Dave went back to his new home, Grenoble, while continued to go further south. I went to Adrien's place in Nice. Adrien was training for the World Cup in free diving. Free diving means breath-hold underwater diving with various activities, in the competitions they try to go as deep as possible. So I joined him twice. It was amazing to watch him and his friend Guillaume train they go so deep and make it look so easy. Vision was really good so I could see them descent for quite a bit but nevertheless they disappeared into the darkness. I kept looking down, waiting for them to reappear, for ages it seemed to me. I was far from holding my breath long enough to watch, while I simply floated on the surface. They went to over 50m without fins, whereas I was struggling to get to 13m with the cable.
Interesting sport. It was not holding my breath that was limiting me to go deeper, which would have expected, but it got hard to equalize and bear the pressure on my lungs. It's really hard to explain. As you go deeper the air in your lungs gets compressed, you can feel that in a bizarre way. You feel the your chest getting squeezed and get stressed out, which makes things even worse. Everybody told me to relax, surprisingly that worked. You have to avoid getting tensed, stay calm and relax all your muscles, closing your eyes helps as well.

Well of course that wasn't all we did in Nice, we also went climbing (you ought to be surprised here!). We've been to the Gorge de Blavet, Col sur Loup, Gorges du Loup, and Baou de Saint-Jeannet. I did my first 7a flash there, odly enough on my sixth consecutive day of climbing.

Gorges du Loup 2007-09-15

Baou de Saint-Jeannet 2007-09-10

After that I went to Spain, I stopped by chez Fanny in Avignon, checked out that lovely town by night with her and moved on to Andorra, where I wanted to do some shopping (climbing equipment of course) but ended up not buying a single thing. Interesting country though, they got a very special architectural style there. And every house in a town looks alike, very homogene. One town especially cought my attention as all the houses had flowerpots in front of every single window they also had huge flowerpots in the street and everywhere the same red flower. Sadly I've no clue wich kind, but it was very pretty.
In Spain, well in Huesca to be precise, I met Willy, Clari, Dani, Javi again and got to know some of their friends. We did some bouldering, climbed in Rodellar and another small crag, have to ask the guys for the name again. Great climbing but not as much as I would have wanted to. We had to chill and hang around. Did my first 7a Onsight in Rodellar. Nice!

Rodellar 2007-09

I stayed there for a week and then I went back to Grenoble. I climbed at la Balme de Yenne with Pierre-Alain. The weather was bad so I went south again with Clarisse and Dave. We climbed in Orpierre and the Calanques, where poor Clarisse dislocated her shoulder. Dave's photos here.

Went back home, just in time to start my courses at the university in Innsbruck.
I really had a great time.