Its been a fairly quite last month or so for me. I have been working hard trying to get enough money saved up to last me for a few months of climbing. I have been out for the odd day on the Tacul Triangle for classics such as the Chere Coulior and the Contamine-Grisol. Thanks to my mate Emma for a great week whilst she was out here and well done too! You packed alot into a short space of time!!
The other day me, Ally Swinton and Jon Griffith headed up to the Grand Gendarme on the Cosmiques arete to get a few photo’s. It was a super fun morning, make no mistake we weren’t there to climb it! It was pretty damn cold and pretty damn hard. We did however get some good photo’s.
With nuclear temperatures in Cham right now finding motivation to leave the comfort of the shade of the flat can be hard but me and Ally Swinton wanted to get stuck into some granite. We really wanted to get on Gulivers Travels on the Grand Capucin but we came to the conclusion that we would probably get fried to death in the process ,being as I am blonde and fair skinned and Ally is…..well…..Scottish. So we decided it was best to stay out of the sun as much as we could. We decided on heading over to the Red Pillar on the Aiguille de Blaitiere’s west face….
Yesterday (9/8/11) me and Wee Ally Swinton headed up to the Aiguille du Midi for some mixed climbing. We were feeling pretty lazy and couldn’t really be bothered to walk anywhere, so we abbed of the bridge to climb a route the has coined the name “The S**t Route.” The route follows a ice line which finishes at the end of the Arete des Cosmiques after 4 pitches of grade 4. We started up it and were pleasantly surprised to find good ice for the first two pitches, then it turned to s**t. Literally. Unfourtunaly this route is feed by the toilet above. Not very nice and I don’t have anything else to say on the matter. Here’s a video of Colin Haley climbing it in the winter made by my mate Bjarne Shalen of Endless Flow . Click here for the video.
I think the only way to describe this summer is wet. It seems like we haven’t really had more than a handfull of really good weather days to play with so for me getting out and doing the routes I really wanted to do this summer has been quite hard.
However, every cloud has a silver lining and with all this wet weather the mountains have been looking very white which is a good sign for the coming autumn. So rather than worring about what I haven’t been able to do I have been training and enjoying the time when I have made it up out of the valley.
The funny thing about the Eiger is your perception of what it’s like is very different to how it actually is. I thought it was going to be in a mailstorm of falling rocks whilst pulling on loose holds with Clint Eastwood body belaying me up a ice field with a funny glint in his eye.
I was pleasantly surprised to find the nature of the climbing was very different to that of the Mont Blanc Massif which made it quite interesting and difficult in places. I was however disappointed by the lack of rock fall and gruff film stars.
Here’s how it went….Continue reading
Here are some picy’s of me and a mate Ross Hewitt Skiing the north east face of the Aiguille Du L’Amone.
This was the best days skiing I have ever had. Fact. I’m not sure why its Fact but it was damn good.