Marietta Uhden has made what may be the first female ascent of THE classic La Rose et le Vampire, hard and polished 8b, at Buoux. This is the route that Jerry Moffatt loved - to quote CragX (at http://www.cragx.com/articles/issue07/the_rose/) - "so much he used to do laps on it". It's a very manufactured route (lots of intentionally chipped holds), "a mixture of powerful technical sections followed by ballistic crimp sequences". It includes a crossover move on manufactured holds that is generally viewed as the crux; Moffatt said it is such a lovely move that it doesn't matter than it's artificial. We'll have to wait to learn what Uhden thought of it.
Sounds good. Seems to be the french way of doing thing; develop a crag, it becomes fashionable, everyone goes there until it becomes really polished, then everyone moves on.
In fairness its not just the French who have abandoned it, there used to be as many foreigners as french there and as others have said it's deserted now, the routes are still fantastic. This also happens in this country, how many people do you see at Runyons Corner these days...;-)
Sorry, fair comment. It just seems more prevalent in France than here for example, where there is a love of esoterica and people seems to accept knackered out crags more readily.
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