Friday

Thursday night I get a text message: "I'm free tomorrow, let me know if you want to go climbing. - Baptiste"

Some other friends will be climbing the next day at Thaurac, the local crag, but they're leaving at 9:30. Baptiste and I decide instead to leave at the very reasonable hour of 11AM, and when we meet the next morning we decide to climb a "grande voie". Baptiste has never done any multi-pitch, so we go to a clean, well-protected wall at Thaurac for his first time. I briefly show him how to make an anchor and how to tie in with a clove hitch, and we cast off. It goes pretty quickly, and he's hooked.

"At first I was nervous, but as soon as I started the second pitch on lead everything was fine."
"Next time we'll go to L'Hortus," I tell him.

We decide to spend the rest of the day cragging, which involves driving a few minutes down the canyon to another wall. But as we round the corner, we see a number of rescue vehicles and a helicopter overhead. We pass, slowly, and my heart jumps as I see my friend's car, the one who left at 9:30, parked just ahead.

"I hope it's not Adrien." I say, and then we're silent as we make our way away from the scene. "Jeez, that's scary."

We climb all afternoon through slowly deteriorating conditions, but despite the accident's morale-lowering effect and the gray sky, both Baptiste and I manage to climb some hard routes that had previously eluded us.

That night I send Adrien a message, to see if he's okay.

"I'm fine" he tells me. "The accident was on the via ferrata, right next to us. I don't have any more details."