Quite possibly the single largest physical achievement I feel I've accomplished next to running a full marathon: Canyoning. For those who are unfamiliar with this activity, it involves hiking up a mountain and then zip-lining, rappelling, hiking, swimming, and jumping off of waterfalls to get down.
This summer, I spent about two months in France, partaking in an opera program called the Franco-American Vocal Academy. It took place in Périgueux, France; located in in the Southwestern region of Périgord. As the program progressed and, inevitably, friendships were formed, much talk circulated about what we would be doing with our break the second week of August. Shall we go to Paris? Switzerland? Bordeaux? Barcelona? Way back in the first couple of weeks of the program, my friend Chris Lopez showed me a website detailing canyoning in Interlochen, Switzerland; needless to say, I was hooked. I had never heard of it before but once I knew it existed and how close we were to it; I needed to have it! We fought, and pondered, and fought, and pondered, until we reached the conclusion that going to Switzerland over our break was simply not within our price range or within the time constraints of the break. There was, however, an overwhelmingly large interest amongst other company members in driving Southwest, across the border to Barcelona, Spain. After this thought brewed for a little while, it dawned on Chris and I that we would be driving STRAIGHT through the Pyrenees mountains, which (of no coincidence) straddle the border between Spain and France. Low and behold, we looked online and found that there were, indeed, several companies in that offered canyoning in the Pyrenees! A few e-mails later (okay, it's quite a bit more complicated than a few e-mails, but the struggle we had to go through to get this all set up isn't really important to the story) Chris, our friend Suzanne, and myself were on a train headed South, to the town of Tarascon-sur-Ariège.
We ended up taking a train South to Toulouse, France, where we got off for some sight seeing, food, and a quick nights rest.
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| La Gare, Toulouse, France |
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| Carousel we found on our self-guided walking tour of Toulouse (in search of food, most importantly) |
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| Suzanne and Chris at a fountain in the city of Toulouse, France |
The next morning were on a train before 6:00 A.M. and headed further South to the Pyrenees mountains, stopping just short of the French-Spanish border. It was obvious we were up in the mountains at this point. The air was brisk, fresh, and misty. The city of Tarascon-sur-Ariège was a cute little mountain village with a few cafés, a bank (of which we ended up needing to take a visit to), and a gorgeous view.
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| Tarascon-sur-Ariège |
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| Tarascon-sur-Ariège |
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| Getting artsy-fartsy in Tarascon-sur-Ariège |
Shortly after arriving in Tarascon, we called a taxi to the train station and drove a short jaunt higher into the mountains to the even-smaller-village of Niaux, at the Pisciculture de la courbière, which was our rendezvous for the canyoning
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| View at the rendezvous in Niaux, France |
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| Suzanne and Chris; obligatory thumbs up! Niaux, France |
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| Suzanne and I at the rendezvous, Niaux, France |
After a short wait our guides arrived. Our group was assigned to our guide Yann; a goofy character who gave us our safety instructions in a sort of amalgamation between French and English.
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| Our canyoning guide, Yann. Keep in mind: this was the man we entrusted our lives and safety to... |
We geared up, were joined by another family, and hopped into a van that drove us quite a bit further into the mountains to the village of Artigues, where they have a lovely self-entitled canyon. There were apparently several canyons in the area to chose from and it just depended on the size and experience of the group. Since our group was made up of mostly youngins, they took us to an intermediate canyon despite this being the first time canyoning for all of us.
We arrived out our destination, gathered the remainder of our loose gear, and took what turned out to be quite a hike up to the top of the mountain. Unfortunately from this point forward we did not have our photographic equipment so our only photographs are the ones taken from Yann's waterproof camera. The view from the hike up was incredible! We continued to hike further and further (passing what seemed like several very old stone huts which were now ruins consumed by the mountain shrubbery) until we reached the mouth of the canyon. We sat down, ate our lunches, then the canyoning commenced. The canyoning consisted of a few hours worth of amazing sights, waterfall jumps, natural luging, swimming, hiking, rappelling, and zip-lining. The water was COLD. We all wore cold-water suits but the shock of the water after a 27foot drop off a waterfall still got to you anyways.
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| Suzanne at the canyon |
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| One of the mid-level jumps in the canyon |
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| The group at the end of the canyon |
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| Chris and I at the bottom of the canyon |
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| Suzanne has successfully conquered the canyon! |
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| Left to right: Myself, Chris, and Suzanne somewhere within the canyon |
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| Chris and Suzanne climbing out of one of the little pools |
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| Suzanne rappelling |
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| Either very excited or very nervous to zip-line down... The two often go hand-in-hand, yes? |
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| Zip-lining down, either high, tired, the hypothermia was setting in, or just mid-blink... Could be any combo of the four as well I suppose |
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| Myself rappelling down to the zip-line point |
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| Again, myself rappelling down to the zip-lining point |
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| Chris before zip-lining |
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| Chris preparing to zip-line |
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| Left to right: Suzanne, Chris, and I navigating the slipper rocks towards a waterfall |
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| Left to right: Myself, Suzanne, and Chris standing under a waterfall at the bottom of the canyon. I was surprised by how strong the water was falling from just a mid-level waterfall like this one! |
When we were finished with our adventure we returned to a neighboring village for food and rest (and also hypothermia recovery if you were me... I hate having awful thermal-regulation).
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| View from our hotel in the Pyrenees |
We woke up early the next morning, had our breakfast, and continued our Southward journey to Barcelona, Spain!
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| Chris, Suzanne and I in the back of our vehicle en route to Barcelona, Spain |
Best wishes,
-Jerron Jorgensen
