22 September 2009

Le vieux et le mer

The old man and the sea...

Photo: Michael Schoefer

This summer Toni Lamprecht, Uli Strunz and Benno Wagner spent several weeks in the Gorge du Verdon with the target to establish a first ascent on one of the amazing limestone-walls. The result is Le Vieux et la mer", with 7 pitches up to the 8th french grade. Toni, the "old Fox" had this project in his mind for several years,but finally catched the "big fish" this summer:

"When you climb a route in the sector Ula in the Gorge du Verdon there's no way not to look at the beautifull, blank looking piller to the right. Soon you get involved in finding a climbable line in the sea of grey rock. I rapelled several times into the overhanging maze of unclimbable looking stone, until I finally found the only freeclimable line: a serpent-like-greeping-way up on little, tiny edges and pockets. A real present and so I swore to myself to return. Exactly a year after seeing the crucial way, we started to boulder in the hard pitches to find the solution. We, a team of different climbers: Uli Strunz -the dreadlocks, wapponed, skinny mover-, Benno Wagner -the Young Gun-, and myself -a good mixture of different climbing-abilities that promissed success- and so it happened that a few weeks later we redpointed the last missing pitch of our new route "Le Vieux et le mer" (6b, 7a+, 8ab, 8a, 6a, 7a, 7c+, 7a), the nicest fish I've ever caught out of the grey-blue looking sea of rock ."

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