Alpine Rock Climbing Adventure: Single & Multi-Pitch Skills in Orpierre and Ubaye

NEW HOLIDAY OFFER 5% discount

To launch this fabulous new climbing weekend we are offering a 5% discount to all bookings made for 2025! Use code NEWPROMO5 when you check out!

Experience world-class rock climbing in the southern French Alps, where you'll enjoy 300 days of sunshine and tackle some of the best limestone and granite routes, including the famous Orpierre cliffs. Whether you're an indoor climber looking for your first outdoor adventure or a more experienced climber seeking variety, our fully qualified, local guides will help you progress your skills on both single and multi-pitch routes.

Holiday Highlights:

• Climb on some of the best rock in France including Orpierre amongst other sites.
• 300 days of sunshine per year - almost guaranteed good weather for climbing
• Experience climbing on quality limestone
• Progress your skills with top tips and advice from fully qualified, experienced and local guides
• All equipment provided - no travelling with heavy gear rucksacks
• Bolted routes for all levels
• Single pitch and multi-pitch climbing routes for a real adventure 

Rock Climbing in the Southern French Alps

The Southern French Alps is blessed with a unique geology resulting in some of the best rock climbing in the world. The most famous sites are Ceüse, known for its hardcore, challenging limestone routes (for advanced climbers) and Orpierre where the whole village has evolved around the sport and is pretty much dedicated to rock climbing on spectacular limestone routes. In the vicinity there are also a whole host of other rock climbing sites, each with its own character and style, making this a perfect spot for climbing, whatever your level. With our local guides we have selected some of the best sites so you can climb in the famous Orpierre and as well as off the beaten track sites in the Ubaye and the Champsaur valley and experience a variety of different rock and styles. 

The great thing about the sites we use are that there are a variety of routes so the guide will be able to adapt to suit the level of individuals in the group. The other advantage is the weather with 300 days of sun a year - climbing on warm sunny rock is pretty much guaranteed, whether you are climbing in spring, summer or autumn!

Rock climbing sites in France are all bolted so this is 'sport climbing' in a natural environment. This reduces the risk of poor gear placements and means you can concentrate on your actual climbing, rope management, belay set up and techniques and enjoy the rock 110%!

Safety

We use fully qualified high mountain guides and rock climbing instructors for this trip to ensure your safety. They will show you the most recent techniques and equipment to optimise your safety whilst climbing and reinforce your safety procedures to help you develop good habits for safe climbing. The aim is to prepare everyone with the skills to manage a multi pitch route independently and safely. The number of people per guide is maximum 8 with maximum 4 for the big multi-pitch route day. 

Who will Love this Climbing Trip?

If you have experienced climbing in some form or other, whether that be on an indoor climbing wall or at your local crag, and are craving a real rock fix in dramatic Alpine scenery, then this trip is for you. Whether you are a pure indoor wall climber looking for a first trip to discover real rock, a climber looking to progress to leading, or an experienced climber interested in joining a like minded group of passionate rock climbers, this trip is for you. You do need some experience of climbing to be sure you will enjoy the trip but don't need to be an expert. The grades at the sites vary from 4a to 8c but we will mainly be focusing on sectors with grades between 5a to 6c for this trip. Please note, these are French climbing grades and are not always comparable with indoor climbing grades and are different to US and UK grading. To understand the different grades, have a read of this article.

If you are a climbing club or group and would like a tailor made version of this trip for your club, please just get in touch for a customised quote. We can do longer trips and can include mountaineering options too.

This trip is aimed at older teenagers and adults but it is possible for children over 10 and younger teenagers with climbing experience to join the August dates during school holidays.The dates outside of school holidays are reserved for over 16s. There is no child discount as the costs are split equally between all participants.

Sustainable Tourism

To minimise our environmental impact, we stay at a single accommodation base to reduce the environmental footprint from daily linen changes, while also enhancing your comfort by avoiding the need to pack and unpack each day and we use shared transport in a modern minibus.

Your guide is a local expert, and both accommodation options are independently owned by locals, ensuring your investment supports the community directly. All our partners adhere to our sustainable tourism code of conduct.

You’ll gain insight into the culture and history of rock climbing in the region and have a chance to observe the local wildlife on the cliffs.

Additionally, we plant a tree on your behalf with Mossy Earth to help offset your carbon footprint. We’ve also calculated the trip’s greenhouse gas emissions using Carmacal, considering travel, accommodation, and activities, so you can see the full carbon footprint report.

Itinerary

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You need to get to Gap which is accessible on public transport (train and bus). 

By train it is accessible via an overnight sleeper from Paris. The closest TGV stations are Aix-en-Provence and Grenoble, both of which have buses or local trains to finish the journey to Gap. You can plan your train journey using the Oui SNCF website. This works from all major European cities. 

There is also a regular direct bus from Marseille airport if you plan on flying here.

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