Just got back from a month in the Alps and in between climbing big lumps of rock, I checked out a gneiss venue near Sallanches called Medonnet and a granite venue in the Chamonix valley called les Bossons (yeah its just below the Bossons glacier).
Both are worth checking out if you're in the area and make good altenatives to the usual Col de Montets curcuit. Medonnet in particular tinkled my bell. Lovely boulders in lovely cool woodland, even climbable on hot days in August. Not many really hard problems but luckily the grades are all over the place (mainly utter sandbags) so a 6c can be desperate. Some great lines though and a useful location out of the higher mountains.
Les Bossons was again a nice venue in cool woodland. Plenty of granite boulders but not that many problems of 7a or above. However, again the grades are total sandbags on the whole. Unfortunately, the place in my opinion was rather spoiled by chipping/drilling of holds. Many of the harder problems are simply steep blank walls with drilled stereo pockets or footedges. There was however a beaut of an 8a+ rampline thing (untouched by drilling or chipping). Obviously I flashed it.
If I get some work done this morning I may get my arse in gear and post some photos.
