Gap and Lac de Serre-poncon

Friday 11th July

A day exploring, shopping and enjoying the sun.

Ecrins total

Thursday 9th July
One of the older routes in the area so the rock has been polished by the many climbers who have been up this popular route. It made ua appreciate the good friction to be found on the newer routes!

Alambic - Ron's pictures

Some of Ron's pictures.

Alambic

Wednesday 8th July

A new route for the area and one which is not in the local guide book yet. The route description that we found did say to climb the tree to start the second pitch!

Remonte-ponte direct

Sunday 5th July
A climb on the shadier side of Ailefroide! The second pitch was tricky for 5c and the Finnish girl climbing behind us thought it the hardest 5c pitch she had climbed! The pitches above were more realistically graded with a lovely slab and a steep finish on good holds. Then a walk down through the trees and back for ice cream.

Divine pancreatite

Saturday 4th July
First four pitches and an extra bit  to the abseil chain climbing on lovely slabs with some steeper sections too. A route to go back to on a cooler day to complete. The lower section was alongside the waterfall coming down through the gorge which gave a light, cooling mist.

Les petites dalles

Thursday 2nd July
A spot of cragging on the slabs. It was cool in the shade for the belayer but felt like being fried on the routes. We finished up with ice cream and were back inside before a sudden short and heavy downpour. All sunny again now.

Barre a' babord, toute.

Wednesday 1st July
A seven pitch climb with all sorts of variation, slabs, steeper slabs, traverses and one pitch that went down before traversing until the last few moves up to the belay! Luckily there was enough of a breeze to keep the temperature comfortable.
Finished off with an ice cream as has become the norm for here :-)

Butterflies

We found these butterflies on the silt beside the river yesterday and wondered why they were there.  A big of "googling" led us to discover that they were slurping up water from the sand!