Cosmiques Arete Solo

Friday saw the good weather we'd been heaving in Cham break and a bank of unsettled low pressure move it for the weekend. Ash an Clare decided to have a valley day at Gaillards the local crag but having done a lot of the route there that are within my grade when I was out in Chamonix last I decided to try and get one more day in up in the mountains before my flight and the definitive end to my sumer alpine season.

The Cosmiques Arete isn't hard, nor is it particularly serious, its very accessible and having done the route many times over the summer due to its proximity to the lift station and preferableness to trudging up the snow arete I now know it pretty dam well. As such it made quite a good objective for a alpine solo. I've never solo'ed anything in the alpine before, and when I say solo I don't mean just climbing un-roped, I'm referring climbing alone on the mountain.


The weather was poor, with visibility down to about 15 meters, persistent snow and a reasonably strong wind which made walking across the galcier the scariest bit of the whole trip, especially when I put my foot partially in a small crevasse just below the Eperon - probably not big enough for me to fall in but it did make me think. I took some shelter behind the Abri Simmond, having a quick bite to eat before setting off.

I left the base at 10:10am (having left the Midi at 9:45/9:50am) and climbed fairly quickly up the first slabbly sectyion. The rock was very snowy and sections were covered in rime. After about 15/20 minutes I was at the first abseil. I though about down-climbing this as I've done several times before but as I needed to get the rope out for the next one decided it was probably quicker an safer to just rappel both. Rigging the second abseil my hands got quite cold having got wet earlier from brushing snow off holds, here I had a bit of a moment as once you do this you are fairly committed to finishing the rest of the ridge, including the crux slab. I went for it and got to the bottom of the gully where I pulled the ropes, here I made a stupid mistake. As I took my sack off to stow the rope I forgot that my axe was behind my back and dropped it and had to downclimb a good 15m to where it was perched precariously between two rocks, this cost me a good 5-10 minutes as I took it quite slowly. After this I soon reached the crux slab where I changed into dry gloves and then went for, the last section on the north side of the ridge went very quickly and by 11am I was slumped infront of the telescope on the viewing platform, 50 minutes after I started.



The guidebook time is 3 hours, so 50 minutes isn't bad, I'm happy with it considering the conditions. I would of really liked to of beaten John's record of 40 minutes, and I think if I did in good conditions I maybe could - but that will have to wait to next year. I really enjoyed doing it and got a huge buzz from moving freely and swiftly on the mountain however I really did feel alone and quite vulnerable if anything did happen (there were no other parties on the ridge), I imagine I'll do some more soloing, but I'm not quite sure how much yet.

Thats the summer alpine season over for me, I've done 7 weeks out in the Alps and got loads done, and in general the summer has been one of the best I've had for climbing with the month I spent climbing Yosemite, Squamish and Nevada before the Alps. Apparently its time to knuckle down and finish my degree now...