Of course when I arrived it legged it down so I worked out at Francois Lombard gym along with a bunch of honed Frenchies. He had some really nice problems. We tend to make all our problems pretty straight forward theirs on the other hand were all toe locks, egyptians and all rather arty. It made a nice change. The next few days cleared up baking hot during the day, we had some great bouldering sessions during the evenings. It's a big social thing kind of like England there was always about 15 of us climbing at one time. There was a team from Fontainebleau in the valley headed by Marc Le Menestrel so it was good to see him.

The classic problem of the area is a 7b+ 'Surprise du Chef' it was a project of Edlingers then Alan Gershen came along and did it in an afternoon. It has a sit down start at 8a and if you want to dedicate a summer or lifetime to it you can traverse into it at what must be a desperate 8b. Originally done by Antoine Lemiche a skinny young, strong-fingered local who along with Francois Lombard has done nearly all the new problems. I think there's around 50 problems 7c or above and many more in the lower grades. Its pretty hot during the day but it all changes around 5:00pm when the sun drops behind the mountains and the temperature drops off nicely.

All in all this place rocks, I'll be going back for sure at least once a year. The most important ingredient for Ailefroide by the way is finger strength if you want to do the hard stuff don't arrive without it!