Thursday
1st August
Sat
in the van trying to re-charge all the electrics (with my rudimentary
electrics system) after our first route and our first bivouac at
altitude. I already feel pretty trashed over all, but it's a good
ache if that'll make any sense?
However
we didn't just do the cosmiques. The original plan was to bivi out
and then head for Mont Blanc du Tacul's Triangle face and climb
either the C-G or the C-Couloir. After finishing the first route, we
took a leisurely walk back to our cached kit (under a boulder near
the Abi Simond and the start of the cosmiques). We'd taken bivi sacks
and packed as light as we could. Our little bivi was alright. I'd
have given it a 6/10 and I'm pretty sure we could have made it much
better with a little more work but we were tired.
Our
evening was spent resting, melting snow to rehydrate and make food
(provided by a stash of dehydrated expedition meals I've been saving
up for months). We probably should have gone to bed a lot earlier
than we did but we walked over to the cosmiques hut in the evening to
ask about conditions on our objective for the next day. We were told
to get up as early as possible and head over, which was fine we us.
We hurried back and bedded down.
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| our now uncached kit, making a fine mess |
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| "drinking like a poor person" |
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| Clearly not poor enough to have someone melting snow for him |
Waking
up at 2am was definatley worth it, even if we only woke up to decided
that we were completely trashed from the night before and going
climbing would be a silly idea. Although I'd slept soundly, Andy
hadn't gotten a wink of sleep and had just been lay there, trying to
rest. We watched the line of head torches heading up Mont Blanc du
Tacul's main route for a while and brewed up, before resetting the
watch and heading back to sleep. This time Andy slept.
We
still woke up early and very quickly a plan was hashed out. We'd skip
breakfast and then head back down. Everyone else had tents and we
realised that we'd be better off if we lugged ours up here. Heading
back down also meant we could eat properly, re-stock all our food and
gas and plan things a little better.
I
think we did the right thing in doing the cosmiques arete. It was
essentially an easy route and we had enough time to work out any
problems we would encounter on it. It also mean that we acclimatised
well and had a better understanding on the environment we were in.
I'm used to just wild camping in Wales somewhere and just knowing
where everything is, out here it's a little different. It was also a
fantastic route!.
Saturday
3rd August
We've
just got back from either an awesome time up in the mountains or a
bit of a spirit quest, depending on how you look at it. We've been up
in the mountains for 2 nights with a day's climbing in the middle. In
that time up there I climbed my hardest alpine route and ended up
leading every pitch, it was also probably the hardest winter route
I've done (if you were to make a comparison with Scottish winter
climbing). We spent the time making good decision, getting stressed
at each other, panicking and laughing. Hell, there almost tears at
one point.
Picking
up where the last post left off we got back down to Chamonix and
actually made a plan. We slept for a couple of hours, planned the
food we'd take went shopping and set out all the kit we'd need. This
level of preparation is unheard of between Finney and I (unless we go
caving of course). All this careful planning went out the window when
Finney went to get the tickets before the Telecabine place closed. He
came running back 10 minutes later, while I was checking over the kit
I'd lain over the ground with a panicked look on his face. The last
ride up left in 20 minutes! I've never packed so quickly! however we
still had to run to the sky car (as Finney has termed it).
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| Jess, a near constant mess. |
We
soon found ourselves walking round the Valle Blanche glacier looking
for somewhere to put our tent. Everyone else had built a snow wall
around theirs and had a nice little pitch. Everyone else it seems had
brought a snow shovel. I don't even own one, but the team of Russians
camped near us kindly lent one out to us. This wouldn't be the only
thing we lent off them as in the rush to pack everything Finney did
not have his head torch. Our original plan was to leave at 0230 to
get to the route. Again the Russians kindly obliged and one of them
handed over his head torch telling Finney “it's like the power of
the sun, in the palm of your hand”. It was a pretty good head
torch. After this our evening was reasonably relaxed, probably the
most stress being either a choice of route or having to melt snow for
water.
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| digging with our borrowed Russian snow shovel |
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| an almost perfect spot to sit and view the route |
I
woke up before my watch went off at 0145 and lay there waiting for it
to start it's annoying bleeping. We'd actually gone to the effort of
setting the most piercing and irritating tone just so we'd actually
wake up. There was no wind and only the very faint metallic sound of
climbing gear clicking together. I thought we were all alone until I
opened the tent and saw a steady stream of people making their way
from the Cosmiques Hut and up Mont Blanc Du Tacul's original route.
We brewed up, packed up, breakfasted and set off, plodding across the
hard crisp snow in the direction of our route.
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| "what? we have to get up?!" |
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| breakfast, tasted like vomit. |
It's
hard to describe what the climb was like without giving a rather
boring blow by blow account of each pitch (which would just result in
a mass of words meaningless to anyone but me) so instead I'll
condense it as best I can. We geared up at the bergschrund, which
Finney managed to put his foot through (to my amusement and his
horror) and I set of climbing over it up the easy angled snow slopes.
The first snow slope was about 100 metres of climbing (in from the
left to avoid possible serac falls) before we even started on the
route. In the early morning darkness we could only see about 50
metres up the couloir... and it looked amazing.
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| first ice screw of the whole trip! |
The
first part of the route was an ice up gully, with a short mixed
section. This mixed section was from where the ice had fallen off
about a week before (as we learnt from the guardian at the cosmiques
hut). It still had hard neve snow in the back so it didn't prove a
problem. The gully itself fluctuated between 60° and 95° degree
ice for 5/6 pitches and was some of the best ice I've ever climbed. I
can still feel the burning in the calves! We had a slight problem
about pitch 3 where Finney's belay device made a bid for freedom and
trundled off down the gully to be lost in the darkness (Italien
hitches all the way!). By the last couple of the ice pitches the sun
was coming up.
 |
climbing in the dark, you can only fall as far as your head torch beam
|
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| a happy andy |
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| an even happier and more comfortable andy |
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| (that black and white tape is a homemade leash... it was crap, just buy one) |
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| the sun slowly making it's presence known |
With
the sun coming up we actually could see where we were going. The next
section of the climb was a broken up mixed section with
unconsolidated powder snow, easy climbing with loose rock and harder
route finding. Finney was letting the route get to him and by the
time we were through this section he was talking about backing off.
He didn't seem to want to actually agree on backing off, so I left
him too it. It must have been a pretty big full on experience. His
second alpine route and finding himself up 350m in a load of loose
terrain with the knowledge that the snow ride we had decided on as
our was down would be hitting the sun about now. I shared his
concerns but I was safe in the knowledge that we could back off from
where ever we ended up. I just wanted to keep moving.
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| 1. calmly select ice screw, ignoring your already burning calves |
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| 2. place said screw the ice, clip it, then breath a sigh of relief |
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| 3. Start climbing, repeating steps 1 & 2, whilst ignoring the rising burn in your calves |
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| 4. continue climbing, whilst screaming at yourself to keep going. The pitch can only be so long |
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| 5. clip something that look like a belay and take the weight off your feet and relax. Act cool when your partner arrives, because right now you're in a bit of a state... |
Finney
finished his mental battle and I set off up another pitch of 55°
ice, traversing under the loose rocks and stealing tat along the way.
Another pitch of this ice led me on to a snowy ridge and a decent
belay which I brought Finney up to. Being honest I was pretty pissed
off at this moment. I was unfairly blaming Finney for this that
weren't his fault and we were moving too slow. I'd allowed myself to
get frustrated as well. We didn't have a choice but to keep climbing,
so I set off up what I thought was that last but one pitch, and what
a pitch!
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| Looking ahead... |
The
“last but one” pitch turned out to be the last pitch of the route
and the final 30 metres of it were immense. The ice was very thin but
it didn't matter. I danced my crampons across the thin ice while my
tools led the way. I was torque my picks in cracks, hooking tiny thin
edges and burying the entire of my hammer into one crack to make
upward progress. All the stress and frustration just fell away and
with the last and hardest moved I found myself hooking my axes over a
block, before mantling onto my right foot and standing up looking up
at... nothing, other than the snowy ridge that was a possible descent
route. I yelled I was at the top and then gave him a thumbs up to let
Andy know I was safe. Nothing else needed to be said.
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| Finney's first encounter with one of the many jokes in winter/alpine climb. Stuff freezing solid. |
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| 70 degree alpine ice |
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| part of the loose scrambly terrain |
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| a haunted look. n.p. |
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| topping out |
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| I genuinely can't believe I actually posed like this. |
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| a happy Finney |
I
had a massive sense of relief when Andy topped out. Not because I was
happy the climb was over (I was also feeling slightly gutted that it
didn't go on longer) but because it meant that I could concentrate on
the second half of the route; getting down and back to the tents (the
first being to approach the climb safely and get up it). One of
Andy's worried while we were on the loose mixed scrambly terrain was
how we were going to get down. It didn't seem to matter how much I
assured him it would be fine, because for him the situation would
have been overwhelming. He told me afterwards that pretty much all
the climbing he's done before that route was just a simple and
obvious walk off. This route did have a “walk off”, but it was a
steep snow ridge, that at this moment in time had been sitting in the
sun for way too long and seemed to be packed up with windslab. The
guides we'd spoken too suggested just rappelling* down the shoulder
and joining up with the Mont Blanc du Tacul route to cross the
bergschrund or we could simply rappel back down the route itself.
We'd seen enough tat and bolts that we could get down, but it was a
winedy route with a lot of loose rock. We discussed the options.
We
agreed to rap down the shoulder, just because it was a more direct
line and so I began explaining to Andy and showing him how to bail
off route**. The first rappel was simple apart from the ropes getting
twisted together, the second went smoothly apart from putting me in
the middle of a 50° ice/snow field. Andy'd already agreed that this
was still the best option. I sat about hacking away at the snow and
ice till I found something good enough to put a screw in. Andy was
soon joining me on my poor excuse for a ledge while I worked away at
building a couple of abalakov threads. I'd never built one before but
we had a good back up and it was worth a test, we could always leave
an ice screw or down climb in necessary.
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| my first abalakov threads |
It
did work (obviously, as I'm still here) but the ropes didn't reach
the flatter snow. I tried to find more ice in the snow but it was
just crap snow now. Settling for a bucket seat I yelled up to Andy.
He didn't seem inspired by my bucket seat idea and instead opted to
down climb, making short work of crossing a small cravasse. We now
only had one obstacle in our way, the main bergschrund but a good
track crossed it and we'd watched several people cross it (from a
distance) and they'd not slowly down. It wasn't that challenging
either, just a short hop and we were walking down defrosting snow,
laughing as my crampons balled up and I kept slipping over. It think
we were a little dehydrated.
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| The route is the gully on the right (1 o'clock from Finney's head) |
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| Finney doing some snow melting |
We
did make it back to camp, safe and sound and the evening was spent
eating, rehydrating but mainly melting snow for more water. It seems
like the never-ending task! Our original plan was to go rock climbing
on one of the spires of the cosmiques arete the next day, but we were
trashed from the day before when we woke up. Instead we lay in the
tent making brews and relaxing... until a nice gentleman from the
PGHM arrived and told us off for having a tent up (which was fair
play really). This gave us the push we needed to get moving. We
packed up, walked out and promptly rode the telecabine down, with the
same PGHM chap who'd told us off earlier. Finney thought we were
going to get arrested.
My
van was still parked up in it's little spot, still in the same tip as
when we'd left it just over 48 hours ago.
Second
alpine route of the year and Andy's second ever alpine route. We were
horribly dehind guidebook time and possibly misjudged how unstable
the walk off (which we didnt take) was, but I'm more than happy with
what we climbed. I was very proud to call myself Andy's climbing
partner for the day. He dropped his belay device but so what. He took
mine and carried on. He didn't even mention the idea of bailing off
route. I watched him overcome his fear and push forward. Personally I
was happy I lead about 12 pitches without coming off once (especially
as some were rather run out). We didn't get lost on route and made
sensible decisions about how to get down. Looking back on this
experience there isn't anything I would change if I could go back and
do it over, not even Andy dropping the belay.
Always
remember: it doesn't have to be “fun” to the fun!
Footnotes:
*[it
would be abseiling but I'm currently in the alps, for it's rappelling
for now]
**[Some
people might question the idea to bring an inexperienced partner into
the mountains. I'd agree with this but I'd rather be with a friend
and have an experience we can share together]
