Chamonix 4 (Frendo Spur)

I'm not sure when I decided to do this route, or specifically why but it's been there eating away at me for a while now. Sitting typing away after I've done it I feel quite lost, because I've yet to find something else to obsess over. What was nice was being able to put into practice everything that I've learnt over the last few routes. Even little things count for a lot like my down jacket. I don't wear it climbing but I've taken it with me every time I've been up to Valle Blanche. It's just excess weight at the end of the day, so I left it behind in favour of my ME Fitzroy. I tried to look at every single item we took in the same way. What would be need, what could we leave behind, what could be do without.

It was a phone call from Stuart Sherwood (climbing partner and a friend of mine, with much more alpine experience) which really gave me the confidence to do it. He just called up to see how I'd found the route (another friend has been telling people I've climbed it, mistakenly) and I told him we'd not. He told me not to worry about the difficulties, he was confident that I'd be more than happy on it and warned me that route finding was probably my biggest worry (he did the route a couple of years ago himself). With this is mind, we really set about going to climb it. The owner of the Hotel L'areyvon [check spelling] let us print off an great topo we'd found on the net while we were having a beer one night and the next day we checked the conditions with the guides buerau. They told us to go for it and it would be in good, not excellent condition. They agreed that the plan to do it in 2 days was most sensible. There was a little risk, as there was bad weather forcast for the day after, so we'd have to actually move quickly. We walked out the the guides buerau in a kind of exstatic state... Frendo was actually going to happen!

We didn't have the smoothest start in the morning. We'd intended to catch the first telepherique up, but we missed it because it took longer to pack up the bags (the downside to your climbing gear being part of your normal everyday gear) and I had to take my camera apart to fix it before we left. It didn't matter because we still had tonnes of time when we stepped off at Plan D'aiguille at 0830. For some unknown reason we had it into our heads that the walk in would only be 40 minutes, this was wrong as we struggled down the moraine and across the boulderfield and glacier with our heavy packs on. The first icefield (only about 40/50°) really took it out of me for some reason and little bits of doubt started creeping into my mind about whether we could climbing something so big.

Team picture before the start of the route.

The last crevasse

I didn't let these worries stop me or let Andy know how I was feeling. It didn't matter because feeling aprehensive about doing something that big is probably a good thing. It meant that I wasn't over-confident. We scooted round the berschrund on a snowbridge and started soloing up the ramp. This was just loose and chossy terrain but easy enough to climb on. I guess roping up here would have just wasted time and the ropes would have just flicked a load of rock down on the poor person belaying. The actual climbing seemed to start on the slanting ledge and we carried on soloing up this because it was, well easy. It was oddly similar to Idwal but I've come across this similarity between climbs I know in England and new rock I find (Soames and I last year in Ecrin's just seems to compare everything to different bits of Llanberis Pass). It wasn't until we hit the steeper head wall and the ramp trending rightward that we roped up, with one half rope for speed.

He wasn't even posing for this, just drinking at the opportune moment

The loose rock in the first 1/4

The last toilet stop before  roping up

Finney leading.

It's hard to describe the climbing, just because there was simply so much of it. We had the first crux about 3 pitches in, a horrible overhanding crack that would have been an easier proposistion in rock boots without a pack on (we didn't have the luxury of this). I ended up skirting round it on a slab and then it was back to good long pitches over easy angled and climbable terrain. Our route finding was going well, mainly thanks to Andy noticing a lot of things but by the time we climbing up to the exposed col the afternoon cloud enveloped us, sealing us away from the outside world in a white mist. It didn't make the climbing any harder, just affected the moral a bit.

A brief break in the afternoon cloud

My failed attempt at the obvious (yet off route) dihedral

Consulting the guidebook

old wooden wedges. This made me happy seeing this.

Hitting the exposed col and the obvious dihedral was a great uplift to our spirits. It was good to know exactly where we were, even if we didn't know how long it would take us to climb the rest. The dihedral itself was pretty perfect, so I went for it getting 40 metres up before I realised I'd made a stupid decision. I down-climbed for 10 metres, and added my own piece of tat to the route as I lowered off. I was pretty pissed at myself for such a stupid thing to do. The spanish topo we had cleared stated to avoid the dihedral and to skrit left to easy ground. This error cost us an hour in total.

We were pitching everything now as it was 4a/4b climbing with easier sections, just seemingly constantly climbing. Pitch after pitch went by in the fog, with little idea how high we were or how far we'd got to go. We knew we'd eventually hit another crux, marked as “fallen block” on our topo. It wasn't a single fallen block, but a mass of fallen material, full of nice sharp edges and awkward climbing. Once I'd lead through it though and was sat on my belay the cloud broke and we could see sunshine and blue sky. More importantly than that we could see all the way up th ridge and how far we needed to go (roughly). I think it was another 4 pitches after that (including a horrible thrutchy chimney which nearly had me off) before we hit the easy ground on the ridge.

By now I was feeling tired and thirsty. I should have just stopped and drank some water but I didn't prefering to keep moving. Looking back this was a pretty stupid decision as staying better hydrated would have made climbing easier. This was one of the many littl things that I learnt on route, and it was a steep learning curve! I made a bad decision climbing a really loose groove just before the bivi ledge until Andy called me down and pointed out a better path. It was all worth it though, to top out onto that ledge. The ledge we'd seen people biving on from the Aig telepherique all those times. It felt amazing to finally be there and to make it better the sun was setting casting an orange glow over everything whilst we looked down on a perfect cloud inversion. Only the peak sticking up over 2500 metres poked out and the cloud went on as far as the eye could see. I couldn't take a good enough picture to express it.

My first view of what was in store on day two

The day wasn't over but the ledge was massive so we just spread everything out and got a little more organised. The jetboil was on straight away to melt snow for brew after brew and to rehydrate the food we'd brought. I'm always surprised at how much hunger makes everything taste incredible. We spent most of the time deciding whether to go left or right to finish on the next day. Left is steeper and slightly shorter, but the sun hits it first. Right is longer and had a little couloir to finish (from what we'd seen) but it stayed in the dark till mid-afternoon. You can guess which one we picked. The right hand finished just meant we could loose the pressure of time and just climb happily instead of racing the sunshine. We were snuggled down in sleeping bags by 2230.

exhaustion

Silhouette

Team shot at the end of day one

A tired looking Finney

Andy slept, I didn't. I normally sleep anywhere however my brain doesn't seem to switch off when I'm biviing and I lay there watching the sky and the mountains, shifting occasionally when I got sore in one spot. Lack of sleep is one thing but I still got some rest, just being able to lay there still for a few hours. I just felt like I was waiting everything to re-freeze rather than sleeping.

After what seemed like a eternity for me, 0500 came around and I started the jetboil again. The morning was cold and we were ahardly efficient getting ready. We didn't start moving till 0630. Today my pack felt so much lighter. I think the removal of all the ice gear really made a difference but plodding up the arete was still hard work. It gradually got steeper and steeper until I could justify placing a ice screw and wandering off on our own line to take the right hand finish. We must have simuli-climbed 200 metres of up to 60° ice before I ran out of screws and had to build a belay. We'd agreed to block lead this section, until we hit the easy snow slopes to finish and thus we did.

All geared up with another day to go

Ready to set off

how thin to ridge was

60 meters out. The piece of gear it where I turned off the ridge to head right

Finally some warmth

The last 60 m of moving together. 

And back to pitched climbing

We kept kidding ourselves everytime we looked ahead that it would only be 1, maybe 2 pitches to the final couloir. In reality it was 4, full length pitches that were simply a joy to climb. The ice was about 70° and we hugged the rock so we could take adventage of any available gear. We really did climb efficiently up the ice and just didn't seem to stop moving until we finally hit the couloir. Suddenly there was this fantastic little mixed pitch with some good ice on it as our last section of hard climbing. I could believe it and loved every metre of it, despite being very tired. I realised when I topped out that we were now behind the Rognon and only the final slopes were left. I belayed of the last piece of ice and Andy lead through to top out. It was over.

setting off, only 2 pitches to go...maybe

...4 pitches later

The last mixed section

Me being brought up the last slope

and a final team photo, back in "civilization"

I felt an immense sense of loss and sadness when the route was over. I'd just wanted it to go on and on. I guess everything ends eventually. Frendo was a steep learning curve and felt a lot like the sum of all my climbing being put to the test in one route. There'd been rock, ice, scrambling, clambering, walking, route finding & navigation... it was just all there and I'd loved it. I actually felt like an alpinist, rather than a british lad bumbling around the alps ticking off routes that looked like they belonged in scotland in winter. 

A well earned Midnight Express Burger

Two bottles of wine down and he's fired up ready to go!