Event de Foussoubie & Rieussec

Chris, Damian, Jasmine, Maz, Scott, Tom

Day 4 and our initial plan of Midroi was thwarted after reading in a French guidebook that the sump just inside the entrance is closed October to June and we realised all the trip reports we’d read were from the blazing summertime. Not fancying travelling too far, we decided on a trip to the bottom entrance of Foussoubie and a play around the area, especially as Chris and Damian were keen on a gorge hike and seeing the Pont d’Arc. 

A short 15 minute drive got us to the Blachas campsite entrance, right at the start of the gorge, and we parked below some nauseating overhanging cliffs and donned our neoprene for an aquatic day. The rock is Swiss-cheesey here with little entrances everywhere. We wandered through the campsite along the river, with the gorge’s walls reaching up, and Maz told us about the huge ‘post office rock’ in the middle of the river – in his paddling guide seasons over here he used to tell the kids it was the Ardeche’s sorting office.

The path continued past the campsite and before long we were at a series of entrances in the cliff face. The first was a shelter, and the lower one a gloopy walking height arch where we bumped into Chris and Damian who’d had a quick scout already before heading onwards with their hike.

We first headed into the obvious main continuation heading down to the water, where an atmospheric little swim got us to a sump – and at first thought this would be the end of our adventure. But on the way back out we spotted another obvious passage heading up through some mud which headed to a chamber. From here a branch spat us out at the top of a 10m scramble down – Jasmine and Scott headed down to a watery chamber with no real way on. Back up the scramble and we tried the other branch, which led via a series of waist-deep wades through different chambers and eventually to the aven at the bottom of the Foussoubie through-trip – good to know for the future. onwards from here a series of wades brought us to a nice low-roofed swim that was good easy ceiling-sucking to get us through to the end of this branch. 

We headed back out, taking a tiny oxbow full of sulphorous mud to stink everything up, before a dip back in the main passage to clean off. After returning to sunlight, we headed a bit further along the path to where it turned into via along a rock wall. With the ropes incomplete we turned back, Jasmine and Scott having a few quick leaps into the fast-flowing Ardeche and having a mess around in the eddies. We clambered back and headed back to the campsite to begin hiking up for the Rieussec, a supposedly easygoing bit of canyoning fun. We began following a path up but quickly realised it was continuing up the mountain rather than up into the valley, and turned back taking a different branch down to the Rieussec stream. 

This was rugged progress before we finally started to reach the odd pool where we had a bit of a jump and drifted in the flow. A little higher up and the grassy banks turned into high solid walls and it seemed we’d reached the bottom of the canyoning section. A line of pools and short pitches stretched above us, with sporting amounts of water chucking down them. The guide we’d read said ‘This canyon only flows a few days a year…but if it flows, given the size of the potholes and the violence of the water movements, it can be extremely dangerous’. Obstacles that would’ve been climbs down into still pools were now churning pitches, and Scott couldn’t spot any bolts. 

Nevertheless we followed a path up the steep valley side hoping to reach the top end, but this finished at an exposed cliff scramble. At this point we’d already had a fair adventure and with the lemons stacking up we decided to just turn back and make a gorge walk of the river back down to the campsite, exploring a couple of small riverside caves along the way. 

Back at the cars, sunburnt and itchy from riverwater, we dekitted and headed to Intermarche for goodies.