Good bye France

It has been awhile since my last blog entry. My apologies. At the end of February, I left my American roomate (Todd) to fend for himself in Aix-en-Provence. I finished my time in France on a good note by sending Le Dictateur (13a) before jumping on a plane to London. After a 5 hour delay and some nasty excess baggage charges I arrived and was greeted by longtime friend and filmaker Jean Gamilovskij. He was exhausted from his 10 hour flight from Vancouver but our travel marathon was just beginning. For the past 6 months we had been planning a climbing expedition to the Middle East and in two days Jean and I would be meeting the rest of the Team in Amman, Jordan.

Heidi Wirtz, Ben Firth, Chris Kalous and myself traveled to tthe Wadi Rum of Jordan with the goal of opening a new free climb on one of the 2000ft sandstone walls. Jean was coming to document the entire adventure for the new FA Climbing Film.

In the U.K. Jean and I had a day to visit my family and organize gear for our flight the next day. We were traveling with a lot of equipment and our excess baggage charges would be a douzy.

Arriving in Amman, Jordan’s capital, we were picked up by Karl Blatterman. Karl is an adventurer from Victoria BC Canada but he and I didn’t know each other before this trip. Interestingly enough, he had heard that some Canadians were traveling to Jordan and he had tracked down my email. Karl was a huge asset driving us around and letting us crash on his floor.

The Wadi Rum, located 4 hours south of Amman near the lost city of Petra, is a vast, silent landscape of ancient riverbeds and pastel colored stretches of sandy desert, suddenly shattered by towering sandstone mountains and sheer, shimmering cliff faces.

We set to work right away driving around the desert valley floor in our rented 2007 Mitsubishi Pajerao 4×4. In the Wadi Rum there is valley after valley of large cliffs and desert dunes and our guide Attayak was invaluable.

After a week of scouting and climbing we found our objective. A blank looking shear 400 meter wall an hour and a half hike from the Wadi Rum village.

I will write again soon. I am currently on holiday in London with Kathleen and I am enjoying walking the horizontal streets of
london and sitting in overpriced cafes now far away from any sketchy climbing.

Below are some images.

CLIMBING
- The Wadi Rum has a large amount of climbing development. Mostly traditional lines with suspect gear and holds. Big adventure feel. There is a guide book produced by Ton Howard.

TRAVEL
- If you are traveling with heavy bags really look into the excess baggage policies of the airline you are traveling with. Generally the cheaper flights have less allowance. There can also a big difference in allowance depending on where you are flight from, For example Royal Jordanian allows two bags of 23 kgs if you are flying from the US but only one bag of 20 kgs if you are flying from London.
- Jordan is not 3rd world cheap. It was much more expensive that we expected. A chocolate bar costs 1JD or 1.3 USD.
There is a big difference in local prices and tourist prices and if you stay on the tourist path you will spend a lot.

PHOTOGRAPHY
- On this last trip I brought a Polaroid camera that was worth it’s weight in good. Great for opening doors and making people feel at ease.

Not quite sure why I left my comfy apartment, a motivated climbing partner and the bulletproof french limestone to climb on death stone under the hot sun and unrelenting winds.