The Downside of Dreams

My partner and I did an old project of mine. For a long time, I’d wanted to climb the Miroir d’Argentine, have a taxi bring our stuff up to the mountain village, spend the night and climb at l’Ecuelle the next day. I had the idea on my last trip to the Miroir, but I couldn’t find the date in my notes. I’m guessing the last time I climbed there was in 2004 or 2005? It’s a hot weather project, since both cliffs are northwest facing and stay in the shade until late in the day, and they’re both at bit up in altitude.

And that’s just what we did! The only problem was that the two places to stay up in Anzeindaz were booked up. My partner has all the camping gear, so he had to bring all of that from his place, and I organized the food on my end. It was probably nicer to camp than to be in a mountain hut full of people, but it did require more organization.

The Miroir is just as long and impressive as I remember, but I’ve done so many long climbs now that it didn’t seem that bad. My partner had the smart idea of climbing two pitches together near the end where it was easy. He just kept going until he ran out of gear and we climbed at the same time.

I also now have super comfy shoes for slab climbing and those made my life much better. There was only one pitch of our route that was a bit harder (the third) and the rest of ‘Remix’ was easy and fun.

It was the first time that I’d seen so many climbers there. There were at least five other groups, spread out over different routes.

After the climb, we went down and collected our tent and pitched it…twice, since someone put their cows into our field just as we’d finished eating. It was nice, though, at least to have gotten all the way through our meal before having to move the tent somewhere behind hot wire.

The next morning we had a lazy start since l’Ecuelle stays in the shade a long time. There’s that expression “eyes are bigger than the stomach” and my partner had eyes on a harder climb…until we got to the foot of the cliff. The long distances between the bolts and the impossibility to place gear on the compact limestone calmed him down. We did an easier climb where only the first pitch was really quite hard. It was also the Remy brothers in full glory, two well-places bolts at the beginning then five meters more before the third. Slip there and you’re on the ground. (I’ve been told they think long and hard about how best to bolt something and that’s the best they can come up with. Apparently one of them broke both his ankles on one of their own climbs and they’ve since been a bit better about not making each pitch a dance with death. ‘Mickeyange’ was bolted in 2003, so we didn’t benefit from their brush with mortality.)

I feel a bit sad now that the dream has been realized. It’d been in the back of my head for such a long time, as the ‘hot weather project’. It required a lot to make it work and it almost didn’t; my partner has been working a lot and it was probably a lot to ask to get him to come here last weekend. But he did, and it was great.