Verdon!

"Let's go to Verdon this weekend!" Said the email in my inbox. It came from Adrien, from my climbing club.

Verdon is a 3.5 hour drive from Montpellier and a world-renowned climbing area. "The most beautiful limestone," Jacques told me.
"The most beautiful limestone...?" I probed.
"In the world." He insisted. "It's incredible."

That Thursday, at the bar, I signed on. Three of us would leave the next morning at 8, to be joined that evening by seven more.

The three early risers (Adrien, Fabrice, and myself) decided to do "À tout cœur" Friday afternoon. It consisted of 150 meters of mostly 6a+, with a significantly harder crux pitch of 6b+. Adrien led the whole thing, with Fabrice and I following "en flèche", each one of us tied into one strand of a half rope.

The route is well traveled, being a gorgeous line at a world-famous "crag", and this fact combined with the rather sandbagged grade meant that a lot of the key holds were polished. It was still a gorgeous climb, and a lovely introduction to the area.

That night, we settled in at a neat little "camping" with all of the amenities. Running (hot!) water, toilets, showers, a fireplace, and most importantly, perfect slacklining trees.

The next day I climbed with Anaïs. We did "Cocoluche" and the second half of "Les Dalles Grises", both about 150 meters. The weather was perfect, and these climbs were less demanding and less technically difficult that that of the previous day. "Tranqil."

That evening I brought out the slackline. A few climbers had tried it before and were reasonably confident, but when I pulled the webbing out of it's bag, they were all a little surprised. "It's so thin!" They said. I guess they're used to walking on 2" webbing, which, it would seem, is significantly easier. A good time was had by all.

The next day I climbed with Joseph at a cliff called "le Dent d'aire", on a climb called "Le Petit Chat". This one was relatively short, just over 100 meters, which we had chosen because the weather for Sunday afternoon was predicted to be "variable". We moved rapidly, which is always fun, and quickly finished the climb. The first half was uncharacteristically loose, but the second half was magnificent. The rest of the afternoon was spent playing tourist.

Sunday night the less dedicated (read: employed) among us returned to Montpellier. Adrien, Florence, Florent, Anaïs, and myself remained, to see what the weather would do.

As it turned out, Monday was rainy. We entertained ourselves by doing the classic "sentier Martel", a hike which goes from one end of the gorge to the other, passing a couple of kilometers of tunnel (headlamp required!). The signs mentioned an estimated time of 7.5 hours from one end to the other, but we did it in 4.5 including lunch. Soaked by the rain, we hit the bar and looked for positive weather predictions.

But the weather was looking miserable all week, and as we debated what to do it started snowing. "C'est mort," said Adrien. We discussed La Jonte, on the other side of Montpellier. "C'est super loin," one of us said. Also mentioned were Les Calanques, by Marseilles, and St. Victoire by Aix-en-Provence. But the weather wasn't looking much better in that direction either. After hours of debate, we gave up and returned to Montpellier, getting in well after midnight. The next day we got in touch. It was still break, after all. Adrien, Florent, Florence and myself decided that day to go to La Jonte, an hour and a half north of Montpellier, with a stop at St. Guillem le Desert to do some cragging on the way. We would stay in La Jonte all week.