This year, Barbara and I decided to hold an open house at our chalet in Vallouise in the Ecrins in the
southern French Alps for the month of September. It ended up being a very successful trip with a
total of 12 people staying for some part of the month; Paul and Barbara, Kyle, Jodie, Seamus, Pete and
Lun, Chris and Kate and Yasmin, Florian and Roman (and of course Lexie our dog).
Vallouise is about 20 mins from Briançon and less than 10 mins from Ailefroide and is very well
situated for climbing, road cycling, via ferrata, hiking (and mountain biking and kayaking and skiing
although not on this trip).
Ailefroide proved to be a favourite location – it has an almost endless supply of multi-pitch granite
routes of anything from 5 – 15 pitches. They are typically well bolted, not much of the old school
run-out fortunately, and a lot of them you can just abseil back down. Combined with short walk-ins
of up to a mammoth 30 mins it makes for a relatively stress free day out. It took between about 4
and 6 hours car-to-car for most routes, leaving plenty of time to get a post route ice-cream in
Ailefroide. Between us we managed around about a dozen multi-pitch routes at Ailefroide and
Barbara even managed to get a multi-pitch route done in the morning before working all afternoon.
Some of the routes climbed include; La Bonne Poire, Sueur de Bouc, Gazon Maudit, Ils y Passeront
Tous, Belle Lisse Poire, La Montagnards sont Las – look them up they are all fantastic.
There are also a lot of other much less well known multi-pitch routes and mountains within a short
drive. Paul and Barbara had a fantastic day out climbing the Voie Academique – Arete SW on the Bric
Bouchet. This involved a reasonably big day out, 9 ½ hrs car to car but took us to the summit of a
3000m peak (well actually 2997m) via a classic 400m AD rock climb. The 360° view from the summit
took in a lot of very well known peaks, Mt Viso was just to the south, we could see all the Ecrin
peaks, Barre des Ecrins, Meije, Pelvoux, etc, the Mont Blanc range and Monte Rosa.
The surrounding area is also littered with sports crags, one or two granite, a lot of limestone, plus
some quartzite and conglomerate which is a bit unusual for France. Most of these are really good
and rather put our local sports crags in the shade. Pete more or less took up residence at Le Simoust,
a relatively recently bolted (although popular) conglomerate crag with sustained (i.e. overhanging)
routes between 30m and 40m long. Chris and Kate took a shine to an extremely steep 7c,
Punishment Park in Ailefroide and both of them managed to redpoint the route.
The road cycling is also amazing, Yasmin along with Florian and Roman stopped by on their
monstrous cycle tour from Munich to Nice via all the biggest cols they could find. They had come
over the Col de Telegraph and Col de Galibier to reach Vallouise which is very impressive when you
are carrying full camping kit on your bike. Yasmin sadly had to go back home to work, but Florian and
Roman headed south over the Col de Vars and were joined by Paul and Barbara for what was meant
to be a pleasant day out on the bikes. It turned out to be a hot day (max 34 C) and the 20 km uphill
of Col de Vars proved trying – Barbara wisely opted to stay in the café at Vars and drink cool drinks
rather than get heat stroke on the last short leg.
The Via Ferrata action was also top notch, various different Via Ferratas were ascended during the
trip, Durance, Vigneaux and Le Tournoux. Kate doing her first Via Ferrata and enjoying it thoroughly.
Unfortunately the Ailefroide via Ferrata was damaged by a big flood shortly before we arrived and
was closed.

And finally the hiking. Barbara was very keen to hike up Tete d’Amont. This is 2814m and the path
starts right at the chalet with a mere 1962m of ascent (well according to Strava) up through the
forest and then the alpine meadows above the tree line. Barbara had had to turn back near the
summit a few years earlier as it was too hot and Lexie was overheating, so this time she opted to
leave the dog behind and instead roped in Jodie. They started very early to avoid the heat and made
it to the top before the sun got too hot but it was a long, long way down.
All told in a month, we had maybe 2 days rain and it was pretty much continuously sunny the rest of
the time. It was pretty hot when we arrived at the end of August, max temp 30° – 35°, but over the
course of the month cooled down, such that by the end of September it wasn’t getting above 25°C in
the valley and much cooler at altitude.
Overall a very successful trip and one we’ll look to repeat again next year.

Paul Drew