Corsica, indeed, is rugged — both in terms of terrain and people. The island has a tortured history of occupation by Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Moors, and Genoese, and since the 1700s has belonged to France. Nonetheless, Corsica has long tried to assert its independence and as recently as 2003 had a referendum for autonomy that only lost by a narrow margin. Corsica has its own language, a blend of French and Italian; a propensity for salty meats and cheeses; and personality, wherein most Corsicans identify themselves as “first Corsican, and then French.” On road signs marking small mountain towns and villages, French names had been shot with bullets and/or spray-painted through with an “X,” the Corsican spelling (“Corti” instead of “Corte,” for example) scrawled beneath. According to my Lonely Planet guidebook, the “official” resistance movement in Corsica, called the Fronte di Liberazione Naziunale di a Corsica, is small and fractured and has “a strict hands-off policy with regards to tourists themselves.” Indeed, we saw little sign of the “official” movement, though the “unofficial” alliance with the resistance was everywhere — most of the Corsicans we met were recognizable as supporters by their propensity for camouflage pants.
After a week in Corsica, swelling with confidence, we decided to return to our first day’s nemesis: the Teghie Lisce. Our goal was Resurrection des Roses, the route Petit had been on the day we first met. We redpointed the approach and made it to the base in record time. Above us lay one of the more perfect 5.12 finger cracks I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, the first pitch was a wet chasm with rosebushes spurting from its depths. A week before, while strangled in the vegetation below, I’d seen Petit methodically smearing on the crystalline granite with what looked like a perfectly nice offwidth less than an arm’s reach away. Now, as I did battle with the first pitch, one leg raked by thorns and smeared in blood, Petit’s face-climbing technique began to make sense. The bolts lining the right edge of the crack also helped … a lot.
Above the offwidth lay the money pitches: two 90-foot sections of vertical and overhanging 5.12 granite. Bolts lined the all-too-perfect, 180-foot finger crack where solid gear placements could easily be found. The irony was not lost on us — the day before, while lassoing hollow tufonis, we’d prayed for bolts.
As obstinate American trad climbers, we felt obligated to protect the tips crack with the triple sets of micro-cams and RPs we’d been lugging around. Our cams and nuts held fine as we fell past the unclipped hangers, and Resurrection des Roses is still awaiting an onsight, gear-placing ascent.
Climbers like Arnaud, who have Corsican climbing wired, will do a route on the 1,000-foot Teghie Lisce and on its higher sibling massif, the 1,000-foot Punta u Corbu, in a day. Punta u Corbu is home to one of Corsica’s more famous climbs, Jeef (5.11+), often photographed because of its dramatic, jutting tufonis and feet-cutting crux. While I was researching the trip, photos of Jeef, and Jeef only, were the sole evidence I could find of Corsican climbing in more than a decade’s worth of magazines. Petit and his brother, Francois, established Jeef in 1992 as a memorial for their friend Jeef Lemoine, who died while climbing the north face of Les Drus. The day we went to Punta u Corbu, Petit was returning with Frederik and Evrard for another ascent, to be followed by a quick romp up another eight pitches on the Teghie Lisce. The French climbers took us under their wing for the complex, hour-long approach, and as we jogged to keep up with the “Alpine Cat” over wet slabs and around waterfalls, we were thankful for the help.