Our goal was to find new caves in a vierge zone in the north of Vietnam. From the capital Hanoi, it took us one week to getting all the permissions to travel to the north and to stay in the homes of the local’s. One week in Hanoi and Bay of Along was enough time to be real tourists!

After two days on a pirate boat in the Bay of Along, we finally found our Vietnamese geologist in Hanoi.  Every paper was signed and we were ready to move into the wild jungle.

The countryside in this region was really impressive and completely untouched from the tourism.

For about four hours we drove the 200km north by car, but at one point there was no more street and we had to walk the last 15km to our small village.

The people who live up there, the Ethnies, really live like in the middle age. All of them are self-supported, they eat rice and vegetables and sometimes they butcher a chicken.

During our explorations, we’ve had the chance to sleep in the house of the chief of the village. It was a big privilege to see how they manage their life, impressive…

Every day, we were looking for new caves and with the help of the locals, we found a lot of little caves from 200 to 500 meters long. But the potential wasn’t really big or impressive. The research in the middle of the jungle was a scary thing. Sometimes we found snakes near the entrances!

The caving was really unique. Nothing extreme, but when you do an expedition in a new zone, it’s like playing Lotto. You can find a 10km cave, or you can find nothing. All in all, we’ve had a lot of fun and life with the Ethnies in their village was adventure enough!

Concerning the food, it was a little adventure as well. Beside the pure rice, we never had an idea what was in our plates. And fortunately we took some good Uncle Ben’s and some snickers with us to change the tastes a little bit.

Holidays have to be holidays, and so we moved with Cédric to the Island Phu Quoc, in the very south of Vietnam. Diving, exotic fruit, seafood, cocktails at the beach… the real recovery!

I would say ‘vive’ the holidays to bring good forces and energy for a new season, with a lot of ascents!

Thank’s to Beal and Uncle Ben’s for the great support!

Teaser des 13èmes Rencontres du cinéma de… par maisondelamontagne

This year, I’ve had the pleasure to present two films on the mountain film festival in Grenoble. The first was Rock’n Cuba from Vladimir Cellier and Julien Nadiras. It was not only a pure climbing film, it was more a mix between music, culture, livestyle and for shure the climbing in Cuba. A peace of art…thank’s once more to Vlad and Julien for their unique work.

Beside climbing and mountain movies, we’ve had the pleasure to see for the first time on this festival a film about caving. The descent from the Petzl Team to the Berger, -1′000m this summer.

I’ve had a lot of fun and it was really cool to see all these films on a big screen.

Soirée du mardi 15 novembre 2011 - Rencontres du… par maisondelamontagne

Caving….it’s time to do more! In one week I will go with Cédric and three friends from Grenoble to Vietnam for exploring and discovering. I’m really psyched because I’m shure that it will be, once more, one of these incredible adventures…;-)

Well well, it’s high time to write about one of the best trip I’ve ever done in my live, the Petzl Roc Trip in Getu Valley.

In my eyes, it was a journey in an inconnu world. A world with another rhythm of live, time and people. Erwann Lelann transformed this lost place in China in a kind of a climbing paradise with a minimum of structure. Structure in China will never be the same as in Europe or America and for us foreigners, everything was just crazy and incredible.

The climbing live there was really easy and uncomplicaded. Rice, cliffs all around in the whole valley and accessible by foot, rice, all different kind of rock and routes, rice, a lot of motivaded climbers, rice, good partys and…rice?

The only thing I was missing was the blue sky and a glass of good redwine. But also without these two important factors, I was always super psyched and the climbing was like a game for me. I just wanted to climb as much as possible. First of all all the multipitch routes in the big arch, then the short and physical sportclimbing routes also in the arch, the crimper lines in Banyana’s cave and the boulderstyle routes in Buddha’s cave.

10 day’s in Getu, a lot of climbing, performances and allez-allez, but also a meeting during day and night with my friends from all around the world. Sharing with them all these crazy situations, crazy ambiances and crazy…..ah, everything was so simple.

More photos are coming soon from Sam Bié and Beau Kahler…

A special thank’s once more to all the Petzl Crew. The creation of an event like this is just incredible…