Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Ceuse - Neil Mawson



What a place. I always forget how great it is to be there. Loads of brilliant routes on perfect rock in a stunning position. You couldn't design a cliff any better, except for there's not enough time in the shade for good climbing conditions - there's always something.

I've been to Ceuse numerous times before but never for a long trip, and this was no different. 6 climbing days, not quite enough time to get stuck into anything really hard so I decided to go onsighting. There was loads of classic mid to high 7's I'd never tried so I set about trying to do as many as I could. You don't get chance in Britain to onsight much due to the rock not lending it's self to onsighting and there's just not the number of quality routes in the 7's to go at.

We were lucky and got perfect weather every day with no clouds to be seen. Far too hot to climb in the sun so we waited for the shade to arrive each day or climbed at Cascade sector in the morning. I soon got used to the hour walk in and the long routes and did two of the best routes I've ever done, la Femme Noire and Mirage. I've felt my onsight climbing has taken a back seat the last year or so while I've been concentrating on redpointing, so it was great to take this opportunity to enjoy climbing onsight and have no stress of trying to redpoint anything.


Lowing off Mirage after a successful onsight

I'm back in Britain now and it's back to redpointing. My first day out and I managed to do a route called Snatch on the Cornice. I'd tried the route before going to Ceuse and with that now finished off I'm keen to get back on my projects up in Yorkshire, as long as they're still dry!

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