Verdon, France - Climbing in the Grand Canyon

The Verdon is renowned for its aesthetic, chemically-pure limestone—150 million years in the making—that has high concentrations of calcium carbonate and nearly no clay impurities. The underlying limestone is bone-white, but the walls more often present themselves as blue-gray due to calcium ions that have migrated toward the surface and formed a patina armor that is highly resistant to erosion. In climber-speak, totally “bomber” rock. For example, even a tiny 5mm protruding edge of patina could easily support a climber’s body weight.

From a distance, the slabs appear impossibly blank. The famous alpinist from Marseilles, Georges Livanos (1923-2004), who climbed many significant routes throughout the Alps in the 1940s and ’50s, is said to have been the first climber to visit the Verdon. Yet when Livanos passed through the Gorge by foot and looked up to inspect the walls, he dismissed the entire area for being cursed with wretched, blank rock that would never be climbed. Not by anyone.

Andrew Bisharat