Quenelle trophy les maux de la fin

The day after my last blog my friend Andy and I decided to check out another of the sectors in Gorge du Loup – Jurassic Park. The approach to this crag involves walking through a number of fairly small tunnels cut for a water pipe. This is fine if you’re a midget, but it turns out that if you’re 6ft 2 then you don’t quite fit, and by the time we arrived at the climbing I was nursing my sore back like an old man. After all that, I then decided that I was more psyched on my project at Deverse, and I was going to rest anyway. Oh well, at least there were some nice views.

The next day we hit Deverse ready to crush. I managed to get through the hard part of the 8c lower pitch of the link I was trying (Quenelle trophy), but screwed up getting into the first knee bar rest, and ended up unable to extract my hand from under my knee and grabbing a draw. Bugger. That wasn’t part of the game plan.  It was our Slovenian friends’ last day, and Isidor was making it count, cruising up Hot Chili X (8c) like it was a warm up. The send train had arrived. Robbie knocked off SataniX (8b), and I got back on QTLMDLF. The first part went well, and this time there were no mistakes with the rest. Reaching the 8c chains I was feeling good, and set about hanging upside down in the kneebars for as long as I possibly could without my head exploding. The upper section all went surprisingly well, and I managed to keep any dangerous thoughts of success at bay until the very last few moves. With a whoop I hopped on the send train and clipped the chains of my first 8c+. (Stu, I believe you owe me a flapjack.)

Where's (the) Wally (in the lime green shorts). Heading into the upper crux on Quenelle trophy les maux de la fin.

Gasper then rounded off team Slovenia's sending with Sika 2 (8b). Not a bad hour or so of climbing! Straight onto the next, I’ve now got stuck into Asai, a short 8c with a rep for being tough at the grade, though thankfully it's mainly burl on pinches which suits me well. The moves have all gone, but it’s an intense 20 move sequence to the first rest and it’ll be a fierce link.  First it’s time for two rest days and a giant celebratory cake!

P.s. Thanks to Gasper and Izidor for the photos from my successful attempt!