The Petit family first visited Corsica in 1988, when Arnaud was 17. By then he’d already been putting up routes at home in Albertville, France, with his younger brother, Francois. The pair, along with their climbing dad and land-loving mother, were immediately smitten by the island, and Arnaud has been coming back since to establish some of Corsica’s most adventurous routes, such as Octogenese and Delicatessen (both 5.13). He has recently begun to rebolt his older lines and says that now, at age 34, he is more interested in sharing his climbs with other people than making them impossible to repeat. “I used to think that you were only climbing if there was the potential of a big fall, a broken leg, or even death,” he told me over a La Pietra (a local ale). “Now I only need to be that scared once, maybe twice, a year.”
Corsica, indeed, is not for the faint-hearted, as Arnaud had warned me via email. I had e-tackled him for the Beta: His was the only name I knew in conjunction with Corsican rock, attached to that old issue of Climbing. His reply was brief. He told me he slept in his van, not to miss the Teghie Lisce, and then gave the crucial nugget: “Please note that climbing in Corsica is sometimes not as easy as we imagine,” he wrote. “The topos are not very precise, the approach hard to find; it’s a bit remote even though it’s an island in Europe.” Bah, I scoffed. I was a trad climber from America, not la donna Grigri from Nice.
On our second day at the Bavella, we actually found our approach trail, to Pointe de L’Oiseau, the track dead obvious at the very top of the wind-scoured col. I headed up Le Temps Peau Noir (5.10a), where I supplemented four bolts with two shallow cams and three slung tufonis in 140 feet. Tufonis are scalloped sections of granite that create small pockmarks and large holes — they are the oft-photographed, defining feature of Corsica rock climbing, on which proficiency with a lasso is critical. I, unfortunately, realized my rodeo skills were lacking just as I remembered Arnaud’s email advice. I’d interpreted “not as easy as we imagine” to mean creative or challenging, like Eldorado Springs Canyon. I didn’t think it meant pulling out every trick in my trad arsenal: non-stop routefinding epics, tricky gear placements, and runouts combined with blank face climbing, overhanging dynos, and shallow cracks.
On the flip side, there are numerous excellent, safe, moderate routes at the Bavella. For example, Le Temps boasts a perfect combination of friction, crack, and overhanging face climbing. Not that it was lacking in excitement: Where else can you find a 15-foot roof full of pockets and huecos that goes at 5.10a?
I had taken the email version of Arnaud for a pushy, chauvinistic Frenchman. After meeting him in person and experiencing the reality of Corsican climbing, I realized he was just trying to be helpful. Factor in that area guidebooks (penned by the “Boss,” Jean-Paul Qullici, a longtime local and guide known for his rainbow scarf and notoriously cryptic guidebooks) do not denote recommended or dangerous climbs, few have overview maps, and approach descriptions are sparse and often incorrect, and climbing here can be brutal, even with good information. When approaching routes in the Bavella, for example, Petit carries hedge trimmers strapped onto his pack.