On May 19, 20 and 21, 2024 we climbed at Jardins d’Ete crag, also known as Summer Gardens. This crag has many interesting moderate climbs that are well bolted. It is close to the road and the sun doesn’t hit it until noon at this time of year. In the photo above, the crag is on the right.
This crag is a short walk past the Sous La Via crag where we climbed the day before. It has about 14 routes and we decided to start at the left and work our way to the right, climbing as many as we could. We didn’t quite get all of them but we climbed most of the routes there over three days.
Summer Gardens (Jardins d’Ete) area has very flat ground with rocks lined up in rows. The rows form squares and rectangles and we wonder if there used to be homes here or if this area was prepared for homes that were never built. Either way, it makes a nice place to set up for climbing.
Day 1
Our first four routes were on this cliff. Climbing the lighter, smooth part at the bottom was fun. There were some deep holes, some big enough to get a whole hand in, some only big enough to jam a finger or two. If you zoom in, you can see our quickdraws on the bolts going up one of the routes.
The tricky part today was the route that went over the dark bulge about halfway up. It was tough to get above it. I tried many times and couldn’t quite pull it off. Dan went up after me and he got it done.
We had a visitor today. It was the largest centipede to ever walk the earth. Well, probably not the largest but darn it was huge. That is our climbing rope beside it. I wish I had thrown a shoe or something down for scale but I was so appalled and yet intrigued by this thing that I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It crawled to the cliff and climbed into a deep hole in the rock near the bottom.
This is me at the top of the fourth climb. I was able to climb over the bulge on this one.
This is me on the fifth climb. The sun is getting close. Once it breaks over the top of the cliff and shines on the rock, it gets very hot.
We managed to get a sixth climb done before 11:30 when the sun hit the wall. We were happy to have done six climbs on our first day at this crag.
Day 2
The next day, we were back at the Summer Gardens to continue our work climbing every route from left to right.
The routes were longer, a little more challenging and a lot more fun.
Dan is setting up his rappel at the top of one of the routes.
We called it a day in time to see a herd of these little black goats coming down from the hills to drink at the river. I think these are the cutest of the herd animals we saw in the area!
Day 3
Our third day at this crag, we were joined by a dog. It hung out for about an hour, never got too close. I was glad I had kept our lunch inside the backpack.
We climbed a few more of these high routes and called it a day. These routes require a 70 meter rope.
Another piece of gear we used here was the Kong Panic Draw. The top section of these routes was a bit run out and these draws allowed us to reach up and clip from a lower stance.
We enjoyed the routes at this crag but after three days, we decided to move on to a different area.
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