Right after the days climbing in St. Leger I travelled through Southern France to my next climbing spot: Seynes – a big limestone crag that provides a lot of long vertical routes. Seynes has one really outstanding tufa route called Dinosaure (8a+) which looks like the spine of a dinosaur. Years ago I spent a lot of tries to climb it, but was way to weak – this time I wanted to defeat the dino …
From St. Leger I travelled by bus through the beautiful landscape of Southern France to reach Orange. With limited skills in French language and incomplete bus plans, this was a little adventure on its own. In Orange, the kids of the competition climbing team Karlsruhe picked me up to get to Seynes where we wanted to spend the following week. The kids had rent a luxury holiday home near Seynes: three floors, huge balcony, luxury kitchen, a big pool outside and a large hall room for living. Being a group of nearly 20 persons made this normally expensive house quite affordable.
Seynes itself is a long south aligned limestone crag with long vertical routes in all grades. There are some sectors with shorter and easier routes from 5b to 7a and there are stunning long routes from 7a to 8c in the main sector. Especially the huge tufa formations are some kind of special and make the climbing there a lot of fun. South alignment of the rock makes it a perfect spot for the winter season – in the easter days, it was nearly too warm and in the summer it is impossible to climb there. There is no shadow at the crag you and the sun gleams without mercy. Checking out the projects in the morning, sleeping some hours in the afternoon and then sending the projects in the sunset, we made the best of it.
There is one outstanding line in Seynes that is well known far beyond: the Dinosaure (8a+). This is a big 40 metres long tufa looking like the spine of a dinosaur. The climbing is super exhausting because most of the time you have to pinch the slightly to big tufa. In my first tries, I fell quite pumped in the upper part – no power was left from the pinching. In my third Go, I made it in the upper part and in a big fight, I made it to the anchor. Well, I climbed too high to fall there one more time. Finally, I have defeated the dino…
Whereas I love the 3D tufa climbing with comfortable holds, dynamic moves and weird body positions, the kids of the competition climbing team struggled a little bit with them. But every day they climbed in Seynes, their courage grew and they were able to experiment a little bit more with the tufa style. Even though all agreed that tufa climbing is super exhausting. Over the time it got warmer and warmer in Seynes. There are no shadow crags directly around Seynes, so we decided to climb the last days in another spot …
