“Set up a blog”, I was told to do from friends. Sounded like a lot of work I thought. However, after the umpteenth person mentioned it I have set up a blog. The purpose is to share my experiences in France and even more specifically to give information about climbing, travel and photography.
This is the first post and I have been in France for about 3 months. I am traveling with a climber from California named Todd Bradlee. We have set up base in the posh city of Aix-en-Provence in Southern France due to it’s centrality to many limestone cliffs. Much has taken place (much by sheer luck) to get us to where we are now. I hope to use this post as somewhat of a journal from this point forward. Please feel free to share your opinions and experiences on this blog.
Seven days ago Todd and I made the 6 hour drive to Chamonix. We picked up Victor at the train station on the way. Victor is an old friend from Vancouver who lives in Paris and he had inspired the trip by telling us about a climb named “Ma Dalton” which is considered to be the “Separate Reality” of France. Separate Reality is a famous roof crack in Yosemite and good cracks are hard to find in France so we where off. We landed in the town of Annecy (an hour shy of Chamonix) for the evening and we were just in time the annual Fete du Lac which is the largest fireworks display in Europe. I have included some images below.
We left Annecy early and arrived in Chamonix to find that a large storm had just passed leaving 150cm of snow. We wouldn’t be able to do the route but we still opted to take a ride on the Telepherique (Gondola) for some sight seeing. The Telepherique drops you on the summit of Aiguille du Midi or Midi Needle (3800m) which is a large granite formation with impressive relief in every direction. Aiguille du Midi is the take off point for infinite alpine objectives on snow, ice or rock. We got some great views of Mt.Blanc (4800m) before another storm encapsulated us. It was going to take 4-5 days of sun to get rid of the snow and the weather wasn’t improving so Todd and I left Victor and headed to an area in the Alps near the border of Italy called Ailefroide. In Ailefroide we spent a few days bouldering and we climbed one long route called Snoopy (8 pitches up to 11a). We made the 6 hour leg from Ailefroide to Aix yesterday to complete a loop through the alps.
Climbing info:
- Chamonix has a roof crack like Separate Reality
- Ailefroide has good bouldering and multi-pitch sport routes in the mountains.
Season = summer
Travel nuts and bolts:
- Tolls from Aix to Chamonix where about 35 euro one way
- Telepherique in Chamonix cost 36 euro return
- Good camping in Chamonix and a nice hostel
- Gas in France is about 1.37 euro per liter
- Ailefroide has a large camping area 5.80 euro per person per night and you can not make reservations
Photography:
- Firework images are best done with a film camera or a cable release (on new digital Canon cameras) so that you can do multiple exposures and create the effect of many fireworks in the sky at the same time. Here, I was shooting fireworks with a digital camera and I didn’t have a a cable release so I added some information in photoshop.
