Six routes in the Mont Blanc region--August 2010
This long post contains my trip reports for my month in Chamonix. For photos, see my picasaweb site.
Aug 7, 2010—Brunat-Perroux on Aiguille l’Index
Annie and I were looking for a moderate route with an easy approach as an introduction to climbing in the Chamonix area. The Index seemed like the ideal choice. There is the SE ridge, but that is a little bit too easy. I noticed in the Griffin guide that the S ridge was longer and more sustained, so that seemed like a good goal. However, the problem as always for me was finding the start of the route. There were lots of people going by, we asked them but they kept directing us to the SE ridge. Finally we found a party starting up the E face a couple of hundred feet below the ramp that forms the usual access to the SE ridge. The leader of the group astutely noticed that the route description I was trying to follow was actually on the Gliere, not the Index! I’ve started up the wrong route before, but never the wrong peak. A change of plan was in order. The route they were following seemed about right for us. It is called the Voie Brunat-Perroux, and it contains 7 pitches. The last pitch is 6a, but we avoided that and the rest is maximum 5b, or about 5.8. I noticed that most of the pitches were short, 30m maximum, and this got me to thinking later about climbing with just the one 60m half rope doubled up. This would save a lot of time with pulling in and stacking scads of cord everywhere. For the Index, however, there is a long rappel to get down from the summit so I think two normal ropes are preferred.
The climbing was fun, but not very sustained as the route seemed to hit on various sections of nice rock with interesting moves interspersed with easier terrain. It was completely bolted so for once route finding was not a problem (plus we were following another party). After 2 pitches, we crossed the ramp but then there was a lineup of people waiting for pitch 3 (most of whom had walked up the ramp). Although I was tempted to try to bypass them I decided to wait. At least the parties seemed to move along pretty well and in any event we had plenty of time to complete the route. The upper section contained several hard moves of upper 5.7 or 5.8 that made you think, and Annie did great. More and more people were coming up from below—the good weather turned the route into a traffic jam. The finish was on a short section of the SE ridge and then you needed to downclimb a bit and go behind the peak to access the rappel point. A relatively straightforward descent down a gully brought us back to the Index chair.
At the bottom of the chair I suggested we do the hike over to the Planpraz of the Brevent ski area. This was a very pleasant 2 hour hike and we still had time to do this and ride up for more views at the top of the Brevent tram. (We had bought multiday passes, so the incentive was to ride lots of lifts on days when you were using the pass.) It was interesting to notice changes in the ski area since I had skied it a fair amount in the 60’s. Mainly a lot of new terrain opened up. One thing I remembered vividly was a narrow box canyon that descends from the open slope of the upper Brevent ski area. Seemingly just a bit wider than ski length and steep with rock walls, it was an intimidating plunge for me then and I’m sure it would continue to challenge if I ever get back to ski here.
August 14, 2010—Chapelle de la Gliere
Forecast was OK for the a.m. so Samuel Bieri from the Ecole de Physique and I went to do the S Ridge of the Gliere (or SSE Arete), for real this time. For once I had a decent topo to work off (from the internet). We got the first tram but got passed on the approach. Got a little guidance from a party on a different route for the start, and we started up behind a pair of Brits. The route is fairly long, in terms of number of pitches (12) but many are pretty easy. Also known as the Chapelle de la Gliere, it is one of the routes in Rebuffat’s list of 100 climbs in the Mont Blanc region. Mostly it is max 5a but if you go all the way up the “clock tower” there is a bit of 6a at the top (5.10a). The chapel and clock tower are an unusual feature with a sort of ramp and finger of rock at the top that if you have a vivid imagination, could be the roof of a chapel and a clock tower. We went with one half rope doubled to 30m this time, and it worked out great. Older routes seem to have shorter pitches, so this works great. After a couple of pitches behind the Brits the going was pretty easy so we switched to simulclimbing and quickly passed them by. Fog started to roll in along with a few portentous raindrops. Visibility was so poor it was hard to tell where the ridge went. A couple of times I had to call Samuel off the line he was taking because a glimpse of the ridge revealed he was going the wrong way. We regrouped at the start of the razor pitch (a sharp horizontal arête which is often photographed). This turned out to be easy although I stupidly tried to climb up a corner on the left which I should have known was off-route. We went over the true summit, then did the hard moves on the clock tower. After a short rap we headed off to the col behind the Index and down to the chairlift. The rain picked up later so it was just as well we decided against doing the SE ridge on the index.
August 17, 2010—the Frison-Roche on the Brevent
Again the weather was supposed to be good for the morning, so Samuel and I decided to go up to the Brevent to do a route on the main crag under the cable car. This would be a snap to approach and it finishes right at the station. I finally got some decent guides at Snell Sports. The Griffin guides just didn’t have enough detail. Piola has a couple of topo guides to the region and fortunately there are now English versions. The route we picked was labeled THE classic of the Aiguilles Rouges—Voie Frison-Roche, 6a, 5 pitches. Although we intended to get right up the cable car, we didn’t get to the Brevent gondola early enough and had to wait in line getting tickets. When we got to the bottom of the route there were already 3 parties ahead of us. Fortunately they seemed to be moving along quickly so we waited. Seems like in the US when you get to that situation there’s always somebody who takes 2 hours to do 1 pitch. The classic routes here are crowded but most of the time they move along OK. Pitch 4 was a little hard but didn’t seem 10a, it went up a corner crack. The route was fully bolted so it was a little strange to climb this crack on bolts. Cracks like this are a dime a dozen in Yosemite, but here a nice crack is noteworthy. The Brits in front of us got stuck and they wasted a lot of time switching leaders to have another go. The last pitch was a real nice crack system, definitely worth it.
August 21, 2010—South Face of Aiguille du Midi
A superb weekend forecast, so Christian and I headed up the first cable car to do the South Face of the Aiguille du Midi (Rebuffat route). I had tried this back in 1984 with Joel Feldman, but it was too hard for him and I had gotten the wrong idea on the route by reading the Rebuffat 100 Finest description (which gives a grade of V but that assumes you pull on pins here and there). Done free in a modern style it is 5.10a. But although it is only 200m tall, it packs quite a punch.
Things got going well as we got to the base (Contamine start) first in line. There would be 4 or 5 other parties all trying to get up behind us, so it was quite a traffic jam (see photos at my picasaweb site.). Things went well at first as we cruised the slab move on the first pitch and the S crack afterwards. These are supposed to be the crux pitches at 10a. (Christian was going “old school” by making liberal use of gear to get up.) The next couple of pitches went pretty well also, but there was a little roof that I got pretty winded on with the altitude so I decided to break the pitch there. Since the party behind us were pressuring us a bit, I decided to take a little break and let them go through. Part of my thinking here was that I needed help with finding the route. I could not find a topo and I was just going from a photo with the line marked and the ridiculous 40 year old route description from the Rebuffat book. It’s the sort of description that can be recognized only after completing the route. As you get to the upper part of the face, the number of options seem to multiply and I thought it would be easier to follow a knowledgeable party up the last few pitches. The problem was the party I let through was not all that knowledgeable and the leader immediately ran into problems with route finding. It’s a lot easier to pressure a party from behind than it is to keep up a quick pace in front when you have the additional burden of route finding. The leader clogged up the pitch and another party came up and started passing on the same pitch. The two ropes got stuck together, creating further problems for the leader. At least I had more people to question about where the route goes and how to rappel the route (we had opted to leave our boots, crampons, and axe at the base, figuring to rappel the route to retrieve them). Eventually I headed up myself and we waited endlessly for the leader (Andrea with a German accent) to make the next pitch. Another party joined us at the ledge. I was stacking the rope to get ready for the next lead and the leader of the new party demanded I make room for him. I said I was busy and he just stepped on my rope and forced his way into the anchor. I went ahead and did another half pitch. The pushy guy started to tell me the route moves left. Now I’m getting really confused, whether to follow the obvious crack system which Andrea had taken (but she was having a really hard time higher up, so I was worried it was a dead end) or move left and go up another system. It seemed like the “go left” guy was saying to go way left, but the ledge ended after 30 feet at a major outside corner and there was no obvious way to go further left into the chasm beyond. (The picture on summitpost shows a route going further left here, and since we never saw the go-left party after this point, there must be a way over there. However, it might have been hard for us to rap back down if we had gone that way.) Anyway, I went up the system left of the cracks, which was fine, but this intersected Andrea’s route. Andrea’s party was having trouble with rope drag, so they asked me to remove some of their gear on my way up. The next feature was a hard-to-reach slab with a bolt about 10 feet up. I was not at all sure this was on route, but I figured out a way to get onto the slab and proceeded on. This led to some snowy terrain but I managed to find a belay anchor. Things were really slowing down at a point where I thought we’d be able to cruise the last few pitches at 5.7.
At this point, we could see the top but it was far from obvious how to get there. Luckily another party passed by and gave us some very specific info about how to finish the climb. At this point the better climbers were heading up and right to do a sort of direct variation that finishes right at the summit. This would be the preferable finish, but it was apparently pretty hard, something like 6c or 7a which would put it at least at hard 5.10. The way for average Joe’s to finish was to traverse across a huge inside corner/chasm and then head up a wide crack system to the top. So we’d finally got the needed beta from the “hive mind” of half a dozen parties on the route. All I needed to do now was cruise a couple of 5.7 pitches. Not so fast! The traverse normally involves pulling on a rope as a tension traverse but the rope was snowed in and too far back to be of use. I put in a .75 camalot and made the move—almost out of balance. Christian couldn’t do it without leaving the cam. Andrea and company were supposed to give it back to me, but they needed it too. I became preoccupied with the next pitch and forgot about it. The final pitch began with a strenuous section about 9 inches wide that required me to move the rack to the other side and grovel and squeeze my way up to a stance. Huffing and puffing, and still very perplexed about where to go next, I got further advice from the knowledgeable guy that I needed to go around the corner, drop down a bit and climb the offwidth. He said it was easier than it looks. There was a bolt to lower off of, or protect the traverse, but then it was a full-on offwidth up a very smooth crack (also wet). I struggled with this for a while and got a ways above the bolt—but no other gear was to be had. Just as I was starting to get overcommitted, a couple of holds started to appear and after a scary slip I managed to complete the pitch to a point overlooking one of the Midi station terraces. (This is definitely one of the finishes described in Rebuffat’s book—but there is also another pitch that leads to the true summit.)
OK, so I’m at the top and very close to civilization, but all the delays meant it was getting quite late, about 4pm and we still had to rappel the route and make the last tram at 6pm. So I rapped down the offwidth pitch, figuring Christian wouldn’t be up for it anyway. After I described the pitch to Andrea, she and her partner said they wanted to rap down with us. But then as Christian and I were readying the next rap they arranged to follow an Italian party (they had carried their gear up—seems to me that’s the better strategy as the rappel involved a lot of traversing and was a pain in the butt. Even better would be to leave an extra set of boots and crampons at the Midi station to go down and retrieve everything with.) Down we went. At first we did just 30m rappels because of the need to traverse. Also the terrain was rather broken up so stuck rope was a real concern. In fact even with our single rope we stuck it once. But the nice thing about rappelling single rope is that even if it sticks it is usually not too high up and so not a huge pain to retrieve. Still, I was counting the minutes on the raps, with the better ones taking only 10 minutes. Further down we switched to double rope raps. However, in retrospect this probably slowed us down because of the time spent untangling and feeding the rope down the rappel line. At one point I was trying to make it to a ledge really far over, but then when I decided to give up on it I allowed myself to swing rather wildly back, scraping my ankle. Finally I made it to the ledge where we left our gear (but one of the ropes was stuck in a crack at direct start about 80 feet down and to the left.) Time was running out. Christian rapped down to where the rope was stuck, and I brought him his boots and crampons. We tried to organize for the hike up to the Midi but I forgot his ice axe and had to go back up to get it. Going as fast as we could, given how tired we were, we made it back to the station at about 6:30. Happily they were running the tram a lot later due to the masses of tourists who were at the top needing to get down. Overall, quite an eventful day in the mountains!
August 22, 2010—Voie des Dalles
Samuel spent Saturday at a party for his grandfather’s 100th birthday. Sunday we had planned to do the Frendo Spur, but in view of my lengthy day on the South face of the Midi I suggested we go for a more modest goal, the Voie des Dalles on the Aiguille du Pouce. This is a pure rock route in the Aiguilles Rouges. I had tried this 4 years ago but got off route a few pitches up, ended on a really hard slab climb and rapped off. This was a long route and you have to move quickly if you want to make it back to the Index chair before it closes. Even more so now that the hours of operation were cut back, with the first tram at 8:15 and the last ride back at 4:30. On our way to the tram Samuel mentioned he had his sandals for the approach—this necessitated a return to Les Houches because getting to and from the climb involved a lot of serious mountain terrain. The approach in particular was quite nasty, as you have to hike way up almost to the level of the top of the Pouce before descending some very loose gullies and a “hidden couloir.” This was one of the worst pieces of terrain I’ve ever descended. Then I had to get down some icy snowfields in my approach shoes, using some rocks in my hands to slow my slide. Four years ago, I had taken a more roundabout route that crossed a lower col a couple of peaks to the east. Even if this is a bit slower, it is much preferable.
We took the “Depart des guides” start, which comes in from the right, as recommended by the Piola guide. Things went pretty well until we got to the top of pitch 2 in the topo. This is the critical route finding juncture. The guidebook warned about following a line of bolts left of the route. So I saw the line of bolts, felt good about not following them, and moved right as per the topo. But another tempting bolt lured me in and I did some hard moves up to it and then to another with a left biner. Evidently I was repeating my experience from 4 years ago. But I had enough presence of mind to lower off and figure out that the real route was even further to the right up a seam with grass and a couple of pins. In retrospect, given that this is an old route, I should have followed pins instead of bolts. The problem with route finding is that none of the options seem to lead anywhere from below—you have to proceed up on a little bit of faith. The seam turned out to be really hard, much harder than the 5c rating would suggest. I put in a ton of gear still somewhat in doubt about whether I was on route.
At this point a British party had caught up to us. They said their intention was to flash up the route and make the last chair down. We had already given in to the inevitable, given our late start and the 4:30 deadline. They started to share the pitch with us, which I didn’t mind so much. However, as usual it is a lot easier to move quickly when the party in front is doing the route finding. Once their leader passed me he made some route finding errors of his own and so we ended up doing several pitches in close proximity. I got an interesting comparison between two rope strategies. We were going with our 30m double rope, they were stretching out leads with a 50 or 60 meter rope. They were often out of communication or dealing with rope drag, so we proceeded up much more smoothly and efficiently. This time I was the knowledgeable one, as I had to correct their route choice at one point where the route traverses back left on a jugged out hand-traverse. At the end of this the Brits finally cleared our rope. They had started to simulclimb, using an interesting method of putting a rope block in every so often to keep the second from pulling off the leader in case of a fall.
At this point the angle eased off and we started to simulclimb as well. In the end, we arrived at the top at about the same time as the Brits. We had done a fairly long route in a respectable time of 5 hours. Still, there was no way any of us would make the last chair—in fact it probably had already departed. After lounging around on the summit for a while, we headed back over fairly technical terrain—a knife-edge ridge that involved a fair amount of downclimbing and skirting obstacles. We arrived at the top of the chair at 7 and proceeded down. I was dreading this part of the day but in fact it was only a 2 hour hike down to the car. Strangely, the path to the parking lot was blocked by a golf course and I ended up following a group of French hikers who knew where the gap in the fence was to get from the golf course back to the tram station.
August 25, 2010—Frendo Spur
Bonus day—after taking advantage of the great weekend weather there was another perfect day forecast. So Samuel and I decided to do the Frendo Spur (we were going to do it on the 22nd but I was too tired from the S Face of the Midi). There was a problem, though, with the contracting hours on the Midi Tram. This is a very long route and it is difficult to finish and make the tram back. So we were going to go up the night before and stay at the Refuge de la Plan d’Aiguille (recently upgraded to a full service hut). However, when we arrived to get our tickets, we learned that the tram was closed all day due to winds. After some discussion we decided to get the first tram in the morning and do our best to move quickly.
I was going to do the Frendo with Duncan 4 years ago but I backed out when a third person was invited to join—I didn’t think it would go very well with 3 people. It’s a pretty serious route, on the north face of the Aiguille du Midi. The lower part is rock climbing, and the upper third is ice, so you have to bring everything. This means doing a long route with heavy packs.
We messed up the approach a little bit because I thought I found a nicer way to get to the base by traversing high from the left on the glacier. Turned out to be a pain because the glacier was fairly broken up, we got forced up way high to avoid crevasses, and then we had to downclimb. We lost maybe a half hour and got started at 9. The route starts with easy scrambling and then you need to climb up some steeper terrain to gain the actual ridge. Here we messed up again because when it looked like it was getting harder we didn’t switch to simulcimbing mode with rock shoes. Rather, we just tried to push through the section (supposedly 5.3) in mountain boots. But then Samuel got stuck and I ended up taking a different way up and gave him a toprope. There were some fixed pins with slings to help people get through this section with a minimum of fuss. Once we switched to rock shoes, the climbing went much more smoothly. It was mostly pretty easy, but there were occasional hard parts—such as the blank corner fairly high up that seemed pretty much impossible without pulling on the pins. So much for the 5.5 rock rating! Simulclimbing helped us make a reasonably good time on the rock section, and we arrived at the start of the snow and ice at 1pm.
The ice climbing part started well enough. Samuel was new to it but he had gotten some Simond Anaconda’s like mine. Still, I felt like I needed to lead all the ice. Still in 30m rope mode, we started climbing together and I put in an ice screw every 20-25 meters. A section of about 250 feet got us to the base of the rognan (rock buttress). From here it was necessary to traverse straight out right for about 200 feet. This was a little awkward, but not too bad. The angle seemed like about 45 degrees mostly, in places maybe a bit steeper. (I noticed some tracks later that some parties had gone diagonally up to the right, following more closely the bottom of the ice rather than the top, as I had done—this might have been a bit easier from the point of view of having snowier ice, which took less effort.) At this point my feet were starting to hurt a lot and I was tiring. The ice was generally quite hard (in the sense that it was hard to penetrate with crampon points) so I was on front points the whole way, with only an occasional break in the 10 and 2 position. (An ascent earlier in the season would perhaps provide easier ice climbing conditions, though one might have to contend with more snow on the rock part of the route. I think that the grey-colored ice is generally to be avoided—one looks for routes with white ice that provides easier purchase and less effort.) There were only occasional partial stances at which to regroup and rest. Nothing like waterfall ice climbing where nice stances seem to form naturally. As we continued around the corner and up the right side of the rognan, I could feel my strength waning to dangerously low levels. There were points for cams in the rock every 60 or 70 feet and when I got to a good one I clipped and hung to relieve my screaming feet. At the fifth stance I saw what I thought was an opportunity to move out onto rock and finish up the rognan. This turned out to be a big mistake and a huge time waster. I felt our situation was becoming dangerous since my climbing technique was getting sloppy and we were getting some rockfall from the intense sun on the terrain above us. But one should never substitute wishful thinking for a realistic appraisal of the situation. I climbed up on the rock with my left crampon on and my right one off, and actually did some interesting moves to gain a vantage point. But from there it was clear that the ramp went nowhere and we were just going to have to finish the ice climbing. I was able to clip a half buried fixed cam and lowered/rappelled back to our stance. When I pulled the rope, it got stuck and I had to climb up 25 feet to retrieve it. Finally after an eternity of reorganizing ourselves for ice climbing, I got going. As it turned out the last section of about 200 feet started to ease off and it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps the hour or so I spent off my front points enabled me to regroup and regain some strength and focus. At this point we had given up all hope of making the tram—it was just a question of getting off the face and out of danger. Altogether there was about 1100 feet of ice climbing, which we did in six sections and took about 5 hours, not counting the interlude on the rock buttress. There were perhaps 2500 feet of rock, which took us 4 hours. So obviously being a bit faster on the ice would have been nice, but it’s been many years since I did a long ice climb and I was not in good enough condition for this. The closest thing I had done in recent years was the N Face of Athabasca (2005) which had much softer conditions, and therefore much easier to rest.
At this point we were very close to the top of the ridge. The wind was picking up and it was clear the top of the ridge would be extremely windy. I put on my parka and followed Samuel up to the Midi-Plan ridge. We fought the wind on the short section back to the tram station—our rope blown out sideways like in the old Patagonia climbing movie "Mountain of Storms". At this point it was almost 8pm but there was still some activity in the station leading us to again hope we could get a ride down and avoid a cold night. As it turned out, they held the last tram down (with all the staff and the garbage from a busy day at the Midi station) for a few minutes to help us out. On the way down I chatted with the tram operator who said he had been following us all day. He even had a few comments on the crazy rock excursion! He talked about the orange-coated climber who led all the ice and I confirmed that “I was the orange guy.”
When I took off my boots I found I had lost feeling in the front part of my feet, probably from all the front pointing (though perhaps my boots were too tight for my swollen feet).
Aug 7, 2010—Brunat-Perroux on Aiguille l’Index
Annie and I were looking for a moderate route with an easy approach as an introduction to climbing in the Chamonix area. The Index seemed like the ideal choice. There is the SE ridge, but that is a little bit too easy. I noticed in the Griffin guide that the S ridge was longer and more sustained, so that seemed like a good goal. However, the problem as always for me was finding the start of the route. There were lots of people going by, we asked them but they kept directing us to the SE ridge. Finally we found a party starting up the E face a couple of hundred feet below the ramp that forms the usual access to the SE ridge. The leader of the group astutely noticed that the route description I was trying to follow was actually on the Gliere, not the Index! I’ve started up the wrong route before, but never the wrong peak. A change of plan was in order. The route they were following seemed about right for us. It is called the Voie Brunat-Perroux, and it contains 7 pitches. The last pitch is 6a, but we avoided that and the rest is maximum 5b, or about 5.8. I noticed that most of the pitches were short, 30m maximum, and this got me to thinking later about climbing with just the one 60m half rope doubled up. This would save a lot of time with pulling in and stacking scads of cord everywhere. For the Index, however, there is a long rappel to get down from the summit so I think two normal ropes are preferred.
The climbing was fun, but not very sustained as the route seemed to hit on various sections of nice rock with interesting moves interspersed with easier terrain. It was completely bolted so for once route finding was not a problem (plus we were following another party). After 2 pitches, we crossed the ramp but then there was a lineup of people waiting for pitch 3 (most of whom had walked up the ramp). Although I was tempted to try to bypass them I decided to wait. At least the parties seemed to move along pretty well and in any event we had plenty of time to complete the route. The upper section contained several hard moves of upper 5.7 or 5.8 that made you think, and Annie did great. More and more people were coming up from below—the good weather turned the route into a traffic jam. The finish was on a short section of the SE ridge and then you needed to downclimb a bit and go behind the peak to access the rappel point. A relatively straightforward descent down a gully brought us back to the Index chair.
At the bottom of the chair I suggested we do the hike over to the Planpraz of the Brevent ski area. This was a very pleasant 2 hour hike and we still had time to do this and ride up for more views at the top of the Brevent tram. (We had bought multiday passes, so the incentive was to ride lots of lifts on days when you were using the pass.) It was interesting to notice changes in the ski area since I had skied it a fair amount in the 60’s. Mainly a lot of new terrain opened up. One thing I remembered vividly was a narrow box canyon that descends from the open slope of the upper Brevent ski area. Seemingly just a bit wider than ski length and steep with rock walls, it was an intimidating plunge for me then and I’m sure it would continue to challenge if I ever get back to ski here.
August 14, 2010—Chapelle de la Gliere
Forecast was OK for the a.m. so Samuel Bieri from the Ecole de Physique and I went to do the S Ridge of the Gliere (or SSE Arete), for real this time. For once I had a decent topo to work off (from the internet). We got the first tram but got passed on the approach. Got a little guidance from a party on a different route for the start, and we started up behind a pair of Brits. The route is fairly long, in terms of number of pitches (12) but many are pretty easy. Also known as the Chapelle de la Gliere, it is one of the routes in Rebuffat’s list of 100 climbs in the Mont Blanc region. Mostly it is max 5a but if you go all the way up the “clock tower” there is a bit of 6a at the top (5.10a). The chapel and clock tower are an unusual feature with a sort of ramp and finger of rock at the top that if you have a vivid imagination, could be the roof of a chapel and a clock tower. We went with one half rope doubled to 30m this time, and it worked out great. Older routes seem to have shorter pitches, so this works great. After a couple of pitches behind the Brits the going was pretty easy so we switched to simulclimbing and quickly passed them by. Fog started to roll in along with a few portentous raindrops. Visibility was so poor it was hard to tell where the ridge went. A couple of times I had to call Samuel off the line he was taking because a glimpse of the ridge revealed he was going the wrong way. We regrouped at the start of the razor pitch (a sharp horizontal arête which is often photographed). This turned out to be easy although I stupidly tried to climb up a corner on the left which I should have known was off-route. We went over the true summit, then did the hard moves on the clock tower. After a short rap we headed off to the col behind the Index and down to the chairlift. The rain picked up later so it was just as well we decided against doing the SE ridge on the index.
August 17, 2010—the Frison-Roche on the Brevent
Again the weather was supposed to be good for the morning, so Samuel and I decided to go up to the Brevent to do a route on the main crag under the cable car. This would be a snap to approach and it finishes right at the station. I finally got some decent guides at Snell Sports. The Griffin guides just didn’t have enough detail. Piola has a couple of topo guides to the region and fortunately there are now English versions. The route we picked was labeled THE classic of the Aiguilles Rouges—Voie Frison-Roche, 6a, 5 pitches. Although we intended to get right up the cable car, we didn’t get to the Brevent gondola early enough and had to wait in line getting tickets. When we got to the bottom of the route there were already 3 parties ahead of us. Fortunately they seemed to be moving along quickly so we waited. Seems like in the US when you get to that situation there’s always somebody who takes 2 hours to do 1 pitch. The classic routes here are crowded but most of the time they move along OK. Pitch 4 was a little hard but didn’t seem 10a, it went up a corner crack. The route was fully bolted so it was a little strange to climb this crack on bolts. Cracks like this are a dime a dozen in Yosemite, but here a nice crack is noteworthy. The Brits in front of us got stuck and they wasted a lot of time switching leaders to have another go. The last pitch was a real nice crack system, definitely worth it.
August 21, 2010—South Face of Aiguille du Midi
A superb weekend forecast, so Christian and I headed up the first cable car to do the South Face of the Aiguille du Midi (Rebuffat route). I had tried this back in 1984 with Joel Feldman, but it was too hard for him and I had gotten the wrong idea on the route by reading the Rebuffat 100 Finest description (which gives a grade of V but that assumes you pull on pins here and there). Done free in a modern style it is 5.10a. But although it is only 200m tall, it packs quite a punch.
Things got going well as we got to the base (Contamine start) first in line. There would be 4 or 5 other parties all trying to get up behind us, so it was quite a traffic jam (see photos at my picasaweb site.). Things went well at first as we cruised the slab move on the first pitch and the S crack afterwards. These are supposed to be the crux pitches at 10a. (Christian was going “old school” by making liberal use of gear to get up.) The next couple of pitches went pretty well also, but there was a little roof that I got pretty winded on with the altitude so I decided to break the pitch there. Since the party behind us were pressuring us a bit, I decided to take a little break and let them go through. Part of my thinking here was that I needed help with finding the route. I could not find a topo and I was just going from a photo with the line marked and the ridiculous 40 year old route description from the Rebuffat book. It’s the sort of description that can be recognized only after completing the route. As you get to the upper part of the face, the number of options seem to multiply and I thought it would be easier to follow a knowledgeable party up the last few pitches. The problem was the party I let through was not all that knowledgeable and the leader immediately ran into problems with route finding. It’s a lot easier to pressure a party from behind than it is to keep up a quick pace in front when you have the additional burden of route finding. The leader clogged up the pitch and another party came up and started passing on the same pitch. The two ropes got stuck together, creating further problems for the leader. At least I had more people to question about where the route goes and how to rappel the route (we had opted to leave our boots, crampons, and axe at the base, figuring to rappel the route to retrieve them). Eventually I headed up myself and we waited endlessly for the leader (Andrea with a German accent) to make the next pitch. Another party joined us at the ledge. I was stacking the rope to get ready for the next lead and the leader of the new party demanded I make room for him. I said I was busy and he just stepped on my rope and forced his way into the anchor. I went ahead and did another half pitch. The pushy guy started to tell me the route moves left. Now I’m getting really confused, whether to follow the obvious crack system which Andrea had taken (but she was having a really hard time higher up, so I was worried it was a dead end) or move left and go up another system. It seemed like the “go left” guy was saying to go way left, but the ledge ended after 30 feet at a major outside corner and there was no obvious way to go further left into the chasm beyond. (The picture on summitpost shows a route going further left here, and since we never saw the go-left party after this point, there must be a way over there. However, it might have been hard for us to rap back down if we had gone that way.) Anyway, I went up the system left of the cracks, which was fine, but this intersected Andrea’s route. Andrea’s party was having trouble with rope drag, so they asked me to remove some of their gear on my way up. The next feature was a hard-to-reach slab with a bolt about 10 feet up. I was not at all sure this was on route, but I figured out a way to get onto the slab and proceeded on. This led to some snowy terrain but I managed to find a belay anchor. Things were really slowing down at a point where I thought we’d be able to cruise the last few pitches at 5.7.
At this point, we could see the top but it was far from obvious how to get there. Luckily another party passed by and gave us some very specific info about how to finish the climb. At this point the better climbers were heading up and right to do a sort of direct variation that finishes right at the summit. This would be the preferable finish, but it was apparently pretty hard, something like 6c or 7a which would put it at least at hard 5.10. The way for average Joe’s to finish was to traverse across a huge inside corner/chasm and then head up a wide crack system to the top. So we’d finally got the needed beta from the “hive mind” of half a dozen parties on the route. All I needed to do now was cruise a couple of 5.7 pitches. Not so fast! The traverse normally involves pulling on a rope as a tension traverse but the rope was snowed in and too far back to be of use. I put in a .75 camalot and made the move—almost out of balance. Christian couldn’t do it without leaving the cam. Andrea and company were supposed to give it back to me, but they needed it too. I became preoccupied with the next pitch and forgot about it. The final pitch began with a strenuous section about 9 inches wide that required me to move the rack to the other side and grovel and squeeze my way up to a stance. Huffing and puffing, and still very perplexed about where to go next, I got further advice from the knowledgeable guy that I needed to go around the corner, drop down a bit and climb the offwidth. He said it was easier than it looks. There was a bolt to lower off of, or protect the traverse, but then it was a full-on offwidth up a very smooth crack (also wet). I struggled with this for a while and got a ways above the bolt—but no other gear was to be had. Just as I was starting to get overcommitted, a couple of holds started to appear and after a scary slip I managed to complete the pitch to a point overlooking one of the Midi station terraces. (This is definitely one of the finishes described in Rebuffat’s book—but there is also another pitch that leads to the true summit.)
OK, so I’m at the top and very close to civilization, but all the delays meant it was getting quite late, about 4pm and we still had to rappel the route and make the last tram at 6pm. So I rapped down the offwidth pitch, figuring Christian wouldn’t be up for it anyway. After I described the pitch to Andrea, she and her partner said they wanted to rap down with us. But then as Christian and I were readying the next rap they arranged to follow an Italian party (they had carried their gear up—seems to me that’s the better strategy as the rappel involved a lot of traversing and was a pain in the butt. Even better would be to leave an extra set of boots and crampons at the Midi station to go down and retrieve everything with.) Down we went. At first we did just 30m rappels because of the need to traverse. Also the terrain was rather broken up so stuck rope was a real concern. In fact even with our single rope we stuck it once. But the nice thing about rappelling single rope is that even if it sticks it is usually not too high up and so not a huge pain to retrieve. Still, I was counting the minutes on the raps, with the better ones taking only 10 minutes. Further down we switched to double rope raps. However, in retrospect this probably slowed us down because of the time spent untangling and feeding the rope down the rappel line. At one point I was trying to make it to a ledge really far over, but then when I decided to give up on it I allowed myself to swing rather wildly back, scraping my ankle. Finally I made it to the ledge where we left our gear (but one of the ropes was stuck in a crack at direct start about 80 feet down and to the left.) Time was running out. Christian rapped down to where the rope was stuck, and I brought him his boots and crampons. We tried to organize for the hike up to the Midi but I forgot his ice axe and had to go back up to get it. Going as fast as we could, given how tired we were, we made it back to the station at about 6:30. Happily they were running the tram a lot later due to the masses of tourists who were at the top needing to get down. Overall, quite an eventful day in the mountains!
August 22, 2010—Voie des Dalles
Samuel spent Saturday at a party for his grandfather’s 100th birthday. Sunday we had planned to do the Frendo Spur, but in view of my lengthy day on the South face of the Midi I suggested we go for a more modest goal, the Voie des Dalles on the Aiguille du Pouce. This is a pure rock route in the Aiguilles Rouges. I had tried this 4 years ago but got off route a few pitches up, ended on a really hard slab climb and rapped off. This was a long route and you have to move quickly if you want to make it back to the Index chair before it closes. Even more so now that the hours of operation were cut back, with the first tram at 8:15 and the last ride back at 4:30. On our way to the tram Samuel mentioned he had his sandals for the approach—this necessitated a return to Les Houches because getting to and from the climb involved a lot of serious mountain terrain. The approach in particular was quite nasty, as you have to hike way up almost to the level of the top of the Pouce before descending some very loose gullies and a “hidden couloir.” This was one of the worst pieces of terrain I’ve ever descended. Then I had to get down some icy snowfields in my approach shoes, using some rocks in my hands to slow my slide. Four years ago, I had taken a more roundabout route that crossed a lower col a couple of peaks to the east. Even if this is a bit slower, it is much preferable.
We took the “Depart des guides” start, which comes in from the right, as recommended by the Piola guide. Things went pretty well until we got to the top of pitch 2 in the topo. This is the critical route finding juncture. The guidebook warned about following a line of bolts left of the route. So I saw the line of bolts, felt good about not following them, and moved right as per the topo. But another tempting bolt lured me in and I did some hard moves up to it and then to another with a left biner. Evidently I was repeating my experience from 4 years ago. But I had enough presence of mind to lower off and figure out that the real route was even further to the right up a seam with grass and a couple of pins. In retrospect, given that this is an old route, I should have followed pins instead of bolts. The problem with route finding is that none of the options seem to lead anywhere from below—you have to proceed up on a little bit of faith. The seam turned out to be really hard, much harder than the 5c rating would suggest. I put in a ton of gear still somewhat in doubt about whether I was on route.
At this point a British party had caught up to us. They said their intention was to flash up the route and make the last chair down. We had already given in to the inevitable, given our late start and the 4:30 deadline. They started to share the pitch with us, which I didn’t mind so much. However, as usual it is a lot easier to move quickly when the party in front is doing the route finding. Once their leader passed me he made some route finding errors of his own and so we ended up doing several pitches in close proximity. I got an interesting comparison between two rope strategies. We were going with our 30m double rope, they were stretching out leads with a 50 or 60 meter rope. They were often out of communication or dealing with rope drag, so we proceeded up much more smoothly and efficiently. This time I was the knowledgeable one, as I had to correct their route choice at one point where the route traverses back left on a jugged out hand-traverse. At the end of this the Brits finally cleared our rope. They had started to simulclimb, using an interesting method of putting a rope block in every so often to keep the second from pulling off the leader in case of a fall.
At this point the angle eased off and we started to simulclimb as well. In the end, we arrived at the top at about the same time as the Brits. We had done a fairly long route in a respectable time of 5 hours. Still, there was no way any of us would make the last chair—in fact it probably had already departed. After lounging around on the summit for a while, we headed back over fairly technical terrain—a knife-edge ridge that involved a fair amount of downclimbing and skirting obstacles. We arrived at the top of the chair at 7 and proceeded down. I was dreading this part of the day but in fact it was only a 2 hour hike down to the car. Strangely, the path to the parking lot was blocked by a golf course and I ended up following a group of French hikers who knew where the gap in the fence was to get from the golf course back to the tram station.
August 25, 2010—Frendo Spur
Bonus day—after taking advantage of the great weekend weather there was another perfect day forecast. So Samuel and I decided to do the Frendo Spur (we were going to do it on the 22nd but I was too tired from the S Face of the Midi). There was a problem, though, with the contracting hours on the Midi Tram. This is a very long route and it is difficult to finish and make the tram back. So we were going to go up the night before and stay at the Refuge de la Plan d’Aiguille (recently upgraded to a full service hut). However, when we arrived to get our tickets, we learned that the tram was closed all day due to winds. After some discussion we decided to get the first tram in the morning and do our best to move quickly.
I was going to do the Frendo with Duncan 4 years ago but I backed out when a third person was invited to join—I didn’t think it would go very well with 3 people. It’s a pretty serious route, on the north face of the Aiguille du Midi. The lower part is rock climbing, and the upper third is ice, so you have to bring everything. This means doing a long route with heavy packs.
We messed up the approach a little bit because I thought I found a nicer way to get to the base by traversing high from the left on the glacier. Turned out to be a pain because the glacier was fairly broken up, we got forced up way high to avoid crevasses, and then we had to downclimb. We lost maybe a half hour and got started at 9. The route starts with easy scrambling and then you need to climb up some steeper terrain to gain the actual ridge. Here we messed up again because when it looked like it was getting harder we didn’t switch to simulcimbing mode with rock shoes. Rather, we just tried to push through the section (supposedly 5.3) in mountain boots. But then Samuel got stuck and I ended up taking a different way up and gave him a toprope. There were some fixed pins with slings to help people get through this section with a minimum of fuss. Once we switched to rock shoes, the climbing went much more smoothly. It was mostly pretty easy, but there were occasional hard parts—such as the blank corner fairly high up that seemed pretty much impossible without pulling on the pins. So much for the 5.5 rock rating! Simulclimbing helped us make a reasonably good time on the rock section, and we arrived at the start of the snow and ice at 1pm.
The ice climbing part started well enough. Samuel was new to it but he had gotten some Simond Anaconda’s like mine. Still, I felt like I needed to lead all the ice. Still in 30m rope mode, we started climbing together and I put in an ice screw every 20-25 meters. A section of about 250 feet got us to the base of the rognan (rock buttress). From here it was necessary to traverse straight out right for about 200 feet. This was a little awkward, but not too bad. The angle seemed like about 45 degrees mostly, in places maybe a bit steeper. (I noticed some tracks later that some parties had gone diagonally up to the right, following more closely the bottom of the ice rather than the top, as I had done—this might have been a bit easier from the point of view of having snowier ice, which took less effort.) At this point my feet were starting to hurt a lot and I was tiring. The ice was generally quite hard (in the sense that it was hard to penetrate with crampon points) so I was on front points the whole way, with only an occasional break in the 10 and 2 position. (An ascent earlier in the season would perhaps provide easier ice climbing conditions, though one might have to contend with more snow on the rock part of the route. I think that the grey-colored ice is generally to be avoided—one looks for routes with white ice that provides easier purchase and less effort.) There were only occasional partial stances at which to regroup and rest. Nothing like waterfall ice climbing where nice stances seem to form naturally. As we continued around the corner and up the right side of the rognan, I could feel my strength waning to dangerously low levels. There were points for cams in the rock every 60 or 70 feet and when I got to a good one I clipped and hung to relieve my screaming feet. At the fifth stance I saw what I thought was an opportunity to move out onto rock and finish up the rognan. This turned out to be a big mistake and a huge time waster. I felt our situation was becoming dangerous since my climbing technique was getting sloppy and we were getting some rockfall from the intense sun on the terrain above us. But one should never substitute wishful thinking for a realistic appraisal of the situation. I climbed up on the rock with my left crampon on and my right one off, and actually did some interesting moves to gain a vantage point. But from there it was clear that the ramp went nowhere and we were just going to have to finish the ice climbing. I was able to clip a half buried fixed cam and lowered/rappelled back to our stance. When I pulled the rope, it got stuck and I had to climb up 25 feet to retrieve it. Finally after an eternity of reorganizing ourselves for ice climbing, I got going. As it turned out the last section of about 200 feet started to ease off and it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps the hour or so I spent off my front points enabled me to regroup and regain some strength and focus. At this point we had given up all hope of making the tram—it was just a question of getting off the face and out of danger. Altogether there was about 1100 feet of ice climbing, which we did in six sections and took about 5 hours, not counting the interlude on the rock buttress. There were perhaps 2500 feet of rock, which took us 4 hours. So obviously being a bit faster on the ice would have been nice, but it’s been many years since I did a long ice climb and I was not in good enough condition for this. The closest thing I had done in recent years was the N Face of Athabasca (2005) which had much softer conditions, and therefore much easier to rest.
At this point we were very close to the top of the ridge. The wind was picking up and it was clear the top of the ridge would be extremely windy. I put on my parka and followed Samuel up to the Midi-Plan ridge. We fought the wind on the short section back to the tram station—our rope blown out sideways like in the old Patagonia climbing movie "Mountain of Storms". At this point it was almost 8pm but there was still some activity in the station leading us to again hope we could get a ride down and avoid a cold night. As it turned out, they held the last tram down (with all the staff and the garbage from a busy day at the Midi station) for a few minutes to help us out. On the way down I chatted with the tram operator who said he had been following us all day. He even had a few comments on the crazy rock excursion! He talked about the orange-coated climber who led all the ice and I confirmed that “I was the orange guy.”
When I took off my boots I found I had lost feeling in the front part of my feet, probably from all the front pointing (though perhaps my boots were too tight for my swollen feet).
posted by John Imbrie at 12:27 PM
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