In reply to Robert Durran:
> What UK grade would you give it? Good rock? How tricky was the descent to find and descend?
I thought E3 at the time (1999), although maybe no single pitch was more than (hard) E2 on its own. I agreed with the guidebook that the pitch near the top (given VII-) was the hardest, although the French site gives that pitch 6b and the VI+ lower down 6b+. Generally good rock; I think the only pitch that I found worrying in that respect was the 4th one (VI-/6a ) up a chimney, which was probably about E1/2 5a.
We did the described descent - ie abbing down Le Jardin Secret, which we had done a couple of days earlier. It would be quite hard to find from above on first acquaintance; you walk down gradually steepening slabs to find the first abseil point, with nothing much to indicate that you're in the right place. I took the precaution of building a small cairn at the top of the slabs when we finished Jardin, and was very glad of it after RF. The summit plateau is very complicated and the few hundred metres from the top of RF to Jardin took a couple of hours; we kept meeting ravines, having to backtrack or abseil in and climb out, make deviations - all very time consuming, and it was starting to get dark when we reached the abseils. I would certainly recommend doing what we did by climbing Jardin first, sorting the abseils so you can do them in the dark if necessary, and having a bit of a wander around at the top to find some landmarks.
I notice that Barraud is between the two routes and has its own abseil; maybe it's harder to find from above, or perhaps doesn't quite top out.
