Aiguille de L'M NNE Ridge & L'Index SE Ridge

Tuesday myself and Ash took a 9am lift up the Midi and jumped off at the Plan station before heading up towards the Nantillons glacier and then cutting across under the Petit Charmoz to the base of the Aiguille de L'M. The approach is given in most books as about 2 hours, either from the Plan station or the Montenvers train station on the to the other side. We opted for the Plan approach as while it undulates a fair bit as it crosses several lines of moraine its basically a traverse, a appose to the Montenvers approach which is shorter but ivolves a lot more ascent - we planned to use this as out descent route.

NNE Ridge, Aiguille de L'M.

I led the first pitch, which starts with a few steep moves before some delicate climbing up a shallow crack on a slab. Its given IV- which makes it allegedly one of the harder pitches of the route but despite it being freezing (the sun hadn't come round yet and I couldn't feel my hands!) I thought it was fairly amenable, I strung this together with the next pitch which has some easy III climbing leading to a nice terrace. Here Ash took over and led a fairly short pitch, but with a stiff move (about British 4b/4c) to start up to below the big diedre. This offwidth corner crack is certainly the crux of the route and takes a bit of though as the natural line is to follow and try to climb the offwidth but the way to do is to make a few delicate but easier moves out on the slab which lead to the belay above. This thwarted me the first time, but Ash dispatched with ease, leaving me to follow with both mine and his rucksack which proved quite a challenge! The line on the next pitch is a bit vague and has a few option, I followed a line that passed a few pegs, but Ash found another on second. From here a final pitch led up to the summit ridge and then the summit of the L'M itself. A bit of backtracking leads to a series of abseil anchors, we made three 30m abseils down to the snow gully and then a further one to the other side of the snow and bit of down-climbing to get get us back to the start. We managed to do the descent from here to the Montenvers in 50mins, getting to the station about 10 minutes before the last train.

Clare O'Sullivan arrived that evening so with both myself an Ash being a bit tired from 3 days on the run and Clare having come straight from sea level we took the Midi up and just did a quick lap on the Cosmiques making use of our lift passes, and being down in time for lunch in the Petit Kitchen.

L'Index, the SE Ridge is the left side of the prominent fin of rock.

The next day we walked down from Chris an Andrea's down to Flegere lift station to get up onto the Aiguille Rouge before the lifts shut at the end of the week and we'd have to start walking up... Alpinistes actually walking somewhere!? I've climbed l'Index twice before, but always done routes on the face rather than the classic but easier ridge-line known as the SE Ridge. We did the approach pitches first that sit below the terrace, these are 5c and then 4c and fully bolted. As I'd done these before Ash lead both of them with me an Clare following. At the terrace we had some lunch before we swapped over and I led up the ridge, which at it's hardest is 4c. Its got much less equipment than the other routes, but theres pegs here and there and a reasonable amount of in-situ nuts an cams. I think I probably only places about 3/4 of my own pieces. its 4/5 pitches in the guidebok but I manged to run bits together and did it in 3 fairly full 60m pitches right to the summit. The route is well travelled, and as a product it is quite polished in places but again there is a reason for this - the route is very good, and while it does detract from the quality it certainly isn'y a reason not to do the route.

Throughout the day we had great views over to the Chappelle route on La Gliere which is a route that I really do recommend to do up on the rouge, 14 pitches of excellent climbing at a moderate grade, the hardest bits being 6a.