Bodging avec Baptiste

Shortly after Paris I spent a spiffing weekend with a Frenchie called Baptiste who lives in a nearby town. The aim was two days of local multipitch climbing.

Friday night

Baptiste and friends: Salut Flick!
Moi: Salut!
Baptiste and friends: Alors....leveryquickfrenchthatsimpossibletounderstand...hein?
Moi: Er...oui...*nervous laugh*
Baptiste and friends: Bof...wearenotspeakinganylanguageinexistencebutjustmakingnoisestoconfuseyou...n'est-ce pas?
Moi: Le mm-hmm.
*Confused stares*
Moi: Eh...ben...bof...alors...quoi! *big smile*

That seems to do the trick!

Saturday morning

10:30am: Wake up. Panic about excessive lie-in. Reach near hyperventilation stage but decide it's too cold for such a big panic and retreat further under duvet.
10:35am: Baptiste leaps into his living room in a similar panic.
Midday: Reach parking spot in time to eat chocolate eclair. (No point in carrying excessive weight up the route...). The road is a bit icy.
12:10pm: Both realise we've forgotten our big, warm, snowproof mountaineering boots for the approach.
12:30pm: Cold! The snow on the approach walk-in is rather deeper than anticipated. We keep losing the path. This is fine for Baptiste, who glides around effortlessly, but not so good for me. My feet appear to be magnets for everything interesting under the snow. Several times in a row I put my foot through a big hole into a stream or a cowpat. Yum.
1pm: Decide we haven't got time to do the intended route if we want to drive back alive, as the snow on the road will turn to ice as soon as the evening cold sets in. Spot a feasible cliff up a slope and set up an ab rope for toproping. Very fun abseil!

The route turns out to be rather hard (in the 7s I think!), not helped by the water on half of it and my snow-soaked climbing shoes. French ethics are employed to scale the cliff, the rope, and various trees at the top.

Sunday
Lovely multipitch in the sun with gorgeous views and only one case of elbow-crippling rockfall.
Spiffing.