Vercors Week: Travel and Day 1 – l’Olette

Connor, Jason, John, Miranda, Scott, Steve, Tom, Yolanda

Tom, Scott and Connor met in Staveley at 3pm on the Friday and began their 928 mile drive. Scott steamed us down to Folkestone, but the bloody Worldwide Computer Problem had mucked things up and our shuttle was delayed a few hours – enough for a few stolen minutes of sleep on the departure lounge benches. Tom took over from Calais around 5:30am for the drive down France, powered by zero-sugar energy drinks.

Jason had opted for rail travel, and the rest were up early doors on Saturday for a flight to Lyon. They picked up their hire car and we met at the rendezvous hypermarket around 1pm with only 10 minutes between us. We stocked up in the rat-riddled Carrefour with plenty of goodies then headed to Bourgoin-Jailleu station to collect a ponderous Jason, found perched reading below a tree, along with his fantastic 70s rucksack which slotted nicely on top of Scott in the back.

Onwards to our base for the week, a gîte in Lans-en-Vercors. While it had never probably been intended to be a caver’s hut, it did a pretty good job of being one, with the correct amount of trees for airing all our gear out on and doing occasional SRTree in. A hosepipe, a shed, and a luxury ‘WC GRINDER’ toilet which electrically mulched anything you could shit in it, what more could we need?

Grotte de l’Olette

As a warm-up day to prepare for the main event tomorrow, we thought this seemed a great option and was minutes away at the top end of the Furon Gorge. Tom and Connor headed up for a scout of the facilities and the reportings were good, so we went back to pick up the others. The approach is fun, heading steeply up from the layby to a lovely ledge that whirls you round before heading further up the woodland to the top entrance, a ‘geological curiosity’, as the book describes it.

We descended into the large scenic sinkhole, with the waterfall cascading in. A dead snake gave us a fright, I believe it was a Boa Constrictor. We split off exploring various nooks and crannies before deciding on the biggest available hang for the next descent. Never quite leaving daylight, we headed down past a fairly wide deviation which was good practise, and onto a ledge high in the bottom entrance portal. A cracking training venue and a good introduction to the area.

Connor rigged up a guided ab line and we took it in turns to zip across it, before some headed back to the car while others practised rigging, ascending with a pantin and other bits and pieces.

After heading back home, we got our Sunday bests on and headed over to the Berger basecamp for the briefing meeting. Being the only Brits we just about got enough scraps of info after the main French briefing to piece together what was expected of us, and wrote our plans on the big pad. Some bought the t-shirts (a little presumptively) and we chatted to some European nutters about their digs, particularly a German chap who showed us their highly efficient and well engineered spoil cablecar. Then it was back over the pass to our Gite for some careful alcohol consumption mixed with nervous packing.