Another small sector with a decent mix of grades from 6a to 7a situated a few minutes above the Elona road.
Ignore the instructions to park 400m beyond the hairpin (unless you’ve got a bicycle!) and instead park near the bend and walk until you find the obligatory blue dots. There’s a spectacularly well cairned path (as you would expect from a crag named after the Greek word for cairn – Cuckoo).
The climbing has a distinctly Verdonesque feel to it, with steepish slab climbing on goute d’eau pockets, though thankfully there’s no sign of polish yet.
Here’s Chris on Beboucien, 6a/+
… and Jim topping out on the same route
And here’s Jim on Formage (not sure if that’s a typo…) 6a+
And Chris nearing the top of the same route.
Micra Picra is the trickiest route on the sector (7a or 6c+ depending which book you read – I found it tougher than a number of the 7as I’ve done elsewhere here, though that might be the style). Thin and crimpy on a couple of very smooth, slabby sections (a wet tufa blob didn’t help).
With accumulated tiredness from climbing for 5 days on the bounce we all decided to call it a day pretty early and enjoy a laze in the sun, before a driftwood bonfire on the beach and an early night
The final dozen Rucksackers arrive tomorrow, so there will no doubt be another late night in prospect 🙂