Chamonix 3 (contamine-grisolle)

Contamine-Grisolle and Mont Blanc du Tacul:

We went back up the Aiguille du Midi with another couple of routes in mind. The afternoon was given over to resting in the sun and packing the bags up, making sure we didn't forget to bring crucial items such as a headtorch. Finney dissappeared off the get the tickets for the telecabine while I packed everything. We arrived with time to spare and enjoyed a quiet ride up with an English chap named Rob (and his guide) who'd been living in Chamonix for the past 12 years. He'd actually grown up in Cheadle and spent his youth bouldering at Churnet.

When marking out your dig, over estimate.

A completed circle of snow...

... which barely fits the tent!

Armed with a snow-shovel (that we brought together) setting up the tent was reasonably easy and we were soon snuggled down in bed trying to get some sleep. Anndy slept soundly all night, I didn't. I just couldn't settle for some reason and just lay there rolling occasionally when a part of my got sore waiting for the alarm to go off at 0144. When it finally did go off it was all action stations. We breakfasted, brewed up and got the tent down as quick as we could. We walked across the crisp snow of the glacier in a direct line to the snow bridge that signified the start of the Contamine-Grisolle.

porridge pant, nice

Finney tying on

The route itself was rather reasonable. We moved together up the first 150 metres (or so, I couldn't tell as it was pitch black and climbing via headtorch) till I hit the first crux pitch of the route. This pitch itself was fantastic to climb through! The start was a thin ice runnel, at the back of a wide open crack. I could still only just reach with my tools and gingerly stepping up on little ledges with my crampons. Surmounting this I was greated with a beautiful scene in front of me. The sun still wasn't up, but it was close enough to provide that erie twilight and seems to bring out the white in the snow. The pitch ahead of me was monocromatic and I marvelled at it's beauty. I wasn't sure if we had enough rope for this but it made more sense to continue that to just stop and I carried on, smiling.

Finney, just finishing the mixed section

Finney setting off on lead

It really was a great pitch of mixed climbing but we were soon off moving together as soon as I brought Andy up to me. He shot off up the snow slopes and through the easier mixed terrain covering it quickly. We only had one more pitch of climbing after this, another excellent mixed pitch before we hit the ridge itself. We checked the time, congratulated ourselves on actually hitting the guidebook time and decided to rest for 10 minutes. By now the sun was coming up properly and I just sat there eating saucission trying to gain some warmth from it's rays.

Making the most of the morning sunshine

Me, with our very British guidebook cover

Th last of the mixed sections

The snow was in better condition that last time we'd descended from the top of the triangle face and we opted to carry on up the ridge to meet the Normal route up Mont Blanc du Tacul. This in itself was not without risk. Walking together roped up I watched as small slabs broke off with every other step and we walked the ridge. It was a risk, but it was worth it because instead of just carrying on down, once we met the normal route it just made sense to carried on heading up. Tacul was only half a km away as it was. I'm not really one for summits, I'd rather enjoy the journey as you climb, but there is a sense of a achievement it topping out. It almost feels like I've given the day a sense of purpose. Standing on top of Tacul definatley did that for me.

The photo a kind guide took of us. He made us get Mont Blanc in the background

Descent was quick. The normal route up Tacul is apparently a long plod up the snow, with a bergschrund to cross. I was fairly disappointed that I'd seen so many people trudging up it over the time I'd been there. It didn't really hold anything for me, other than a quick means of getting down. I don't doubt that there is immense value in the routes and I don't look down on people who do it. It's just not my cup of tea.

We did have one funny moment when both of us, only 500 metres from the tents punched through a snow bridge and into a small cravasse... each with our right leg at exactly the same time. Tired and dehyrdated all we could do was pull ourselves out and laugh at how lucky we could have been. It just goes to show that the climb is never over till you're back somewhere you can call safe.

Me melting even more snow, a seemingly never ending job

yep, he's fast asleep

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!

Chamonix 5 (Aiguille Du Chardonney)

Failure:

I think the title probably describes my feelings towards our last trip into the mountains, at least in part. We failed in our objective which started as the Messner Route (on Aig' du Argentiere's north face) which was then adjusted to either [site both couliors on Aig' Du Chardonnay]. We didn't actually climb anything that day but I think calling it a failure is wrong. True we did fail, and it pissed me off immensly but what we gained was worth the loss of climbing a route.

What we gained was experience. Mr Twight states that failure is par for the course and you should just accept it and learn from it, making the most of what can be a valuable experience. After making it to the base of the route we bailed the main reason being that Andy had a really bad feeling about climbing the route. I wasn't 100% but I'm generally of the opinion that if you don't risk it a little, you could miss out. The route was a bit of a stone schute at the time and it freaked Andy out enough for him to want to go back down. I was happy with this decision and when I said I was pissed off it was with the mountain, the weather, time and everything else under the sun other than Andy. Failing because of bad juju is more than acceptable. The give him some credit after he'd been lowered off and I was waiting for him to more further away and the ropes to pull tight it almost felt like the mountain didn't want me to be there. Rocks and stone of all small sizes started flying down the route, most missing but enough glancing and hitting me. I was stuck in the firing line with nothing to do but sit it out till Andy pulled the ropes tight. It was a dangerous situation and I think we both knew it. You shouldn't put yourself in a position where you need to be lucky, and I just had.

I was mainly pissed at myself.

Here are some photos:

Shameless selfshot taken on the walk in

Aiguille du Chardonnay

Long exposure shot of the mountains when the moon came out

Star wars?

Some of the debris visible from the bottom of the route

Proof that a bedsheet can be transformed into suitable headgear

Bloody weather...

Seems like its been an ages since I last got out and did some good climbing. I think the last time was probably with Andy going to Gogarth... and that was ages ago! This isn't going to turn into a weather rant (I'm probably due to write one) but the weather has been pretty abismal recently. I'm surprised that I'm not in a fouler moo to be honest, but I've been filling my time with loads of indoor climbing, and finding other things to do like enjoy the German Market in B'ham. I'll put something up proper about it later.

This is actually about the alps of all things, well specifically the french in the alps. I went to an SUMC meet the other night and tested out my old old old harness, actually passed down to me from Doyley. It's similar to Doyley's magic Ronhills, but without the magic and without the belay loop!!! Its an old BD alpine bod but I couldn't resist telling people that I had to cut the loop during an epic (I put them straight afterwards).

I was talking to Sid about the harness and I mentioned the lack of belay loop. Puzzeled he asked the reason why. My explaination was along the lines of

"Its an alpine harness so you don't need one to save weight and you're probably going to be moving together and not belaying so you can usually get away without having one. Plus if your french you don't need one anyway because you can teleport"
"teleport?"
"yeah...errr... teleport... you know like move through space and time to get from one place to another"
"but why?" (this was followed by laughter when he realised what I ment)
"well the french are so quick the only realistic explanation we British can come up with is that you must be able to teleport. I mean its not like your going to be better climbers that us is it?"

Thus followed much laughter at the point I was making. Clearly the french are better at alpining than us on the whole, but we're never going to admit it. I'm glad Sid saw the humourous side to all this.

A French Guy in the Lake District...

This is an old weekend to write up, but I couldn't leave it out. When I went over to France to do some climbing in Chamonix we stayed for a few days with Claire's sister just outside Geneva. Her husband (Fabrice) used to climb alot back in the day, although now he spends his time doing via ferrata alot as he's got no-one to climb with.

He took me and Claire sport climbing for the day while we were over in France. It was great fun. I said if he came over to Britain in the summer then I'd take him out trad climbing in the Lakes. Bear in mind that when I explained placing your own protection he muttered "kamakazi British trad climbers!". So heres how it went...

Seeing as we were based south of Coniston in a great little farm house (one of the benefits of crashing with Claire's folks while they were here on holiday) we decided on a roadside crag for out fist day. Me, Claire and Fabrice headed for Raven Crag behind the Old Dungen Ghyll.

The weather looked good, well good for the Lake District. We headed straight from Holly Tree Direct (HVS 4c). Seeing as I was leading I wanted to be on a climb I'd done before and thankfully this time it was dry. The first pitch went well and I brought them both up using my reverso as a guide plate. This is something I've only really done a few times but was quite confident doing. We moved quickly up the next pitch especially as I was block leading so there was no constant change of ropes. I quickly dispatched the crux of the route which I'd had loads of trouble on the first time. At the next belay Fabrice secured himself in a tree leaving Claire to belay me to the finish. I honestly couldn't believe how quickly we'd moved by block leading and using a guide plate allowing them to climb together.

Anyway as I was happy we'd climbed so quick I was swifley brought back down to earth as I missed the descent path. Seeing as someone else had obviously made the same mistake and left a big piece of abseil tat behind (seriously like 8mm rope cut off the end of a 60m rope), I tested it, backed it up, promised Fabrice that I wasn't really a crazy british climber and abseiled off. We all arrived at the floor safely and ran round to our next route (dispite accidentally kicking off an sheep skeleton).

Seeing as Fabrice had asked for "Traditional British Climbing" I'd had decided on Bilberry Buttress (VS 4c) as our second climb. The first pitch takes a blank but easy slab then a beautifel crack (beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder). It takes fist jams and makes me smile. I went up it happily jamming away and then brought Fabrice up. He looked as me like a crazy man when he pulled himself onto the ledge. He thought jamming was a odd concept, and had laybacked as much as he could. Claire having had to suffer my crack addiction before came up the easier groove to the left.

by now the weather had gone from good to worse. I'd been watching the weather building and the clouds coming in but now the rain had just started. Thankfully we were sheilded from the worst of the weather by the rest of Raven crag, but I had decided to get a shufty on. We did the second pitch quickly again, which had a right difficuly section just above the belay. Its also full of stuck wires (I counted 3) but I refused to clip them. The rain had really started as we set out on the final pitch. Its a bit of an esoteric adevnture as there is lots vegetation on route and a little bit of loose rock. But its a mountain route, what do you expect! I belayed in the rain and praying they climb quicker as they came up. This time I hit the descent right on and we got back to the bags, as the weather stopped.

Now Claire wanted to explore some more, and after consulting the guide book she lead off towards Raven Crag East, a single pitch crag with a host of S's, VS's and HVS's. The rock was still a little damp, but our rats clearly still needed feeding so I went up Rowan Tree Groove (HVS 4c). It was a pretty good route by all accounts, and the gear for the crux was a few bomber micro wires (wouldn't want to run it out) but it was only a short move till the next good piece.

Sadly by now the rain had moved back in and we were getting cold. Also a crag with a pub at the base is never a good idea, so we packed up and went for a pint. Fabrice said he had enjoyed Trad climbing and I asked him if he wanted to try something harder and more exposed. He said he would. So on the next day we went to... Dow crag.

I've only completed a route on Dow once, after 3 attempts. The first ended in an abseil off, when we'd pushed on and were hopelessly lost on B buttress in 50mph winds, fog and rain (we were young and inexperienced). The second we also aseiled off in again very high wind, but this time it was probably for the sake of the rest of the party. My third attempt we did Isengard (HVS 5b) and then joined up with Eliminate A (VS 4c) in bright sunshine hauling our rucksack on the hard pitches. All in all this day had been great.

So we rocked up at the Walna Scar Road grabbed the kit and started on the walk in. On the walk in I noted the weather and how it seemed to be building. I figured that we'd be ok anyway and we headed for A buttress. The rock itself was damp and greasy as I found out when I tried to do Eliminate A. VS 4c in slippery greasy wet isn't good and I swiftly backed off on my trusty skyhook. When I'd arrived back at Fabrice and flicked off said trusty skyhook, I took a moment to explain its use. I don't think I made to case for "crazy english climbers" any better to be honest (retreating of little bent bits of metal). As wind had picked up, Arete, chimeny and Crack (HS 4a) had had a more time to dry off so we had a rest, re-racked and I headed off there.

I ended up running the first 2 pitches together as the second only covers easy ground (although somewhat loose). The first pitch runs up a fantastic arete (as suggested by the name!), but the compact rock doesn't allow for much gear. It did save alot of time running both pitches together in the end. The next pitch took the chimney. I'd wanted to avoid this as much as possible, thinking it would be hell in damp conditions. When I got to the crux it just turned out to be climbing over a giant chockstone involving alot of thrutching and salmoning that left us both smeared in green.

The next pitch took "Gordan and Craig's Traverse". I don't know how this traverse has got this name, but I'd love to know the full story behind it. This traverse pitch is a great one and I explained about placing loads of gear to protect my second and that the climbing wasn't actually that hard. I belayed where I'd belayed before, remembering the first time I'd met a friend out on the hill here at this very spot. Finally I nipped up the exit crack/groove, which proved to be harder than I'd anticipated. I'd used up every runner on my rack by the time I topped out. When I'd brought up Fabrice the cloud descended so we moved together until I was sure we where topped out on the summit.

To end the day we took a walk south down the ridge and back to the Walna Scar road, seeing as we'd carried up our bags it made the obvious option. I asked Fabrice what he thought about climbing in British mountains. He said sometimes the climbing isn't hard, but what your doing is. Your in a situation and its an adventure because you have to look after yourself (ok well I wrote it in better english but). He said he'd enjoyed "traditional" climbing in Britian, although I still think he thinks I'm mad.

On our final day we went to Hodge Close Quarry and went sport climbing on some slate. I nearly ended up in the drink climbing out above the pool. Fabrice lead a super strenuous 5+ which knackered us all out. It was a good day.