Voi Normalle (easy route)

Approach

From parking lot, short 10-15 min hike up through forrest, bear slightly left (east). Can be slightly difficult to find. Look for weak path and couple of small red paint marks. Start of climbing is in the couloir between the eastmost pucelle and the small knife-blade to her east side.

Route Description

The route is composed of 5-7 pitches with short walking/scarabling in between. Depending on confidence level you can use dynamic belays for the walk/scramble parts. The climbing is very well protected with many bolts and quite varried (from memory - hope I get it right):
Pitch 1: Traverse around base of eastmost virgin
Pitch 2: Short chimeny. slippery - in particular when wet, but with several holes for positive grips.
From either walk path around or stay close to wall for a scramble through a small tunnel.
'crux' is towards end where a pitch climbs a 4-5m wide end-of-alley. Left corner has good grips but is vertical and may be pumpy for beginners (medium rock-climbers will find it easy). Midway up traverse to right side. Right side from bottom offers an interesting very flatwalled crack for more experienced climbers. Last pitch leads to the top, where lunch can be had while admiring the views. Sometimes rather windy, so bring a windblocking jacket.

Route can be rapelled (reverse climb traverse) if you have to bail before top.

Descend:
Walk to far (south) end of summit, where a bolt allows rapelling. From here several options:
1) Rapell to the bottom on left (east) side.
1a) descend lots of scree around eastmost virgin to where climb started - carefull of slipping in upper part of gulley (I have not tried this and can not give precise directions)
1b) walk south along the side of the ridge from which you rapelled, first down, then back up to where the ridge turns to forrest. Option: Interesting (but only protected by one bolt) balance traverse on a 40 cm wide slab detached by 10 cm from the main wall. Otherwise just walk around.\
2) Rapell straight south to saddle point (often very windy), reclimb the ridge, follow ridge. One more 4-5m high down-climb, then back up - this part difficult to protect for last person, so team must have two confident climbers - the first and the last. Walk down ridge to forrest, where you join with option 2. Hike first slightly up forrest under/around a fallen tree. Look out for obvous path descending to the right (called sentier geologique a bit furtehr down). Descend this path through forrest back to car park.

Essential Gear

Route can be climbed in boots, but I recomend climbing shoes. Helmet obligatory as there are often small stones that fall from belay stances. Harnes, rope and quick-draws, rapell device. No trad-pro required.

Miscellaneous Info

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