|
|
| Home > Expeditions > Vercors, France 2001 | |
Introduction Between Saturday July 21st to Sunday August 4th 2001 York University Cave and Pothole Club undertook an "expedition" (read "holiday") to the Vercors, a French National Park a short distance South West of Grenoble. This page is an edited type-up of the logbook kept during the trip, but, as Laz put it, the "no one could be arsed to write in it so it's particularly sparse with big gaps and it dies about halfway through the first week", so I've tried to expand on what was written in it a fair amount. I've also included some photos Laz took on the trip (a full index of his photos of the Vercors is here), and a couple of photos Steve took, as well. Other people had cameras in France too but only Laz's and a few of Steve's photos are available on the web - and hence many things mentioned here have no photographic accompaniment. Excluding show caves, there are exceedingly few photos of YUCPC people actually in caves in France last summer in existence at all, because doing so requires lots and lots of effort. My camera was taken down the entrance to a cave but unfortunately I broke it. Details and photos of drinking and socialising aren't included because that's not what logbooks are for, innit, though there are a fair few photos at Laz's site mentioned above. French cave names are spelled differently each time they are written, I know, it's the same in the actual logbook. Day 1: Saturday and Day 2: Sunday Drove or were driven to France: Laz, Andy, Steve, Mike, Jeff, Dave B Day 1 From York to France - David B: "Arrived at Steve's house just before ten to find the hire cars had already been delivered. This is where things started to go wrong…. It was 4:30pm when we finally left York. The problem being we had to collect Andy from Sheffield train station at 2pm. After a bit of 'quick' driving we got there at 5:45pm. In order to get to Dover in time to get the boat we would have to do some speedy driving. All went well until we stopped to fill up with petrol." Mike continues the story: "Unfortunately we did actually fill up with 'petrol', which the diesel car had a few objections to. However help was at hand in the shape of Hollywood legend and sex symbol Morgan Freeman. He quickly whisked us off to his Beverly Hills pod for drinks and nibbles with Uma Thurman. While chatting with Uma, fat Lez, a close friend at the Hollywood showbiz community entertained us with his 'petrol and fags' routine. The show over, Lez being the expert showman that he is proved his right foot is as lead filled [or something] as the next pop icon by razzing the fuck out of the engine. Saying a fond farewell to Uma, thanks to Morgan and backing hurriedly away from Lez we sped out into the night, comforted in our minds that Hollywood really does care about the little people!" Meanwhile, elsewhere - James: Other people were using other methods to get to France - trains. The plan was to meet at Gare du Nord in Paris from where we'd all get a train to Grenoble together. After travelling across Paris on a rather hot and crowded Metro train where our mass of baggage provided a few problems whenever other people tried to get on or off the train, but with no particular mishaps, me, Michelle, Debs and Richard reached the correct station, about 10 minutes before our train was going to leave. With no sign of Mark, we debated whether or not to wait for him. Now we'd missed our booked train anyhow, we decided to wait for Mark. Maybe an hour later another train left for Grenoble, but still without any sign of Mark we continued waiting. After 3 hours of waiting and having not got on quite a few more trains to Grenoble we finally gave up and got on a train to Lyons, whereupon we changed to another train to finally arrive in Grenoble at 10 past midnight. At last, after a day of ridiculous amounts of waiting about and lots of rushing about with lots and lots and lots of baggage (our human chain for unloading all our bags off trains when we got to a station was becoming ever more fast and efficient), we'd have cars waiting to take us and all our bags directly to the campsite. Except, not. Back in the land of the car people… - Laz: We hacked it down to Dover and just made the 12:30am ferry. After wandering round the boat about 3 times we came to the conclusion that the "salon" on deck 6 didn't exist. We ended up collapsing in the corner of the Gourmet (yeah right!) café. The bloke came and threw us out when the ferry got in to Calais. We drove down through France with no obvious mishaps, apart from ca 50km detour when we filled up with petrol+diesel (correct way round this time) and went the wrong way out of the garage. Tolls across France were about 500F per car, i.e. ca. 50 quid. Off the ferry at ca. 2:45am. Got to Villard de Land at ca. 11am or so. Might have been later. Train people again - James: [written long after the actual trip] On reaching Grenoble it became apparent our fellow cavers with cars had got fed up waiting for us at the station, and so we were all alone at gone midnight standing about wondering what to do. Periodically phoning the others using mobiles and waiting about for a while didn't seem to be achieving anything. Should we sleep on the station floor and wait for morning? Or ask one of the taxis in the taxi rank just how much was the fare to a campsite many miles away? As ringing the people who were supposed to be picking us up continued to achieve nothing, we tentatively enquired for the taxi fare, and on finding it to be large but not extortionate, we continued to consider our options for some time before finally coming to the conclusion we may as well get a taxi. We wanted to get in this mini-bus like thing, but a Volvo estate was in front of him in the rank and insisted we at least try to fit everything in his car first. As we begun rapidly filling up his boot with just a few things he stopped us and did it himself, how he managed to fit it and all us as well in I don't know, we were quite squashed though. Anyhow, zoomed up mountains in the night, got out of taxi at campsite, rather cold, wandered about campsite in dark for a while, found others asleep in tents, including Mark who had apparently got the very first train we were supposed to get, having somehow overtaken us on the Metro, settled down in tents or bivi bags or whatever and slept. Day 3: Monday Went down Trou Qui Souffle (180-200m), group 1, 3.5 hours underground: Laz, Michelle, Dave B Trou Qui Souffle - Laz: "If it is named after the food, it can't be bad, or, maybe the food is named after the cave… (all Trou Qui Souffle photos: 12, 13, 14, 14 actually the nearby entrance to Sont de Glace done another day) A few smallish pitches, a 30m pitch, a dodgy metal ladder and wire traverse. Des's rope lengths were all wrong, again, so we didn’t get to the bottom!! Had to use the bottom rope on an unmentioned climb. The second group down did move this rope and descended the final pitch. We couldn't be bothered!! Walking - James "Drive, stop, map read for a while, park by golf course, wander up big hill, wander about on top following some marker tape on trees, find (what we thought was) the cave, leave arrows at footpath junctions on return journey down. Later found out the cave we were actually looking for was a few minutes walk away from the one we did find" Day 4: Tuesday Went down Grotte de Gournier, group 1, reached end of first wire traverse, 5 hours underground: Gover, Debs, James Grotte de Gournier - David: The plan was to split into two groups, team 1 being Gover, Andy, Debs and James, and team 2 was to be me, Laz, Steve, and Michelle. This didn't quite work as team 2 met Andy driving back from the cave to collect his forgotten undersuit. Thankfully this gave us time for a spot of lunch. Steve and I thought it would be a good idea to swim across the lake as we were wearing wet suits, we soon discovered the lake to be quite cold. Whilst waiting for the others to cross by boat. Steve entertained us by jumping off things into the lake. Spent a while trying to find the streamway. Wearing wet suits meant the stream way was good fun. Steve bypassed the traverses by jumping down the waterfalls. Turned back at the end of the 2nd traverse. Uneventful trip other than Steve jumping into the lake from a great height." [in the actual logbook a diagram of Steve, water, rocks and a tackle sack is included] Steve and tackle sacks - Laz: "Steve, that bag will sink!" "No it won't." "it's sinking!" "It won't: rope floats!" "Er, Steve…it's now below the surface!" "Arse!" "Steve, it's now sitting on the bottom of the lake!" "ARSE!!!" Glub, glub, glub, as Steve dived to the bottom of the entrance lake. What a great cave! Lake, big stomping passages, superb stream way, dodgy traverses. Fun, fun, fun. Oh yes, we rented the boat from a shop in Villard de Lans for ca. £10. Bargain!" The other Grotte de Gournier group - James "Zooming down the tiny little road which cut it's way through the side of the huge sheer walls of the Bourne Gorge there was a rather scary moment entering a tunnel when it all went dark, Richard realised the road bent sharply to the right and we screeched sideways-ish round the corner on the wrong side of the road at a rather silly speed. Scary, scary, scary. Anyhow, on reaching the car park for the show cave next to Grotte de Gournier, Andy realised he'd forgotten his under suit, so he took the car and drove back to go and get it, the plan being for him to join the 2nd, later group (which he did). So Debs, Richard and I were the first to test out our hired dingy on the entrance lake. As people are always saying, Grotte de Gournier really is a rather pleasant and civilised cave - there were really quite a few people down there, including groups of children with their parents. First the big and pretty entrance chamber which you paddle across in a dinghy (very nice), then a traverse around the top of said chamber (cool), then a big stomping passageway (admittedly HUUUGE with masses of formations, but I thought a bit boring and a bit of a slog at times) and then the streamway (really rather lovely, with masses of crystal clear water which shines a sort of light bluey colour in the beam of a lamp, would have liked to go on a bit further)." Day 5: Wednesday Canyoning, Furon Gorge (top half until chucked out), group 1, 3.5 hours: Gover, Mike, Mark Canyon walking - Laz: "Well, we all drove to the big dam across the river Furon (for hydroelectric things). Two groups: Gover, Mike + Mark; Steve, Dave B + Jeff. The first group set off stomping downstream from the dam whilst the other group ferried a car to the bottom of the gorge. After the second group had returned and, too, stomped off down stream, the rest of us: Andy, Debs, Michelle, James + Laz drove to the bottom of the gorge at Sassenage. After an ice cream, we found the Furon and stomped, climbed, paddled up it. We saw about three groups of canyoners, none of which were ours. Some nutter bloke jumped off a high ledge into a pool, enthusing Andy and James to jump in too, albeit from ca. 6m lower down! Our two groups never made it to the lower part because, apparently, some French blokes with a big dog kept on jabbering at them, telling them that they weren't allowed in that bit. Maybe they just wussed out!" More on canyon walking - James: Spent an age waiting about in the sun whilst the canyoners sorted themselves out and moved cars about and the like. After seeing both groups off went drove down to the bottom of the canyon, and I just couldn't work out how to say "jus d'orange" in a way that a lady in a café could understand, having to eventually enlist Deb's help. Others had icecreams. The idea was that we'd go up the canyon until we met up with the groups coming down, however as Laz says above, unbeknowst to us, the canyoning people had been thrown out by some French blokes some way up and so we never actually met up. Setting off up the canyon, we immediately left the path which ran up along its bank and started alternately paddling and climbing up and around the boulders of the canyon, but occasionally climbed back up to the footpath wherever a big pitch appeared which was impassable without rope. Walking past a show cave (Cuves du Sassenage, yes cuves, which we visited properly the following week) we found a small crevace which "went" for maybe 10 or 15m with the aid of Andy's LED. Surely another 10 minutes each for a few people in the underground statistics section? Anyway, as Laz describes, we continued up the canyon alternately by the path or not as the situation dictated, there was paddling/climbing/traversing walking/jumping in pools and various other things, with the footpath always near at hand for when people so wished. The fact that some took a slightly more direct route up the canyon than others is demonstrated in the photo above where as Andy and I wade through a pool Debs and Michelle hop across stepping stones around the edge in the background… After a while the sides of the canyon got steeper and steeper and the path up the side ended. We continued on up the canyon using boulders for a while until reaching a fairly large and incredibly pretty waterfall, the sunlight creating hundreds of golden sparkling dots in the late afternoon sun as water splashed down…lalala I've been reading The Lord of the Rings too much recently. A dodgy steel cable would have allowed access up underneath it, but not being able to see what it was attached to we decided not to bother and went back to the car, mainly using the path on our return journey… Day 6: Thursday Sans le Glace (-269m), group 1, 3.5 hours: Andy, Gover, Mark, Michelle Sans le Glace - Laz "This is one of the other entrances to that Souffle cave. DO NOT believe Des' description of how to find it. See map: [actual logbook features scrawled map] Entrance looks like a mine entrance in the forest! Mega draughts from the entrance! More on Sans le Glace - James Really good cave - just like a Dales cave, only better. Constant diagonally downwards angle and constant lots of short pitches meant lots of depth in not much time. Fairly tight in places, but never for extended periods of time and never a very low ceiling so only made it more interesting. Also interesting was a nice slidy tobaggany bit. We then met the other group, and Matt borrowed a dive light off of one of them because his electric had already died. Then, another pitch brought us suddenly through the roof of a fairly huge chamber at the bottom. Great. Strolling along said chamber at the bottom, there was a massive, strange tunnel with huge marks on the roof which had been formed under water pressure, can't remember what they are called now. Could also see dive lines running here to help cave divers find their way into and out of the sump when the chamber floods, crazy people. Day 7: Friday Down Sont de Glace, 4 hours: Jeff, Steve, Dave Up a mountain - either Mark or Michelle wrote this, not sure which "Mark and Michelle walked from camp to Villard. Went to the Casino and got Yop & other stuff for lunch. Walked from Villard de Lans to les clots then headed towards…" Meanwhile - Laz "Meanwhile, Laz sat about camp, went to Villard de Lans for some Yop (separate to the aforementioned Yop). Bought postcards, wrote postcards, sent postcards. Went back to camp. Sat about. Meanwhile… French people - Debs: "Debs bought postcards + wrote them, but didn't send them. Walked to Pont de l'Amour (full of annoying French kids with trucks) over paths with many big red ants. Started going up hill and realised limitations of sandals, especially when having to jump over piles of horse shit, so found nice meadow by stream and ate peaches and slept. Also met scary singing French bloke, 'Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye' in bizarre accent, nice arse though…" Calm canyons - James "With a team with very little canyoning experience and no wetsuits, we chose what looked like the easiest canyon in the guidebook. Unfortunately, and maybe it's better when not the middle of summer, but the severe lack of water and severely large prescience of undergrowth meant a machete would have been more handy than a wetsuit. Still, I got a fair amount of practice with a fig 8 and others a fair amount of practice at rigging canyon-type pitches, and the first pitch was sort of impressive, or would be even more so to people who aren't used to caving and the associated abseiling down huge drops. When Matt was coming down it the rope rubbing at the top managed to bring down a huge chunk of turf, hitting Matt and showering those below in crap, which was also quite impressive…" Day 8: Saturday Walk up to Antre le Dams, 3.5 hours including 10 mins caving and a few more minutes rest at the top: James G, Andy, Mark Gour Fumant - Debs "I rigged, lots of difficult pitch heads but we didn't come back up that way so twas alright. Des' rope lengths were wrong again, resulting in Dave tying another rope onto my brilliantly rigged Y-hang which I transferred onto mid-pitch and had to prusik down." Various places - James "Very quick and rather hot walk up to Antre le Dams, found still rigged and seemingly untouched (we'd left a note and a pen at the entrance), so we grabbed the rope and other stuff left up there and zoomed back down again (rained a little bit on the way down), before driving off to join the others at Herboilly pasture, where we found some of the others playing on a slack line they had set up." "We watched and joined in playing on the slack line. Though it was lovely and warm and sunny, we could hear a thunderstorm gradually getting ever closer. After a while some more people got back, and Gover, Andy and I headed off and down the already rigged Pot de Lupe, which was: entrance pitch into shake hole type thing, short climb up with fixed rope, big descent down shaft, change rope, big descent down shaft, change rope, big descent down shaft, walk 10 metres, see sump, start heading out again. Cool. I headed out first whilst Gover and Andy derigged. As I climbed down into the shake hole thing it was a fair bit cooler than it had been earlier, and it was raining. At the top of the entrance pitch I took some car keys on a karabiner off the Y-hang, and climbed out. Probably too much watching films, but it was a good scene - our car, moved there for us by the others who had evidently left some time earlier, sat looking rather odd in a small forest clearing beneath the huge Blair Witch-style fir trees, as thunder and lightning rolled and banged and flashed and crashed constantly in the fading daylight overhead." Day 9: Sunday Took gear up to Silence: Steve, Mark, Michelle, Dave B Gear up to silence - notes from logbook Dave paid 4 x 30F for one way cable car. Walk to cave. Decisions - Debs: "Mark and translated descriptions of Scialet du Blizzard and du Silence. A decision was made to do Silence on the basis it seemed easier, unfortunately this proved wrong in the following days… I must add that I translated the end of Mark's one!" [in the actual logbook, an AltaVista babelfish style route description follows, which includes reference to "the assets of highly visible contact"] I'm Mr. Narrator - James: Seeing as our chosen cave appeared to already be rigged, we decided not to risk it and instead decided we needed to choose a new fairly big cave that we could still do in the next week. Silence was chosen. Day 10: Monday First rigging trip into S. Silence: Steve, Dave, Debs, James First trip - notes from logbook: Cable car up (with caving gear), walk to cave. Start rigging ~11:00am. 3 hrs to rig entrance. Reached -150m at 5:00pm. Turned back, soon passing 2nd group. Exit in 1.5 hours. Slow walk back (via new cave/tube)…stupid walk down splitting into numerous groups - reached car at 10:00pm. First trip - Dave B: "First day of the big 'push' to get the cave rigged. The first team was Steve, James, Debs and myself, we were planning to rif the 1st four bags of rope. Due to a route finding problem at the entrance we only managed 3 bags of rope." [in the actual logbook a small diagram of the cave appears] First trip - Debs: Sat at entrance for 3 hours waiting for Steve to rig entrance pitch, was very hot. I was impressed by the glacier in the cave but not by having to stand on it while waiting to join the skylight (short walk [squeeze])." First trip - James: "Steve had difficulty finding where exactly the cave went once down the very first bit of pitch, his route finding problems were exaggerated by the vertical nature of the cave meanign he was rigging and derigging his way up and down and around to investigate the way on. Was indeed very hot waiting at the top, and as I wa s2nd down I had already put my caving gear on, so I clipped into the rope at the head of the entrance pitch and sat halfway in trying to gain some shade, before Steve finally said that that rope was definitely free and I could come down in the cool. Sat about a fair while longer, and it was whilst waiting down here I realised my camera was not functioning properly. Ate almost all my emergency energy supply bars whilst waiting, before finally being told I could continue on down. Bizarre sequence of small pitch, abseil/walk/slide down small underground glacier, and prussic up fixed rope into short squeeze, where I lay for a while whilst Steve rigged a bit more. The cave proper then started - a number of very high pitches where you were never off the rope, merely changing over constantly. It was very cool (as in cold), and absolutely silent (as the cave name implies), which made it sort of eerie, which was c…some word which means good by which isn't "cool" because that would create confusion. Down down down change over change over change over, reverse on way back up. When we got out it was much cooler outside than it had been earlier, too, and a with light white mist, the limestone area we were walking in and the bright white moon outside was as quiet and eerie as it had been in the cave, the silence punctuated by the cries of marmots echoing round the mountains. Found a very small cave entrance nearby up on a mountainside which no one could fit down, and seemed to be a bit of a drop below. Continued on and walked down in the light of a nice sunset. Some crazy "I'll just look over here" antics meant we accidentally split into two groups, and later me and Steve split up again." [in actual logbook another small cave diagram appears] Second trip - notes from logbook: Enter cave 3:30pm. Turn around 8-8:30, surface 10:00-11:00. Rigged an extra 100m (total depth: 250m) Second trip - Laz: "We passed the others and carried on down the 20m, a nasty-ish meander, and several more pitches, we got to a second meander near a little cascade thing. By this point, Matt's light had well and truly died. We decided to head out at this point. Got out to a nice starry sky with a big moon. A lovely 2 hour walk down in the dark followed. Pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch…hardly ever off the rope!" [in actual log book big many sectioned diagram of cave appears] Day 11: Tuesday Third rigging trip: Mike, Jeff 3rd rigging trip - notes from logbook: "Went tits up". 10:30 entrance. Combined with 4th trip in cave. Exit, after full de-rig, 11:30-12:00pm. 4th rigging trip - notes from logbook: 3:00pm entrance. Reached 1st group at 4:30pm. Exit, after full de-rig, 11:30-12:00pm. Derigged: 10 bags of rope, 2 of other (rescue/food). Show cave - Debs: "Whilst Jeff+Mike then Steve, Dave and Andy attempted to rig more of Scialet du Silence we mostly sat around in the sunshine. There were probably many Yop! (eugghh!) trips. Laz, me, Michelle and Richard went to the Grotte du Choranche show cave. Brilliant light and sound extravaganza!" Show cave - Laz: "As Debs says: the light and sound extravaganza was absolutely tacky and superb! Nice straws and formations, etc. Groovy white lizard things too!!" Day 12: Wednesday Canyon Furon II: Steve, Jeff, Mike Furon II - notes from logbook: Top 13m jump at end. Getting tackle sacks - James: Very quick - cable car up, quick walk to cave and back to top of cable car with none of that caving nonsense. Everyone then spent a while in the extortionately priced café ("Altitude 2000m" it was called, suppose it doesn't have much competition), getting drinks and ice creams etc. On Richard sitting in café whilst we got tackle sacks due to sprained ankle - notes from logbook - I' d assume Laz: GIT!! Day 13: Thursday Canyoning, the interesting bit ot Furon I: Steve, Matt, Michelle, Jeff, James Canyoning - James: "Jumping off lots of waterfalls into lots of big plunge pools is fun. As mentioned earlier, the 13m jump is particularly so. At the top of the 13m jump Matt and I found some French people in swimming shorts playing about in the plunge pool at the top, they watched as we jumped off. After Matt and I swam over to meet our fellow canyoners on the rocks at the bottom we then proceeded to use jumping up and down and vague sign language to convince one of the French people up above to jump down, too." Day 14: Friday Show cave - Cuves du Sassenage - followed by McCave (TM) at McDonalds: Dave B, Laz, Debs, Andy, Richard, Michelle, James Scialet du Campsite - Dave: "What happened was rather unfortunate, messy and painful." [change of handwriting to Laz's:] "Debs had the only epic of the trip" Grotte de Gournier - notes from logbook To the end. No boat, jump at end of trip into lake.
Reports by Members
No reports have been submitted yet.
|
This site is best viewed with a screen size of 1024 x 768 or above.© 2010 York University Cave & Pothole Club all rights reserved (especially the right to eat cake).
Hyperlinks and comments submitted by members are not necessarily the views adopted by the club.
Site designed by Computer FX Ltd Hosted by cfxHosting.co.uk