Scottish DT'ing Series 2008

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Midi-Plan

 

During our rest day after the mini-epic that was our ‘easy rock day’ we moved to a campsite in chamonix and met up with the injured Wee Mark (hope the knees getting better!!) and the restless, partner-less Warren. And so the three of us planned to do the Midi-Plan Traverse and leave poor Mark to figure out the origin of the Universe and brushing up his knowledge on the String Theory!

 

The first lift took us to the Midi station from which the early morning skies lit up the beautiful snow arête that was our route. Roped together we set off, not wasting a minute as we had a lot of ground to cover and speed was essential. The situation was awe inspiring with a drop of 2500m on one side falling all the way back to Chamonix and 1000m on the other into the Vallee Blanche, a slip could not be contemplated!

The beautiful airy knife-edge soon gave way to the first rocky steps of Rognon du Plan which gave some entertaining but easy mixed climbing.

From the summit two rather awkward abseils took us down to the Col Superior du Plan from which we traversed the ice slopes at the top of the Glacier d’Envers towards the summit of Aig. du Plan.

At the top of the snow slopes there was a convenient ledge upon which we left our bags before the final summit blocks which were reached by some interesting maneuvers on the famed clean Chamonix Granite!

That was the easy part done, the traverse completed in precise guidebook time of 4hrs, but now we had 2000m of descent down the complex terrain of the ‘Envers glacier and onto the Mer de Glace! To make things a little more entertaining the strong sun had softened the snow, and what looked like it should be an easy glissade had to be treated with great care! Through some stunning serac territory we slowly wound eventually reaching the halfway point of the Requin hut, where our energy stores were replenished with a well earned sandwich. Time was short and we had to race on down the path and ladders onto the Mer de Glace. Unfortunately, since the ladders we put in the glacier has moved and they dropped us onto a seriously convoluted crevasse field!

After much discussion about the best way to navigate this savage nest of fractures we resorted to the adrenaline pumped tactic of jumping where we could and zig-zagging when we had too! This took us around 2hrs to travel about 200m down the glacier and we were in serious danger of missing the last train from Montevers! Luckily once we were clear of the crevasses were onto known terrain and it took us less than 45min to cover the last few miles and soon we were safely on the train, resisting the urge to steal sweets from innocent kids to feed our ravenous bellies!

A great route, long day and the wonderful feeling of exhausted contentment that makes climbing so addictive!

Parat Signeur - An easy day on rock?

Time for some alpine rock, personally recommended by one of Scotland’s best ever climbers and, according to the guidebook, with ‘one of the finest approach walks in all the Alps’ we were keen for a relatively easy day. A train ride towards Switzerland took us to Le Buet, from where we could see the south face of Aig. De Praz Torrents on which we hoped to climb the little known route ‘Parat Signeur’.

The walk in, despite the beautiful woodland scenery, was absolutely hellish! After loosing three pints of sweat and burning our thighs to a cinder we emerged out of the immensely steep forest, crossed the boulder fields and paused to draw breath and match our vague photocopied French topo with the rock-face in front of us. Several lines appeared to breach the face and the presence of a pair of climbers near the top drew us to a line that kind of matched our guide, and so in earnest we set off.

Andy led the first pitch, supposedly 4c, but by the fact he wasn’t replying to my shouts I knew it must be hard! Hard indeed it was, and I had to resort to some French tactics to pull out of an awkward corner (6b?) before joining him on the first belay. The ground appeared to ease ahead and I led on with out too much trouble. The third pitch proved a bit of a treat, with a lovely pillar and a committing traverse move.

This then led us into a beautiful corner crack tackled by a combination of body jamming and bridging and a scramble above took us to the end of the climb. An enjoyable route with awesome views over the Mont Blanc Range and the Aigullies Rouges, but it didn’t really live up to expectation and we were not convinced it was worth the walk-in!

Cubby had told us there was a short scramble to an obvious abseil point. This ab station never materialized and soon we found ourselves on a rather precarious knife-edge ridge that seemed about as stable as a house of cards! The traverse of this was more fun than the climb but when Andy dislodged a block the size of a small car the seriousness of our situation became apparent. We were on a loose ridge having missed the proper descent and anything we knocked off tumbled 200m into the abyss, several scary abseils off spikes would have to be arranged! After getting the rope stuck after the first ab, the spikes got more tenuous with each rope length and on the last one the rope was barely even secure and to our horror the gully dropped away to leave us hanging in mid air over a huge cave! Thankfully we were both safely onto the scree slopes and had little more than a loose surf back to the bags and our long awaited lunch (at 7.30pm!)

The descent march was speeded up by our desire to catch the last train back to Argentiere, but unfortunately it was 9 before we got down, an hour after the last train! Being a Sunday evening at the quiet end of the Chamonix valley a hitch was going to prove difficult and a sleep in the station had to be contemplated in just our shorts and t-shirts, ace! Luckily just before we gave up hope a French mountain guide took pity on us and delivered us back to our campsite in one piece! Not quite the pleasant easy day we had hoped for!

No climbers on the Cosmiques?!

    

And so, a week into our trip, it was time to try to get a route done! This required a change of tactics, we bought a multi-day lift pass and vowed to climb shorter routes within range of lift stations. And there it was, the most famous motorway in the alps; The Cosmiques Arete – a true classic!

 

With our campsite neighbours (and later the kind benefactors of 5 boxes of tea, 8 jars of marmalade and 16 half full gas canisters) Pete and Andy we set off for a lunch time start (after Andy had been sick all night with food poisoning), muttering about how slushy the famous Midi snow arête was in the full heat of the mid-day sun. But our cunningness paid off – everyone who started at the normal time was waiting in a big queue at the short pitched section near the end and we had the rest of the route to ourselves!
    
Thus, in two ropes of two, we simul-climbed up the snow gulley, traversed the initial pinnacles and enjoyed the splendour of the views without another climber in sight! Once at the abseil, we had a chance to get a bite to eat (or, in Andy’s case, a series of voluminous belches!) as Andy and Pete descended, we then followed and due to their weak route finding and our blind following we think we ended up too low! Clearly many another climber had done the same, and a ledge was soon found leading back to the last pinnacle, which should have been surmounted but looked easier to skirt so that we did.

This took us to the crux pitch for which we un-coiled and set up a belay. 
In true French tradition there was both a point of aid and numerous carved crampon holds, the later of which were very useful, the former would be a sin to use given that it awesome move of about 3c!

But a tasty move none-the-less, at around 3700m altitude and with the Col du Midi dropping away far below, the heave up a crack into a chimney system brought us back to easier ground. This was then simul-climbed and an alternative technical finish gave the most enjoyable climbing of the route accompanied by the snapping and flashes of the rock star reception we were given by the hordes of tourists!
 
A great route, just a shame it wasn’t longer…. But it had the feel of an afternoons cragging in an immense setting and we were pleased to get our first route under our belts! This was until we realized we hadn’t finished; another crazy alpine ladder, half tethered to the rock and almost rusted through had to be conquered to gain the lift station - scary stuff!!

Mis-adventures on the Mer de Glace!

Fresh faced and eager after a false start on the Conville course we planned an adventure up the famous Mer de Glace, onto the Lescaux glacier and to a bivi boulder behind the Courvecle hut. The route we had in mind, the Sth Ridge of the Moine, was one of Rebuffats ‘100 Finest’ and should provide a good introduction to alpine ridges and open out some of the more remote parts of the range to our prying eyes!

Well it would have done, had we not marched past the Courvecle hut; yet another storm was threatening to break and in our haste to get off the glacier we took flight to the most obvious hut (actually a further 2km up the glacier!). 

All this was unknown to us at the time! We had found a bivy boulder (of sorts) and it was after reccie-ing the start of our proposed route that doubts began to persist…. It looked very scary and rather unclean for a classic PD. On reference to the book, it appeared that the hut we were aiming for was smiling at us in the distance and the ridge we intended to climb formed our southern skyline about 3hrs walk away! But not to worry, our immediate vista included the Grande Jorasses, Aig de Tucal and the impressive spires of Mt Mallet and the Dent de Geant – there must be something around here we can climb!

 

 

Our fellow Conviller, and companion for this trip, Dan had suggested to me that if my sleeping bag was synthetic then, weather permitting, I could probably do without my bivy bag. Ever keen for the advancement of knowledge (and the further reduction of my consistently light pack!) I duly disregarded the weather forecast and dispensed with my waterproof abode in order to test the theory of the all conquering synthetic bag! Inevitably, once we were settled down for the night an almighty thunderstorm broke and such true valour in the face of self made adversity made me proud to be an idiot!

 

The sheets of electric blue illuminating the great landscape, the energetic forks dancing over the peaks and the rumble of distant rock fall could not distract me the from the fact that I might as well be bivying in a bath!! To make things worse my smug companions, all snugly tucked into their goretex, deflected all their rain onto me!

Despite this minor set back I had a grand nights sleep (all hail the synthetic!) and we awoke to grey but not obviously threatening skies. We had re-evaluated our position and decided to climb Aig de Eboulement by the normal route, so by first light we were scrambling up the initial ridge when we were once again met by disheartening sensation of raindrops falling and all that this entails in an alpine environment, (namely: retreat!). Thus, for the second time, we had got up obscenely early only to be rained off our route (maybe we should buck the alpine tradition and start getting up late…..)

so alternative interest was sought in a high level walk over to the Courvecle hut. This involved crossing the Telefre glacier and drooling over all the peaks of its basin before dropping down the famous Eglerets ladders back to the Mer de Glace.

Conville course

So, this was the long awaited start to our Alpine adventures..... in the good company of our guides Dave and Phil we set off up the Grand Montets to cover simple crampon work, rope techniques and abalikov threads. this was then followed by a descent towards the Argentiere glacier and an easy scramble up the Aig. de montets back to the lift station.

At this point we confused the tourists by jumping back off the summit platform and performing the art of the assisted hoist, pretending that a drop off the iron railings was infact a crevasse! In all this activity my brand new Camelback decided to shed its bite-valve so i had to crawl under the cage and get photographed in my true habitat!

The following day brought us up into the Tour Basin, where the plan was to practise crevasse rescue on the real deal, stay at the Albert Premiere hut then start early in the morning to tackle the South summit of Aig. de Tour.

The walk up was stunning, with the immense ice formations of the glacier emphasising the ruggedness of the basin and the obvious lefthand skyline on the Chardonnet forming the awesome 'Forbes arete'.

 

After some playing around on the glacier we settled into the hut and it was time to enjoy ht e famous catering of the french mountain hut. Our wylie Scottish guide insisted we get all we can for our money so i treated myself to 5 bowls of soup, 4 platefuls of sausage stew and mash and some fruitsalad. (Andy, more concerned about his figure, stuck to a more sensible amount of 3 portions of each!) With all this to digest, we sat enjoying a beautiful sunset

 

 

Unfortunately, a storm raged throught the night and our proposed set off at 5am was a non-starter! we had breakfast, played cards then contemplated the joys of our trip and the disappointment of not being able to climb. As we were readying to leave i happened to be putting my boots on next to the legendary Dave 'Cubby' Cuthbertson, so with small talk of home i drew him into conversation. A fine blether ensued and he recommended we did a rather obscure rock route (around HVS/E1) on the Praz Torrents by the name of Parat Signeur, so i said we would, thanked him and wished him all the best!

The Alps

Basically, the trip was amazing! did loads of stuff, met loads of folk and saw loads of total awesomeness! Andy should have hundreds of sweet photos and i shall describe the fun with my usual spouts of drivel, which your best advised to ignore and let the piccys do the talking!

to break it up, we're gonna do wee trip reports for each of our varyingly sucessful forays into the mountains so keep checking for the next update! but heres basically what we did; Conville course where we learnt that carrying a spare pair of boots in an alpine sack was slightly unneccesary and that some folk just wont shut up about 'The Blanc', a mystery tour of the bivy boulders above the Mer de Glace where yet another of my experiments went wrong, some oneday trips from the valley that ranged from the easy to the epic, and finally an awesome weekend bivying on the Col du Midi with a heroically early start for Mont Blanc du Tucal via the Chere Couloir.......