At the bivi for the Rochefort Arete.
Early last week we headed up with a friend of Chris's, Remi whos been living in the UK for a while. We took an afternoon lift up the midi and traversed the Vallee Blanche in fiarly bad conditions to get to a bivy spot above the Torino hut for an attempt on the Rochefort arete the day after. We went fairly lighweight for the bivy, and were a little cold after the clouds dissapeared, and quite relieived to get moving at 4am. The route starts with a slog the glacier, over the bergschrund and then a small, but shallow mixed coulir lead to the col. Here we ditched crampons for the scramble up to the Salle e Manger below the Dent du Geant. The scramble cover around 300m of height and some fairly loose chossy ground, so it was nice to be on it when it was all fairly frozen together. We reached the start of the Rochefort Arete at around 8am. Remi wasen't feeling too good due to the altitude and to add to this Stubbsy had lost his glacier glasses on the ascent so was struggling to see as the sun began to break over the horizon. So a little frustrated we turned around, it was a shame, as I could see the whole arete stretching out in front and it looked ace, and so close! We were glad to be descending the chossy ground while it was still frozen though, there were a few parties on their way up as we were descending and they were starting to knock a lot of stuff down. Two short abseils and a bimble down the glacier and we were back at the bivi spot, before making out way back to the Midi.
After we were down we roped up and began the crossing to the Torino hut, getting there a few hours before dinner, and then having a fairly early night.
We left the hut at 5:30am, which was probably a little late as depsite being a north face, the route on the tour ronde gets the sun fairly early. The North Face route is 350-400m, moving first up a icefield directly above the bergscrund and then through a snow gully which leads to the upper icefield and the summit. The climbing is much easier than the Chere, being at the steepest maybe 55/60 degrees - the crus pitches are in the gully. We moved together up the first icefield for around 100m with myself leading, and then pitched it through the gully and up the summit icefield getting to the top by about 2pm. We moved fairly slowly but this was due to the fact we were fairly tired from the previous day. The descent was tedious as we first followed the PD rock ridge before dropping off at the shoulder on the the Tour Ronde Normal Route, which is AD and follows a broad, and very loose couloirs. 3 Abseils got us to the bottom of this, and then a sprint back to the lift station.
We fancied a bit of warm rock climbing for change after our cold north face endeavours so headed up the Flegere lift and then the index chair to climb on the index, a huge fin of rock standing clean away from the mountain. The classic route takes the ridge up this, at about 4c but we opted for a link of two routes on the face, going at about 5c/6a over 7 pitches. The climbing was nice, and most of the pitches were pretty well equipped. We abseiled off the summit, back down tot he chair and were back in Chamonix for late afternoon.
Continuing the theme of sunny rock climbing, after a fiarly heavy night with Chris, John a Scott we got up late so drove up towards Argentierre and walked up to the Aiguillete de'Argentierre, a small pinnacle about an hour from the road road. This was pretty easy, if a little dissapointing with two pitches of maybe 4c getting us to the top. Nice views from the top of the pinncale though. After this we did a route on the cliff opposite, which was 4 pitches of 5c, excellent slabby climbing on warm Schist.
Yesterday we headed back up into the big mountains to have a look at the Rebuffet Route on the Eperon des Cosmiques. Me an Chris went and had a look at this a few weeks but decided the start was out of condition and dangerous due to the snowmelt. We'd heard about a direct start though, that missed this though so decided to go an have a look. The catch was that apparently it went at about E1. The crux of any alpine rock route was as always getting out of crampons and boots, getting these into your rucksack and then getting your rock shoes on! I led off up the first pitch we'd been informed about and immeidietely found it quite hard so left my sack on a runner for Stubbs to deal with later. The climbing was awkward but got easier and eventually I made the belay an then brought Stubbs up, who was complaing about having to come up it with two sacks. I'm not sure it was E1, maybe hard HVS, but still fairly hard on a mountain. I then led out the rest of the rightwards trending ledge system, belaying below overhang pitch. Stubbs came up and I set off up the overhang pitch, this starts with some lovely crack climbing with good gear before you reach a big roof which sticks out about 2m. You can free this, but it goes at about VI so I just pulled on the gear an got through it quickly. 3 More pitches on lovely orange granite cracks led us to the top of the buttress at about VS, and then we zoomed along the Cosmiques Arete, getting to the station for 2pm. Superb route.
In addition to the above we've also beein hitting the valley crags like les Gaillards quite a but in between things.
Cosmiques Arete in under 7 hours? Come on man, where's your sense of national identity?
ReplyDeleteYou can drag me up some stuff when you get back over here!