Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Notes

Jona and i choose to wake up at 7:30 am, having just spent our first night at La Fontasse, the youth hostel in the middle of the Massif des Calanques in Southern France. The night before, we had procured both a rope (thanks to Jona talking up 2 French climbers) and a guide: an enthusiastic American who lived in Germany and did MI for the army. We called him Tennessee (in private) after his home state, and he had promised to show us the trail he had found the day before that led to climbing. Jona & I sat, eagerly waiting for him to wake up and nervously watching black clouds roll in from the sea.

When it became clear that the weather wouldn’t be conducive to climbing, Jona taught me how to make coffee and we sat around a table inside, studying the climbing guide (written in French, of course), getting excited, taking pictures with Jona’s cell phone for reference at the crag, and drinking coffee.

The 2 French climbers and Tennessee eventually joined us at our table. Over the past few days I had been building my confidence in my French skills. That was quickly destroyed as a conversation about American politics started up. I struggled to keep up — Jona & Tennessee were pretty easy to understand, I got the gist of what one of the French guys said, and none of what the other French guy said (he spoke so fast!). Jona and I would occasionally confer “What does that word he keeps using mean? maybe powerful?”. I don’t know if it was more frustrating to not understand or to understand and not know how to say the response I wanted to say! (I mean, jesus, how do you say puppet-master in French? l’homme de la marionette?). At one point, Jona, Tennessee and I tried to explain what Network Security (what I’m studying at iHK) is, since I had been getting Tennessee’s MI perspective on it in English. I think we got the idea across, though it was hard since we didn’t know the word for “network” at first.

Eventually, the French climbers decided to drive into Marseille for the day, and we were left alone with Tennessee. Idly hanging around the hostel, we noticed a break in the rain. Now’s our chance to find this trail and get our bearings, scope out the crag, we thought. It was Tennessee’s last day, and he wanted some pictures of the Calanques to take home. So off we went.

Tennessee first led us to a juncture of two wide, well marked paths. Pausing for a second, he proceeding to tromp through the scrubby area directly between the paths. Jona & I look at each other in bewilderment before following him through the brush. (This pattern will prove to be a common one with him). After a bit of aimless wandering, Tennessee exclaimed “Ah, here’s the little trail I found yesterday!”. We were standing in what was, obviously, a dry streambed. No time to comment before he charged down the streambed, with Jona and I somewhat reluctantly in tow. I soon realized we wouldn’t keep up with him if we held onto any of our reluctance, so I abandoned caution and started jogging down the steep, rocky streambed.

it was about this time when the thunder & lightning started.

Jona left his metal water bottle by the side of the trail, wanting to deter lightning from seeking us out. I was stealing worried glances back at Jona with increasing frequency when the rain started.

“Jona, look how big these raindrops are!”

“Yeah, they hurt!”

“… and they pile up on the ground”

Neither of us wanted to admit it at first, that there could be a hailstorm in paradise, but the evidence was bouncing off of our shoulders and collecting in depressions in the ground.

Tennessee continued on though. Given that our alternative was hiking up a treacherous streambed in a hailstorm, this might have been the first decision Tennessee made that had any sense behind it.

Walking on the side of the trail that ran through the valley floor (the trail itself, failing to absorb any water, had quickly turned into a meter wide stream in the storm), we reached En Vau, the third Calanque from Cassis.

The hail stopped, the clouds parted, and “out came the sun and dried up all the rain…”. Suddenly, we found ourselves with all of En Vau — the beach, the rocks, the sky and the sea — to ourself. We shrugged off our wet clothes, laid them out to dry on the rocks, and played on the beach. Lacking climbing shoes, I bouldered barefoot, low on the rocks above the turquoise water (I’d yet to learn the short lesson of how sharp the rocks are in the Calanques). Eager to climb, Jona and I devised different bouldering problems, hanging off ledges and toeing around corners, much to the astonishment of Tennessee. To his credit, he astonished Jona & I by jumping in the icy cold Mediterranean sea, wearing just shoes and boxer shorts. We all lay on the beach, soaking up the sun.

When we couldn’t ignore the thought of the rope and climbing shoes sitting, uselessly, on the floor of our hostel, any longer, we redressed and hiked back up.

Sitting in the yard were our climber friends. The quick-speaking one said “Fermé” - closed. (Thankfully, I know this from using my French friends’ computers this semester. I always see “fermer la fenêtre” (close the window), when I’m scanning through the menu looking for the option I want). I got to stammer out something intelligent-sounding like “Nous sommes allé a En Vau, et escalade avec notre pieds, sans chaussures! Jonathan… ici dans dix minutes… il attende pour Michael, qui faire un photo.” in my broken French.

Whether they understood what I said or not, they figured out a way to sneak into the hostel. I ran inside to grab our climbing gear — thankful it was all packed from the morning — and then nonchalantly went back outside. We were there waiting when Jona and Tennessee returned. We bid au revoir to Tennessee, who had decided to drive to Barcelona that afternoon, and happily followed our new tour guides down a different path to Port Miou.

At Port Miou, we borrowed our friends’ guide (with a 30€ price tag, we sure as hell weren’t buying our own). Though useful as a relative measure, the French rating system told us little about the absolute difficulty of the climbs in terms we could understand. The easiest on the wall was a 5b, but it was taken, so instead I led¹ a 5c, which Jona tells me is around a 5.9 on the Yosemite decimal system. Happy to be climbing at last, I soared up the first part of the climb. The middle part was very difficult — it took me perhaps 10 different tries to get past it. There was nowhere to put your feet!, which are where my strength lies. Relieved to be past it, I made steady progress up the rest of the climb. At several points near the top, I was scared and wanted to come down, but a 5c didn’t sound very hard and I knew I should be able to (and, depending on Jona’s climbing ability, likely had to) finish the climb.

I came down, excited and full of adrenaline from the, admittedly, scary climb. The French, impressed, came up to us and starting talking about the climb. After a bit of confusion on how you pronounce French letters & numbers, we realize that we had read the map wrong, and I had just led a 6.c+. Wikipedia tells me that’s like a 5.11c, which I’m not sure I believe, but in any case, it’s closer to a 5.11 than a 5.9. A 5.11² would have been pushing the limits of my leading ability this past Fall when I was climbing several times a week. Jona was impressed, but I was a little sketched out by the experience. I had been telling myself not to be scared because it wasn’t that hard of a climb when, really, that was the appropriate response — I was leading a climb outside of my ability and easily could have fallen. And I was pretty sure Jona knew how to lead-belay, but I’d only climbed with him once or twice outside before and wasn’t totally sure.

We went on to do several easier climbs before packing up around 8:15 (gotta love these long days). Jona hiked back to the hostel. I ran into town (about 1 hour) to sit on the curb outside Hotel Cassitel, whose managers don’t know how to secure a wireless network. I left my mom a voicemail letting her know I wasn’t dead, sent something inane to Twitter, and a badly typoed email to Becky with Jona’s love before his phone died.

Walking back to the hostel, I overtook a ridge and was stunned as the full moon, rising over a calanque, hit me like a spot light. I walked back in the brilliant moonlight, with my stark shadow keeping pace.

Back in the comfort of the hostel, Jona was sitting in front of a fire, conversing with (and drinking the wine of) a German woman who was about the age of our parents. We were both enamored with her, and agreed that she was most likely a muse sent down to guide such misguided humans as ourselves. She had the most wonderfully welcoming smile. We listened to her stories: she had first found the hostel while hitchiking at the age of 17, and had returned every year since. She said the place was “famous for its light”. When Jean-Pierre came around to close the lights at 11:30, our German friend told us with a wink that the party would continue outside. We sat on the patio outside, watching the moon and its reflection over the ocean, drinking biologique wine, and talking for a while before I begged Jona to let me fall asleep after our long day. And so we did.

And that was Tuesday.

1)Lead climbing is scary because you’re often above your “protection” — the point that the rope is strung through and that catches you when you fall.

2) I apologize if these ratings mean nothing to you — I don’t know who reads my blog. The point is, it was a fucking hard climb.