We were excited to go the the great wall of Flammes de Pierre to climb a route that looked promising: Les Flammes du Désir. Unfortunately the weather has been unstable, the schedule from/to Montenvers was a bit tight and the route was far from nice: many cracks were full of grass, many anchors are old or on a single bolt and there are many unpleasant chimney to climb.
Diamant des Flammes de Pierre (© P. Gatta)
This route is graded ED-/6c and has been opened by Carli-Chassagne in 1986. The are a few old bolts in the route so take 2 racks of friends #0.3 to #3 and a #4 can be useful.
The ladder leading to the Flammes de Pierre have been removed in 2016 a replaced by a 3 pitched route (4c max, fully bolted) a bit further right. Here is the GPS Route from Montenvers. On the way down there are 2 or 3 abseils (50 + 60 or 50 + 50 +10).
1st pitch of the new access to Flammes de Pierre (© P. Gatta)
It seems that nobody climbs the first pitch (a 6a+ called pitch 0) which is a wet chimney. From the end of the gpx track above, go around the slab and traverse to the left on grassy shelves to reach the top of the first chimney. The first anchor is at the bottom of the second chimney with a roof on the left. Start there, photo below.
The route
Les Flammes du Désir: 1st pitch, 6b (© P. Gatta)
2nd pitch, 6c (© P. Gatta)
Les Flammes du Désir: 3rd pitch, 6c (© M. Baduel)
Les Flammes du Désir: 4th pitch, 6a+ (© P. Gatta)
5th pitch, 6a+ (© P. Gatta)
We decided to stop at the 5th pitch; the anchor was a single old bolt and above there was a fixed rope to skip a crack full of mud and grass!