Tag Archives: climbing

Swiss Route Solo

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With a long stint of work behind me and a blur of pow days and free-riding before that I felt like I needed a memorable day and a tough outing to remind myself I’m still able to go big.  Yesterday reminded me of some of the things I’ve done in the past and also gave me motivation for the future.  It feels like a long time since I have climbed anything over 60m and apart from an evening soloing at the Cremerie in Argentiere (small beginners Ice climbing venue) I haven’t wielded my Nomics for what seems like eternity.  I’ve wanted to climb the Swiss route on the Courtes for years but as time went by the idea that I wanted to solo it turned more and more into reality.  I find building things up in my mind can psyche me out so when the opportunity arose to try it yesterday I was surprised at how calm I felt about it.  After skiing down from first bin at the GM to the glacier and beginning the skin up I nearly bailed due to the wind but something inside of me kept me going.  I’m not sure whether it was arrogance but it should have been a sign of things to have come….

on the hike up to the face, Sastrugi forming....

on the hike up to the face, Sastrugi forming….

Saying goodbye to my shadow for a few hours.

Saying goodbye to my shadow for a few hours.

I headed up toward the base of the route breaking the skin track to the shrund whilst listening to my tunes.  I was still calm and motivated and soon found myself strapping on my crampons and attaching my ski’s to my bag which felt pretty heavy already. Crossing the bergshrund was pretty easy (although you have to go far left of the route) and I began wading up the snow cone to the start of the ice.  It was tiring work and I must admit I have never been as happy to pull onto 70 degree ice before. The first few hundred meters went smoothly with a couple of small spin-drift showers tinkling down the face.  On the second and steeper of the two crux’s, about 200m up, I got nailed for about 10 minutes by a sizable spin-drift avalanche which left me gripping onto my tools looking down at me feet as they came in and out of view.  It was good contemplation time and certainly got my pretty pumped shaking out on the 85degree ice.  I kept telling myself it would stop and then wondering why it hadn’t.  After it had I tentatively looked up to check properly and carried on up dreading the next one.  This happened again a few more times and I lost a fair amount of time waiting them out. After a while I started climbing the ice out of the main gully line which helped a lot and meant I could keep going longer before my hands got to cold and I had to stop.  The ice however was amazing Neve with perfect first timers every swing.  It reminded me of previous routes and how much fun alpine ice is to climb.

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Found a belay and took a little rest from the spin-drift and cold hands.

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Looking down the route from about halfway on one of the only mellow snow sections.

The rest of the route went well apart from battling hot aches and numb toes until I reached the final 50m to the summit ridge.  I hit some super hard, brittle ice which required a lot of care and attention.  I ended up smashing my axes in well  which took a few good swings each.  Not ideal when your already mentally drained from 750m of climbing.

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I took this photo accidentally at the top but the look on my face says it all…

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Free ride. I’ve wanted to ski of this peak for a while. Glad to have a good pair of ski’s to do it with. Mont Blanc in the back.

My initial plan was to ski the South Face direct but I pretty soon went of the idea as I was feeling pretty tired and the snow looked pretty bad on the southerly aspect.  I decided instead to traverse to the Col de la Tour des Courtes and descend from there to the Telefre basin and back to town. It turned out that I didn’t really need the 120m of rope I lugged up after all but I did do an abseil on the ridge to avoid a large patch of black ice.  The snow was OK in places but crusty in others but I was pretty happy to be on my way down.  the skiing went quickly and I got to the start of the hike up to the buvette (or the end of being in the mountains proper) just before the light started to fade and I managed to make it to town before needing my head torch. A pretty special day and a grand adventure by all accounts.  My legs are certainly feeling it today and I was glad for the beer and burgers at the MBC afterwards….

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Looking down at the Col des Droites South Face from the Col de la Tour des Courtes

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Beer and burgers at the MBC went down very well!

Departure Imminent

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Talung in far Eastern Nepal Stands at 7349m and is yet to receive a successful ascent of its north face despite a few very strong Czech teams making attempts. Myself, James and Gavin hope to make an alpine style ascent of the prominent 1800m North Pillar. Fingers crossed for a good trip!

Tommorow I will be departing for my most epic adventure to date.  Myself, Gavin Pike and James Clapham will be boarding a plane to Kathmandu in Nepal from where we will take another plane ride east to Taplejung. From here a 1.5 day jeep ride to the end of the road at Gopetar.  Then begins the 10 day trek to Ramche which will be our basecamp for the proceeding month and is some 15km from the base of the north face of Talung, our proposed objective for this November.

I have never been on expedition before.  I have never been to a third world country before.  I have never tried to climb a new route and I have never been higher the 4810m (I.e the top of Mont Blanc!). The whole trip should really push my comfort zone and open my eyes to a new world of possibilities regardless of success or failure.  I’m not without my worries about how I will cope with the stresses and strains and extra altitude but I feel I am approaching everything with an open mind and a willingness to learn.  James and Gav have both been to Alaska twice before and they know part of what is involved in the process but for myself my ventures into the mountains have only lasted a few days at most.

This expedition has been a long time in the pipeline and I remember when we first came to the decision we were going to do the trip.  I remember it vividly in fact as I was in a pit of despair in early December last year after fracturing my Tibial Plateau in a ski crash which put me on my biggest layoff from the mountains in 3 years. Towards the end of my week long hospital stay Gav asked me whether I wanted to join them for this expedition.  I immediately agreed.  This trip and the thought of getting back on the ski’s again were the driving forces behind my thankfully speedy recovery.

The metal work that is still holding my knee together.

This autumn has been a total washout so fair with only a handful of good weather days so far and lots of fresh snow to contend with.  Getting out to do anything “big” has been next to impossible.  Its been a haze of sport climbing, drytooling and “Col du Midi Alpine Cragging”.   My hunger for a big route is bigger than ever right and is giving me enthusiasm beyond that that I have felt for any trip into the alps I’ve had so far.

Climbing with Emily on the Tacul Triangle.

I’ve also never had to pack like this for.  You have to think about every thing you’ll need for a big new route and also what you’ll want in basecamp to live in the mountains for 7 weeks.  It’s been a long process of preparing,  packing, repacking, pairing down and adding more and it’s still not over.  I’m also moving out of my current apartment in Chamonix when I leave so there is a lot to sort out over the next few hours!

I’ve also been slightly worried about my current body weight which is perfect for sport climbing but doesn’t give me a huge amount of fat reserves to work with out in Nepal.  So its been melted ice cream, eclairs, cheese and chips to try and pile a bit of much needed bivi fat on in the past few days.

We won’t be in contact with the outside world when we are in basecamp unless there is a  problem (we have a satellite phone but we are planning not to use it).  I’ll be doing a trip report on here when I’m back in mid December.

Still it is with great trepidation that I say goodbye to Chamtown and all its residents and  mountains.  With the recent snowfall and the Season pass bought I’m already looking forward to the adventures that will happen this winter.

Mileage

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I must admit that my absolute least favourite month in Chamonix is August.  Its super busy, super hot and the Glaciers are usually at there most open making getting around in the mountains dangerous and tedious.  Strange that its also the most prolific time for alpine climbing with ques on all the popular routes and big routes seeing rare ascents (like  Calum Muskett and Paul Jenkinson on Divine Providence, good effort lads!).  I however have been working…… working some more and occasionally getting out for the odd rock route in the Aiguille Rouge on my lunch break or a sport climbing session in the baking heat.  This is all soon to change and its been great to get out in the past week and rack up some millage…..

Soloing the Super classic Mani Pulite with the index chairlift below on a three hour lunch break.

I had a super fun day on my own climbing routes around the Col Du Midi on wednesday.  I  started in my typical third bin fail way and headed straight over to the traverse of Pointe Lachenal to kick things off. After this I headed up the Contamine/Grisole on the north face of the Triangle Du Tacul which was in really good condition and gave me the first chance in a very long time to use my nomic’s which made me very happy indeed. The normal route on the Tacul looked like one giant windslab so I opted for the Chere Couloir rapels to get back to the col.  The Chere had a few teams in it and Jeff Mercier and his partner were climbing the Perroux Gully (just to the left of the chere, see Jeff’s blog here) so I was being peppered by ice on the way down, as to be expected. I had originally wanted to solo the Chere but decided against it due to the ice that was coming down so headed over to other side of the col and started up the short section (not sure what its called) of ridge that finishes at the Cosmiques Refuge.  Unbeknownst to me you have to take your boots off and walk through the hut to get to the start of the Cosmiques Arete proper.  I got some funny looks from people sunning them selves at the hut terrace as I less than gracefully took my boots off and flopped over the railings.  I also got momentarily lost finding the way out of the hut which in hindsight is pretty funny, but in my defense I had never been in there before!  I hadn’t been up high for a while (maybe three weeks) and the altitude really hit me when I started to climb the initial slope up the Cosmiques Arete so I was suffering hard on this part of the day but I finished off my journey in a 6 hour round trip feeling like I had had a pretty good work out!

Good to have the Nomic’s back on the bag!

Starting up the Cosmiques Arete with the Traverse of Pointe Lachenal to the left of my head and the Tacul Triangle to the right.

Showing the first half of my link up on the Col Du Midi.

Thursday saw me and Ally head out to Gietroz, an amazing sport climbing venue just up the valley from Chamonix for a leisurely half day working on Reve de Senge a super classic 8a which I have wanted to get on for a while.  I was surprised how well I got on with it and I hope that I can finish it off before I head out to the Himalayas this autumn, fingers crossed.

Today I headed out with Mike Thomas for a fair well Aiguille Rouge climb-a-thon (the Flegere lift system closes after this weekend) that saw us climb a total of 1000m of excellent quality rock up to 6a including such classics as the south ridge on the Index and Manhatten on the Lower Bastion of the Grande Floria.

Mike Thomas climbing the penultimate pitch to the summit of the Grande Floria. The index lift station looking pretty small below!

On the last pitch of Fraise des Boatchs on the Grande Floria.

The Dru and the Nant Blanc face. More Ice needed for the Dru Couloir but the Nant Blanc looks good to go.

All in all a fun week had by all and psyche is very high for this coming period!!  With less than 6 weeks left before we depart for Nepal its high time it got cold so we can all get out and play on the north faces!

Current Conditions Chamonix side

After the big snowfall of last week the north faces are looking a bit fresher but more snow wouldn’t go a miss.  The Colton/Macintyre, Shroud and Croz/Slovienian all look pretty good right now so as soon as it gets cold would be worth a go.  The Desmaison/Gouseault could do with more cover lower down but you could nip in from the top of the Shroud crux. Not sure about harder routes on the Jorasses right now.

Not much ice in the Cham Aiguille north faces or the Tacul East Face Goulottes.  The top of the Droites looks good but I haven’t seen the bottom of the face so can’t comment on whether its possible to do the Ginat or Colton/Brokes etc right now (anybody been up there?). The Tacul Triangle is pretty good right now as is the North Face of the Tour Ronde.  Not enough ice on the Midi north face right now but too much to make the Frendo not viable.

All the south facing rock is clear enough and its fairly warm so the Envers Des Aiguilles would be OK still.  Not sure about the Italian side of the Massif right now.  Any reports of the Grande Pillar d’Angle north face would be welcome as I’d personally like to climb it this autumn!

Hope this helps. Feel free to message me about routes your interested in and i’ll try and help you out or point you in the right direction.

Gervasutti Pillar.

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Gervassuti pillar

The Gervasutti Pillar is the slender pillar on the right of the obvious ice line (Supercouloir), Three Points Pillar is to the left. Photo taken in June 2012, there is much less snow than this now!

Last week saw James Clapham and I head up to the Gervasutti Pillar on the East face of Mont Blanc Du Tacul.  This is a route that has been on my wishlist for some years and it feels great to have finally laid it to rest.  I think we both underestimated its length and difficulty and it took much longer to climb than we were expecting.

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