des Allières

A small crag, with an easy walkin – not the most picturesque location (althought the valley is), but for what it’s worth in my book ideal first day crag. Its situated above the Village of Lans en vercor, and next to the fire road leading to the des Allières Auberge. Much used by groups, softer grading, and in the words of Mike “where you want a jug, there are three”, all make a good confidence boosting start to holiday. And the best thing about this crag? In the shade until about 2pm.

Presles

Wow! The cliffs here are BIG. 300m in places. If you aren’t impressed, then you probably aren’t a climber. Presles is a catch all name for a multitude of sectors on these impressive cliffs which sit below the village of Presles, which inturn lies on the plateau above. We stayed at the municiple campsite at Coronche, which lies in the valley bottom. 2 of the days we where here it was hot hot hot (doh – that’ll be July then!) So we stuck to climbing in the morning and evening, at the Tina Dalle sector. it’s a little polished in places, and the gradings quite stiff – but plesant.

Salad Days. Does this count as one of my 5 a day?

Our third day here we spent at the less accessible Sector Guarany. After bushwacking down trough the steep wood, we found lovely if slightly ‘salad’ like climbing (some of the best all holiday I thought) – shame rain stoped play after just 3 climbs.

In summary, Presles is one of those places that makes you want to be a much better climber – there clearly loads of amazing routes in far out places- and despite it being great to climb there, doing easy stuff on polished single pitch sectors seems a bit of waste.

Lans en Vercors

A deceptively large crag, with loads of different sectors, and a wide grade spread (3b to 8a). From the road you can only really see the Sector des Trous (sector of holes), but round the corner there is another 5 sectors. We climbed mainly in the Sector Humour Noir, and the Sector des Trous.

Lans Pierre in the Sector des Trous

The crag reminded me a bit of a Guadi cathedral or a Sudano-Sahelian mosque – It’s hard to explain, but have a look at pictures of these buildings and it might be clearer. At an altitude of over 1000m we never really found it too hot to climb here, although the weather was less hot in general while we were here.

Les Trois Pucelles

You can either translate this as the three virgins or the three maidens depending on your sensibilties. Les Trois Pucelles dominates the skyline at you look up from grenoble to St. Nizer.

The first ‘getting’ lost happened in the woods on the way up – which is a thin trail up through the woods, and then up the gully. You start the route round the corner in the gully then traverse left to right, to get to the base of the middle virgin. First pitch, fell to me – a sparsley bolted traverse, when you set off you have about 5m of space below you – by the end of the pitch about 50m, but all OK, because even if it’s slight pokey, the climbing is easy. The second pitch is more wandering through a wood attached to a rope (think the 2nd pitch on Little Chamonix – but longer). The third pitch we never found. We thought we found it – but it wasn’t bolted. We tried some alternatives – random bolts leading us down dead, vertical soil, ends. In the end we abbed off, and went up the gully. This turned out to be a whole big adventure in itself – of the loose rock and caving variety.

In conclusion The Vercors is a good climbing destination – but probably best not to go in July.