Is this work or is it play?

I had to visit Petzl in France for a training session.

This involved meeting up with a number of Petzl staff and other distributors from around the globe. This was one of many courses they are running and it was a good opportunity to see their new training facility V.Axess.

It’s an impressive building, approximately 30 m high with a number of external surfaces to ‘play’ on (sloping concrete walls, overhanging stone slabs, via ferrata, steel lattice tower and roof area), and inside it’s amazing with tons of walkways, traverses, ladders, climbing walls etc.

The plan is to learn about products, thoughts and developments but to also put our skills in to erect a wooden beam, stabilise it and walk on it – all at 12 m high.

We discovered energy absorbing systems (rope, movement of belayer and tear out absorbers). For this, we all took to testing a system. It turned out mine was the longest!

We had a tour of the production facility and test tower (of course no photos allowed there!). But just a few pics of their HQ.

We all had a great time. I look forward to my next visit…..