An epic, fun and happy day

I love sharing my passion with my friends who come from other scenes. Most of the time I'm away, climbing with some other strong climbers. Lately, my elbow started to be painful and it was diagnosed as a tendinitis. I was forced to slow down and I realized it was the perfect moment to share some "easy" routes with nice friends.

The freeskiers stars Julien Regnier (France), JP Auclair (Quebec) and the amazing photographer Elina Sirparanta (Finland) have been climbing since a little while. They read books about climbing, they practised knots and rigging. They were all in Chamonix for some filming and photoshooting but since the ski conditions were miserable the idea of climbing all together a multipitch route came as an evidence.
Julien, another friend of mine and french mountain guide, Chris and Tbird from the filming crew also joined us and made a party on another route.

I really wanted us to have a nice, fun and relax day for a first multipitch experience. But I also wanted them to do something a little challenging since they were athletes and they knew how to push hard. For those reasons I choose a route on the Tour d'Areu above Sallanches called "Copacabana" (6b max, 6a mandatory). I knew it was a little ambitious but I knew they could do it.

We had a very fun but epic day. The climbing was not very easy. Slaby sometimes, lots of scouting on the right, on the left, more space between bolts that they were used to. But they all did excellent! For me, that was fun to watch. They really tried hard, committed and climbed well.
But that day was epic too. In a very short time, the sky got totally black and it started to rain. Slightly at first. We thought we would passed through it. But as soon as we reached the second rappel, it was a deluge of rain, small hail and finaly heavy hail. We were completly wet and freezing. But the rain and hail were not enough. To add a little of more adventure, thunderstorm and lightnings surrounded us, getting closer and closer.
We rappeled off, got to the next rappel waited for Julien who was last. I started to feel trapped and got very worried due to those lightnings. For some reason Julien was very slow. I yeld at him to hurry up, I did not wanted to stay any longer on the face with the gear on us. Finaly he showed up, frozen and wet like all of us. The ropes were passing on his lock binner. He had dropped his reverso. Thankfuly, he knew from the book how to do a half hitches. It just took him a little while to figure out how to do it for real. Phew... I was glad I did not have to go up to help him in such a critical moment.
Luckily the storm finaly went away and we did the last rappel under the rain without lightnings around us. I had never felt that good reaching the ground and taking off my gear. And so relieve that everyone made it safely to the ground.

I would never, ever forget the image of the four of us, completly wet and shaking, trying to have the helmets protecting us from the hail and rain, heads in the shoulders, pants and jackets sticking on our body. At that point I thought they might be mad at me for the rest of their life. But everyone was stoked and we were laughing at our miserable situation.

A huge thanks to Elina, Ju, JP, Julmil, Chris and Tbird for their enthusiasm, great spirit and for loving being in the mountains.
It was wonderful to share this epic, fun and happy day with you guys !

Enjoy the beautiful pictures by Elina Sirparanta (Elinaphoto.com)

The "Tour d'Areu" six big teeth of great limestone
We climbed on the fourth tower

Early morning... Getting ready for the hike... Climbing is hard...
(Ju Regnier, Jumil, Liv)

Elina's also getting ready with her specific gear
You would not believe how much energy, temerity and talent such a little and pretty woman can have !

The good thing with those guys : they can carry almost all the gear ;)

The hike is getting steeper meanwhile the scenery is stunning

Found the route ! Phew...

Gearing up, making decision about what to carry up.
Always the same dilemna between climbing light, having enough water and warm clothes... you never know... ;)

One of the stunning view we had that day

Ju and JP, inseparable friends and ski partners since ever

Elina, climbing well and pushing herself on the hard sections.
She did awesome for a first multipitch routes, carrying the camera, shooting and not even scared by the height