Routes described:
Petite Roche is west-northwest facing and perfect for warm days. Start early and climb in the shade until 2pm-4pm, depending on the route. The climbing is generally steep, and the rock is featured with plenty of holds and feet. The routes described here are sustained, and harder than what a cursory glance at the topo would perhaps make you think.
The routes should be avoided on days when thunderstorms threaten as after a certain point it would be quite difficult, not to mention expensive, to bail by rappeling. Count on having to get to the top even in case of bad weather.
The start of the routes
My topo for the three routes we did
Sous la griffe de Lucifer, 450m ED-, 6c+>6b+, 14 pitches
Gear: 11 draws max for the pitches plus something for belays. Two 50 m ropes. I would avoid hauling. Climb with a small backpack or clip water and shoes to the harness.
FA: Bruno Béatrix & Bruno Martel, 1987. Rebolted in 2013, and a few bolts added at the same time.
Unusually sustained and steep face climbing for 13 pitches. No cracks or any rock that touches the back of the hand. In the shade until around 2.30pm.
The route starts at the memorial plaque to Bruno Martel that his daughters put in place:
“You who passes by, remember Bruno Martel and his love for The Gillards. To our dad, with eternal love”
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| Memorial Plaque at the base of Elsa and Lucifer |
The first pitch has some average rock but not many bolts so it pays to be careful. Overall the bolting is minimalistic. Count on having to climb up to six meters between the bolts if the climbing is 6a or easier.
Sometimes the next bolt is hidden behind a feature, and if it is far away you will not always spot it from below. As it is possible to climb more or less everywhere, put yourself in Bruno and Bruno's shoes and try to find the easiest climbing and the next bolt will appear eventually.
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| Here's J. on the 6th pitch |
Pitch 5 to 11 were very good. We found the ninth pitch (6c) the hardest. A good pitch on a leftward slanting traverse. Pitch eleven is nominally the crux pitch (6c+), with lots of silica bands on grey limestone giving small crimps everywhere that are a pleasure to climb on. Pitch eleven is fairly slabby and can be climbed mostly on the feets, something that is quite welcome after ten pitches of sustained climbing!
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| Near the belay of pitch eleven. |
Pitch 12 and parts of pitch 13 goes through what in the vernacular is called “pouding”, i.e. conglomerate. Neither are particularly sustained which is a nice change from the limestone and flint lower on the route.
The descent is a leisurely stroll down along a single footpath that starts at directly at the top of the route and leads down the shoulder to the hamlet of Jouves. A 2 km hike along the main road leads back to the parking.
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| From the decent towards Jouves. The impressive looking wall on the horizon is Pic de Bure |
Miroir Tectonique 450 m, ED, 7b>6c A0
Gear: 14 draws max for the pitches plus something for belays. Two 50 m ropes. Hauling a bag is easy.
FA: Bruno Béatrix & Martin Hurtaj, 2018
After having climbed Lucifer, we were still keen on more. A friend of Julia recommended the newer route Miroir Tectonique. I couldn't find any topo for the route, but there was a written description on camptocamp.org, which more than sufficed as it doesn't cross any route. So really it is just a question of following the plentiful bolts.
Come to think about it Miroir Tectonique could be an easier route than Sous la griffe de Lucifer for many visitors to Céüse. Miroir has a lot more bolts than Lucifer, and the hard parts are overhanging with pretty good holds. The only thing that requires a bigger tool set than normal sport climbing is that the route goes through some questionable rock; on almost every pitch some holds were moving and we broke a few footholds along the route. Take care to choose solid holds over good holds.
The route starts 50 m to the right of the common first pitch of Elsa and Lucifer. The first pitch is easily identified by the large roofs that caps the 2nd pitch. Start on the plumb line straight down from the left edge of the roof.
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| Pitch 1 of Miroir |
The first two pitches were nothing remarkable, but the very short 3rd pitch is easy and fun in a spectacular position.
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| Pitch 3 of Miroir. Around the roof and up right. |
The fifth pitch is fairly long, at least 40m, and goes through slightly overhanging yellow rock. Sustained climbing, but a bit easier than the 7a+ given in the description we had — more like 7a I think.
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| Pitch 5 7a/+. Note the haul rope. |
After the fifth pitch there is an easy-ish pitch leading up to a rotten terrass, traversing the terrass was not as terrifying as I though it would be, as there were a few bolts placed along the pitch. Protection on a super-easy pitch? Modern times indeed!
If we found the fifth pitch easy, the eight pitch felt hard for its grade. There is an aid-point on the pitch (the only point of aid on the entire route) consisting of a fixed sling above the small roof. I had a quick look around and I am pretty sure that it is possible to free climb past the sling at a grade below 8a. So those who can afford to fire off 7c+ one-move wonders onsight in the middle of a long day, and admittedly there should be many of those, should definitely refrain from pulling on the sling.
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| The 10th pitch ends with a traverse, so haul to the last bolt. |
After the tough but short eight pitch there are four 6c/+ pitches in a row completely free of easy parts. The tenth pitch had a rather mandatory move near the belay, and the twelfth pitch was particularly steep and good but watch out for loose holds. At this time the air really started to heat up as well, with temperatures in the high twenties, no wind and high humidity. Stupidly we had only one-and-a-half litre of water between the two of us. That would likely had been ok a normal day, but it was a hot as the weather forecast had promised.
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| In the sun on pitch 12 |
The upper parts of the route doesn't get into the sun until just before 4pm, by which time most normal team should be on the top. Not us though. We were on the twelfth belay.
It was loose holds on the thirteenth pitch that ended the dream of a clean onsight for me. I broke off half a crimp on the fingery climbing at the start, but managed to hold on. That was all for nothing as I fell on the last hard move of the pitch when breaking a foothold... At least, that is what I'm telling myself. If I had a smidgen more margin it would have been fine.
I was totally broken by this point. Luckily Julia cheated her way up the pitch and thus had some energy left to lead the last 6c-pitch in full sun and temperature around 30 degrees. I somehow managed to also follow clean.
Les premiers pas d'Elsa 430 m, ED, 7a+>6c
Gear: 12 draws max for the pitches plus something for belays. Two 50 m ropes. Hauling a bag is easy.
FA: Catherine Boroch & Bruno Martel, 1999
After two routes on the Gillardes, my better half had it with the wall. Suffering from a bit of monomania I wanted to do Premier pas d'Elsa as well as it is included in both Parois de Légende and Mussato's book Itinéraires d'un grimpeur gâté. A Dutch climber I know was in the area and I suspected that he could be convinced; alas, he had already moved on to more proper alps, but luckily he knew Erik, a Belgian climber who was in the area and was keen.
Of the three routes I did on Petite Roche, this was the hardest overall. The crux pitch on Elsa is quite a bit easier than the crux on Miroir, and not harder than the second hardest pitch on Miroir, but Elsa has a lot more volume of hard climbing. For a team willing to pull on a draw or two, Miroir must be miles easier to climb. Miroir also a lot more bolts to actually pull on.
I met Erik in the morning 7.15AM at the parking, and after spending half a minute on discussing the rack we went off.
The route starts with the same first pitch and a half as Sous la griffe de Lucifer, but then continue straight up with a second pitch that was closer to 6c than 6b. Pretty demanding climbing with some runouts early in the morning as well.
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| After pitch 2, we were already awake |
The French climbing establishment insist on this slightly quixotic fight against dissemination of information outside of local topos. After having had Rockfax and Tmms Verlag's topos in the cross hairs, their new pet hate seems to be camptocamp.org. As Mistral is for noobs and Rockfax tends to have errors like having the wrong number of pitches on routes, having the pitches in wrong order, or simply drawing routes on a pic of the wrong mountain I never considered using them for information and thus never really cared either way. Camptocamp, on the other hand, is a real gold mine with up-to-date user generated information about routes on the Continent, the Maghreb and the Levant. Specifically I learned from comments on there that there were four hangers missing along the route, so I went to Approach in Gap and bought 5 hangers the day before climbing.
The fourth anchor was the first that missed a hanger, and since the hanger in place had a small hole with a sling already threaded through it I could not get any of our crabs to fit, so I was quite happy to have a wrench and a hanger in the harness and nuts in the shirt pocket...
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| Erik near the fourth belay. A team on Miroir's yellow rock in the background |
The fifth pitch had also a missing hanger, on the crux bit. Luckily Erik had margin and put in in place from a free climbing stance. Luckily it was also quite easy for the grade. One of only two pitches I felt was on the easy side. Most pitches felt quite hard for their given grade...
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| Erik just about to add a hanger to a bolt on pitch five |
Starting on pitch 5 the climbing got very good as well. Basically everything from pitch 5 to pitch 13 is brilliant. Pretty solid rock as well.
Erik towards the end of the sixth pitch.
The eight (crux) pitch was particularly good... Overall I think that a good level of endurance is needed for the route. There are no slab pitches and almost everything from pitch 6 and onwards is either vertical or slightly overhanging (this part of the crag was the site of France's biggest rope-jump in 2019) with very few easy sections.
The ninth pitch was a piece of cake, but I struggled a lot on the tenth pitch, and close to the belay I was pretty close to falling on the section here:
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| Tricky traverse on pitch ten. |
The eleventh pitch goes through the overhang just above Erik in the pic above. In my experience it is exceedingly rare to climb steeply overhanging rock with 300+ meter of pure air beneath the feet at such an amiable grade (7a). Partly explained by the fact that it is not a very long section.
The route finishes with some brilliant but confusing climbing on a band of conglomerate. Take care not to end up on the belay of Lucifer after the 6c+ conglomerate on pitch 12. Even though I had done Lucifer a week earlier I managed to end up there, before I realised where I was. The real belay after pitch 12 consists of a bolt and a piton, and is not in a small cave, if you are wondering.
Overall a brilliant route that is harder to link than a cursory glance at the topo would suggest. Most pitches are very sustained, and the easier parts are quite runout. In my opinion, the global grade of ED is well deserved.
Getting there
Park at 44°45'03" North and 5°53'01" East, some 2 km north of Saint-Disdier in Dévoluy, on a big pullout. Walk south across the stone bridge and descent fixed ropes on the right bank of Souoise river. Follow the footpath downstream along the river, then up right via a steep scree slope to the base of the wall.
The parking for the climbing is just a kilometer south of La source des Gillardes, the second largest spring in France (after la Fontaine de Vaucluse).
