Oh yeah, that's what getting pumped feels like...

Finally made it climbing again. It's the second time I've been on a rope since we last ice-climbed!?!?! Visited a great gym just outside of Paris. I remember Guillaume saying that nobody checks that you can actually climb in France, and that certainly seems to be the case here. As long as you can pay, you can climb... (Ha, I dug through the archives, and this is actually the place G mentioned!)

Can never remember how to convert grades, so we started off with a a 5a and a 5b+ so I could get dialed in. These felt like 5.7-5.8, which agrees with Wikipedia's handy conversion table. Can't really remember the sequence of climbs, but we mixed toproping (5c, 6a, 6b+) with some leading (5c, 6a+). I pretty quickly ran out of gas, and got rudely spit off of a 6a+ at the third clip, but I managed to finish the rest. One thing G didn't mention was that on many lead routes they have autolocking biners at the anchors. Try threading your rope through that with one hand when you're pumped! I was advised next time to bring a sling for the desperation clip...

The place is great. Big open spaces, tall walls and a good mix of routes with weird features like cracks thrown in for fun. Definitely try to make it back again.

Liability anyone?

Went to MurMur with Muriel. It is on the opposite side of town when compared to Antrebloc. We were trying to figure out where we were when we cam outside of the Metro, when someone said: "are you going to MurMur?" Thank God, he saved us as this is another place we would never have found.

Very nice gym, with some uber long overhanging routes. At the entrance they asked us if we were autonomous. Autonomous? Sure we said, so they make us pay and in we go. You can lead anywhere in the gym. There are ropes on the ground everywhere for you to grab. There are orange ones (for the shorter walls) and blue ones (for the higher walls). So there we are, and Muriel doesn't know how to lead. No problem, I just taught her. She did great. She climbed a 3, a 4, and a 4c/5a; as well as some 5s on top rope. I climbed some 5s and 6s on lead, and I finished with a great 6c super long slab on TR.

BTW as if its not dangerous enough already, the ground is like in a school gymnasium, not mats, hard as rock... Its a miracle there's not one death a week at that place.