Saint Guilhem to La Jonte

Saint Guilhem le Dèsert

Saint Guilhem le Désert is a rather particular area, as far as crags go. The medieval village is classified as a UNESCO world heritage site, and the area surrounding is is similarly protected. The village sees millions of tourists each year, and more than half of the surrounding cliffs are forbidden for climbing. Perhaps because of this delicate situation, there is no existing guidebook for the permitted climbing in the area. Luckily, Adrien has compiled his own topos and knows the area reasonably well. We went to a crag with mostly hard stuff. While Florent and Adrien wore themselves out on some of these overhanging monsters, Florence and I rappelled down to another cliff to try a longish traversing 6a. What I thought was a sport route, however, had only about six bolts in 40 meters. I threw the two slings I had over some bushes for extra (psychological?) protection, climbed carefully, and made a mental note to correct Adrien's topo sheet.


La Jonte

That night we made it to La Jonte rather late and set up our "bivouac". What the French called "bivouac" is basically what we think of as camping. As Adrien explained it to me, bivouac means you set up the tent after dark and break down the tent at daybreak. "Camping" entails leaving the tent pitched, and usually means paying for a site. When we woke up the next morning we noticed signs nailed to trees that said, "camping - feux interdits". Oops. We weren't sure whether that meant no camping, no campfires, or neither, but we decided to sleep somewhere else the next night.

Les Gorges de la Jonte consist mostly of multi-pitch climbs on the 100-150 meter walls. The rock is Dolomite, a special type of limestone founds mostly in, you guessed it, the Dolomites of Italy. Dolomite forms cool, sharp pockets and irregular edges, and it's quite fun to climb on. The first Day Adrien and I did "Gallo Loco" a beautiful, well-bolted and over graded 100m climb, in about an hour. Then we attacked "Fais Caf c'est Dur", a slightly harder line of the same length and quality. We found a different "bivouac" spot by a picnic area and settled in.

The next day, my confidence boosted by the soft grades and large number of bolts on "Gallo Loco", I wanted to try "l'Arète Ouest". "L'Arète Ouest", graded 5c-6a-5c, is the local sandbag. With a bolt every six meters and sustained, steep climbing on pockets, it's a lot harder than it seems on paper. I took a 15 meter fall on the crux pitch and bailed. L'Arète Ouest: 1, William: 0.

Wanting to do something a little less physical, I joined up with Adrien the next day to do an easier gear climb called "Démons et Merveilles". The crack protected well and went smoothly.
At the top, we met a couple of Belgians named Thom and Stephane, also on vacation. They invited us back to their car for some beers. Florence and Florent went to do another climb, but Adrien and I decided to follow the Belgians. A climber has to know when to climb and when to drink. Our choice turned out to be a good one, as the Belgians were traveling with a cooler full of top-shelf Belgian beer. The four of us sat in the parking lot, talking half in English, half in French, for the better part of two hours.

Eventually the Belgians left for the long drive to go bouldering in Fontainbleau, and Adrien and I finished the day at a boulder called "Body Building", a 45 degree overhanging monster of a crag. After sufficiently destroying our forearms, we went to a spot suggested by the Belgians in the neighboring Gorges du Tarn (Lots of climbing there, also) which was perfect for our purposes. We slept hard.

Saturday, we were all beat. Adrien and I climbed at Body Building again, but quickly realized that there was no way we were going to send anything and gave up. Bodies aching, all four of us returned to Montpellier for some much-needed rest.


Coming soon: an Anarchy Breakfast double-header, with a twist.