La Cocarde – Saturday 25th July

Another beautiful, sunny day so back to La Poire.
The first pitch of La Cocarde has a tricky move to start with and the first bolt is quite high up but a nifty little nut placed in a convenient crack made all the difference to me! Above the steep start, there is a slab to traverse, a tree to climb around and a gully to step across to reach the belay. I led the next pitch too, stepping back over the gully and up to reach another travers with an airy step down then lovely steep climbing with excellent holds to the next belay.
The third pitch, Ron's, is all on the feet with very few holds but good friction and a litle steep wall to climb to reach the belay. This is followed by a walkable slab then two more pitches which Ron leads and each has its difficulties to keep us thinking.
Grade D+, 200m, 5c

We found some interesting anomalies between our two guidebooks - Escalades autour d'Ailefroide and Suisse Plaisir Sud. These differences seem to have come about as the most recent edition of Suisse Plaisir takes its grades from the original local Escalades autour d'Ailefroide guide book. Quite often the grades, number of pitches and belay locations were different as routes had been rebolted.
We learned that it was best to stick with the 2007 edition of the local guide book.