Onwards to South Rock.

So after a brief spell at home in Ireland we decided it was uninhabitable.
Luckily Jess had already bought us flights for Sydney and Auckland so we migrated south for the worst of the winter.
On arrival in Sydney early on Friday 4th December we proceeded to do a few of the touristy things to pass away the jetlag. After the Opera houses and the Harbour Bridge we went to see a collection of Australias largely deadly flora and fauna at Sydney Wildlife World down on Darling Harbour.





On Saturday we proceeded to catch up with a guy I used to work with back In the early days at Google. Jason appears to be living the quiet life these days with his lovely wife Marie. Glad you've taken to Sydney life Canberra man!
Can't believe i didn't take any photos of Jason and Marie to immortalise them on the Internet...

Sunday was spent on more touristy activities: a walk down the coast from Bondi Beach. Didn't see any sharks but lots of beer and barbies. Ahh, the cliches.



Monday and Tuesday took us out of the city into the Blue Mountains. Awesome scenery and nature stuff. Managed to persuade Jess to come caving, albeit on a nice organised tour.



Wednesday was an early flight to Auckland for more gentle touristy activities: walking, eating and hoping volcanoes remain extinct...
But more on New Zealand in the next exciting installment...

Long overdue!

So we have been very bad bloggers over the last couple of months. This is going to be a brief summary post on what we've been up to and we promise to try to be a little better on the updates.

We left Carcassone and headed south to Spain. First stop was Sella, a friendly limestone sports crag about 1.5 h from Alicante. We had been here before about 6 years ago and had really enjoyed it. It lived up to the memory. Lots of high quality climbs from 5 up with some really excellent 6bs. We parked the van up in the forest around the crag and just had to stumble over to the climbs each morning.

Unfortunately while we were here our poor van got a little sick. It developed a leak in the hydraulics that run the clutch and we couldn't reliably change gear so it was off to the mechanics with it. The closest garage that could do the job was in Benidorm (gasps of shocked horror!). The van went in for the operation on Monday and it was Friday before we could pick it up. We had to decamp to a hotel in Benidorm which we have to admit was not as terrible as expected. It was nice to spend a few days in a larger space and to be able to leave our stuff lying around. That said we were happy campers when it was time to reoccupy the van and get back on the rock.

Dunk's Mum and Dad were due to visit us on 4/Nov for a while and we had decided to base ourselves in Barcelona for that time so a couple of days beforehand we headed North to suss out a campsite and take in a little climbing on the way. We hit La Mussara (close to Suirana) which was littered with high class 6s. After a day's climbing we continued on to Barcelona and found a campsite in the town of El Masnou which was 15 km north of the city and right on the train line in.

We met Dunk's parents and moved them into the guest annex (tent). The first day with them we caught up with Ali B, a family friend who lives in Barcelona, and wandered all over El Masnou wondering where it was hiding all its restaurants.

The next day our paths diverged. I headed home for a few days to check out how pregnant my sister Kate had gotten, to catch up with friends and to see at least one episode of this year's Strictly Come Dancing!! Dunk and his parents pottered around Carcassone, Girona, Barcelona etc but I'll leave it to Dunk to write a few words on that cos I wasn't there!

While I was back in Ireland I had one very important mission - to book flights to the southern hemisphere. We had great fun in the campervan over the summer but after the hour went back at the end of November, the days had gotten really short and the weather was turning colder. We had decided to migrate south and do our best to avoid the winter. I managed to find us flights giving us a week in Sydney, 6 weeks in New Zealand and 2 weeks in Thailand/Laos on the way home so we would miss December and January and the worst of the Irish winter.

When I got back to Spain, Dunk had missed me so much that he lost the run of himself and asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes cos he's too cute to let him get away! So the flights were booked for the 2/Dec and all that was left to do was to drop the van home, do about 20 loads of washing and pack again. We hopped on the ferry from Santander in the north of Spain to Plymouth in the south of England. It was a 24 h crossing and the notorious Bay of Biscay was its usual self. Poor Dunk was a little green around the gills but survived the trip.

On our way to pick up the ferry from Fishguard to Rosslare, we stopped in to visit Dunk's sister, Al and her kids, Islay and Ewan, for a few days and also to pick out a lovely sparkly ring! I kicked Ewan's ass at Wii so I'm guessing he's practicing hard now for the inevitable rematch.

Back in Ireland, we stopped into visit my parents and tell them the good news and then headed on for Dublin to unpack the campervan, catch up with family and friends and get ourselves ready for the the next leg.

Dear John.....

Its been 33 days since the last blog post as John Cotter pointed out to me so this one's for you John!

Since leaving Arco we've returned to France. First stop was Orpierre for more bolt clipping. Orpierre is a small medieval town in Provence. The little town is surrounded by limestone walls with lots of sports routes less than 10 minutes from the campsite. We spent about a week climbing there until my elbow couldn't hack the punishment anymore. Luckily we were headed for Nice at that stage to pick up my parents who were visiting for a few days.




After touring many closed campsites in the Nice area we eventually settled down in Menton, a small town about 30 mins from Nice city. Unfortunately for my exercise-phobic mother, the campsite was at the top of 300 steps. On seeing this she decided the guest annex (tent) was not for her and promptly checked into a hotel in town. We did see her again once in the campsite when Duncan's crepes tempted her. She arrived on a chauffeur driven (Dad) moped so managed to avoid the steps. We spent a few days sight seeing in various towns in the area - Nice, Monaco, Ventamiglia etc and spent the nights eating and drinking some nice French wines. Duncan got to see his favourite fish at the Monaco aquarium - a cuttlefish! It was all very civilized until the night we hooked up with Roger the alcoholic recovering heroin addict and Saeed the non-english speaking Berber. It was a late one. The next day was spent in recovery (for me at least).




We dropped my parents back to the airport and headed north again to the Verdon. The Verdon gorge is the biggest canyon in Europe and is absolutely stunning. The walls are limestone and the climbs are up to 250 m long, a mixture of sport and trad, single and multipitch. We spent about a week again doing a mixture of climbs. The climbs were good but unfortunately we had left the Verdon a little late. The weather was cooling down and the ground was covered in frost every morning. After so many months in the sun, we found this traumatic and so are currently in the process of migrating south to Espana! I'm reliably informed that the weather is always "scorchio" in Spain.




We're currently pitstopped in Carcassone in the south of Franc close to the Spanish border. It really is a fairytale town. Its a medieval fortified town from the 12th century surrounded by walls and towers topped with witches hat like roofs. There's not particulary much to do but really cool to wander round for a couple of hours. Tomorrow we'll hit Spain home of tapas and cava. Stay tuned John!

Arco (not Arklow).

From Munchen we set off for Arco in the north of Italy. There was some more climbing to do there.
Arco is on the north shore of Lake Garda amongst spectacular limestone outcrops. There are probably more Germans than Italians here at this time of year.

There is a mixture of short sport pitches and long all day multipitch routes in the Arco area but we decided to concentrate on the short sports routes to try and get nice and strong.



We are staying in Camping Zoo which appears to be a fairly normal campsite but has the added peculiarity of being next door to some noisy geese, chickens, parrots and a few fat pigs. Of particular interest are the 5 cockrels that have a little campsite waking competition nice and early every morning.

After a few days climbing we were worn out and the weather forecast was bad so we decided to take a brief trip to Venice. On the drive there we were escorted our own personal thunder storm which dumped rain pretty much constantly.

We spent a few hours blindly following Tomasina, our satnav, to non-existent campsites. At one point she had us take a round trip on the Lido ferry for no apparent reason at a cost of 66 euros! Silly satnav. Thankfully the following morning was bright and clear.
Venice is beautiful and not the museum city i thought it would be but rather a living place (admittedly with a lot of tourists in it).


A few days later on our next rest day we went to Verona. While nothing in comparison to Venice it was a fun place to poke around, visit a colluseum (no lions eating christians) and have some nice lunch.



The general plan is to spent another few days here in Arco revisiting the climbs that tormented us before hitting the road and heading for France and the Verdon Gorge.

The Requin hut and beyond.

Once little Ellie had hoped on the plane back to rainy Ireland, we got ready to take a trip to the Requin hut, situated above the Mer de Glace at about 2500 m. We jammed our little 30 L packs full with rock and ice gear, lunches and a change of clothes and set off across the Mer de Glace. It was a slow plod. Duncan lost his crampons somewhere in the moraine on the trek but we managed to make it to the hut without incident. The hut is run by a french woman, sometimes assisted by her husband, a mountain guide.



The loss of crampons severely restricted our choice of routes for the remainder of our visit as there is a lot of permanent ice that high up the mountain.
We settled on Congo Star, a 10 pitch (300 metre) bolted route on perfect granite at mostly 6a with a few harder bits along the way. This route is a fantastic outing with enough bolts to protect the hard moves but little to ease the nerves elsewhere. Probably the most adventurous part of the day was crossing a meltwater river on the way back to the hut in the late afternoon. After a day's sunshine on the higher ice the steep stream had become a raging torrent (Jess's description). After a few dunkings and a little cursing as Jess was safeley belayed across (unfortunately cameras were all safely wrapped in plastic for the affair) we got back to the hut just in time for dinner by the always enthusiastic Mme Hut Gardien.




Feeling quite tired and without our 2nd pair of crampons we decided to leave it at that and head back down hill the next day. After a late start (to let the glacier ice melt a little so it was not to slippy without crampons) we decended the Mer de Glace in the lifting fog. Thankfully visibility had improved enough to make routfinding easy so the only thing that slowed us down were the steep crevasses halfway.



Back in the valley, we spent a few days cragging and recuperating. Unfortunately,the weather began to deteriorate so we decided on a change of scene after 5 weeks in Chamonix. We decided to head for Arco close to Lake Garda in the north of Italy and headed there via Munich to visit Britta. Britta has moved on from phd life to become a respectable professional working for Roche in the south of Germany. We arrived just in time to meet her parents who were leaving after a visit. We stayed with her in her lovely new apartment in Penzburg. We sampled some of the German beers and bavarian food and took a stroll round Munich. We also visited some cute Bavarian villages and saw many pairs of lederhosen and drindls! It was really good to catch up with Britta before hitting the road for Arco.

Little sister in the big mountains

On Wednesday (19/June), Jess's littlest sister Ellen arrived for a short visit. We picked her up in Geneva airport and smuggled her over the border into France. She had been a little confused about where she was actually going before leaving Ireland and had settled on telling people that she was going to Switzerance! We fed her that evening and gently broke the bad news that we'd be getting up at 6.30 am the next day to take the cable car to the top of Aiguille du midi. 6.30 am doesn't really exist in Ellen's world especially since it was 5.30 am Irish time.

The bleary eyed little thing dragged herself out of the guest annnex (tent!) the next morning bright and early and we headed for the cable car. The Aiguille du midi cable car is the highest in Europe connecting Chamonix at 1037 m to close to the summit of the Aiguille du midi at 3776 m. Its a two stage trip and each stage only takes 8 mins. A lot quicker than walking! From the top of the Aiguille du midi, there are breathtaking views of Mont Blanc and the Vallee Blanche. Mountaineers in single file leave here via the steep snowy exit ramp to start most of the routes in the high alps.





From this point, there is another cable car that runs to Helbronner just over the Italian border. It crosses the Vallee Blanche and a few hundred metres below you see mountaineers moving like ants across the glaciers, some with massive crevasses.



After a scenery overload, we headed back down the mountain to grab some lunch and to introduce Ellen to rock climbing at Les Gaillands in Chamonix. She was a natural flying up a 5b to our amazement. She seemed to enjoy it as long as we didn't make her look down for photos! The poor thing was exhausted after her day and retired to her tent by 9.30 pm.



We took pity on Ellen and let her have a lie in till 7.30am the next day. We had hired her boots, crampons and an ice axe and took her up onto the Mer de Glace. Dunk showed her the basics of steep ice climbing and front pointing and she was up and down the sides of crevasses in no time. She seemed particularly taken with the deep water filled holes in the glacier and got immense satisfaction from dropping stones down them. The ant hills (ahem!) on the glacier were another point of interest. I wonder what so many ants would be doing on a glacier! That evening after feeding the guest, we popped round to Toto (aka Toby and Tom) who were just back from a couple of days in the Requin hut to get the beta. Ellen went wild and stayed up till 10.30!!



On Saturday, we headed to do some more climbing hitting the Forestiers and Frendo areas of Les Gaillands. Ellen proved herself on her first overhang. We bumped into Toby who joined us for a couple. Poor Tom had gotten a stomach bug and was curled up in his tent. Hope you are recovered Tom and cranking hard in Font! We spent most of the day there and then popped into town to grab some Savoie specialities for dinner. These specialities involve large quantities of melted cheese. Mmmmmmm!! Afterwards we headed back to the campsite and had a few drinks and listened to a few tunes before bed.

On Sunday, we had to drop little Ellen back to Geneva. It was really sad to see her go and to pack away the guest annex. We've started making plans for our trip to the Requin hut to fill the gap!

Alpine Adventures.

So from Sweden we started the 2 day drive to Chamonix, France.
We had a little van trouble on the way (blown air in-take hose) but all fixed thanks to the miracle of DuckTape.

We based ourselves in a campsite underneath the Bossons Glacier for the first 2 weeks and spent our time getting to know the area.

View from the camp site.

We bought all the useless climbing guidebooks on offer to newcomers to the region and set about going climbing.
Obviously being high in the Alps the quality of climbing is fantastic even if the quality of the climbing guidebooks is less than satisfactory...

Our 2nd day here we tried to off ourselves with a trip up to 2500 metres carrying rock climbing gear for a short climb and long trek back down to Chamonix (at 1000 metres). Needless to say Jess was not the happiest of punters on the cycle back to the campsite. (My legs had turned to jelly 1/2 way down!).

View from the top of our first hike. And my sandwich.

After a few trips to local crags and adopting Tom and Toby (two UK guys camped next door), our next expedition was up to the classic Papillon's Arete (Butterfly's Ridge for the un-educated...).
Luckily we had grown a little more used to the altitude by this stage and caught the gondola up bright and early to be at the bottom of the route for 09:00, 3rd in the queue. Papillon's ridge is graded V and follows the arete for about 400 m of spectacular views. The climbing was not particularly sustained although the crux chimney pitch which left the "letterbox" felt considerably harder especially with our rucksacks. The French pair coming behind us agreed wholeheartedly! The boulders crashing down a couloir up the valley as the heat of the day melted the ice certainly added atmosphere. Jess's camera also came crashing down the mountainside. Less dramatic but far more upsetting and expensive. All in all it was a great day out although the verdict might have been different if our sprint for the gondola down had had a different outcome.

Early start on Papillon's Ridge.


Passing 2 nice French climbers on the route.


Dunk on the 2nd last pitch.


View from the ridge looking east.

After a day or 2 of R&R (and some expensive ice gear and camera shopping), it was time to play on a glacier. We opted for a short hike along the famous Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice) to see the large moulin. The moulin (basically a big hole drilled in the glacier by meltwater) has been explored down to 110 m. We contented ourselves with cautiously peering over the edge! The hike also gave us the opportunity to play on some steep ice in a few friendly crevasses and test out our new shiny boots, crampons and ice axes.

The Mer de Glace. (The Sea of Ice.)


Playing in the crevasses.


Heading home.

The next mountainside expedition was the Vaucher route, graded at VI and picked from the worst guidebook in the history of the planet (no I am not exaggerating!). The 400 m long climb was described in 2 sentences, an incomplete topo and a smudged mountainside photograph leading us to believe it would follow an obvious line. That was not the case. We found the start of the route alright at the top of a small ice field but soon had lost the line and cobbled together a series of excellent pitches up the mountainside. It turns out that there are numerous routes up the SW face of Aiguille de Peigne, a mixture of trad and bolted lines (not in the guidebook). We settled for moving in a generally upward direction on rock that bore no resemblance to the guidebooks description. About 300 m up, we opted to abseil down to avoid another sprint for the gondola. A great day out but still have no clue where the Vaucher Route goes.


Today, Jess's little sister Ellen is arriving for a visit. A great excuse to rest Duncan's feet and Jess's quads and calves. Can't wait to show the little sis some rock and ice action!!