Chamonix rock TR (long) - my annual sub-epic report
ant
tradition, here's a new adventure to rock you to sleep.
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ant's yearly december getting-my-ass-handed-to-me TR :: chamonix alpine
the hard way
early september '04
in a welcome change from continental travels, i spent a little over a
month in europe this summer. most of this jaunt was spent in the
well-fed embrace of relatives in england and greece, but i have my
reputation to think of- a little climbing was in order.
with two weeks in the UK at the front end of the trip, i figured id
ditch the brits for a bit and try out this chamonix place i'd heard so
much about. months ago when id planned the trip, i trolled rc.com and
ukclimbing.com for partners, and came up with a gung-ho canadian dude
who wanted to push hard. after setting dates he suddenly dissapeared.
by the time i was crossing the atlantic i'd given him up for yet
another bailed partner. suspicious that i woudlnt end up finding anyone
to climb with after all, i traveled with the bare minimum of gear. just
enough to toprope seacliffs in greece, and my leather boots.
between sumptuous meals in croydon, sumptuous meals in surrey, and
sumptuous meals in london, i did manage to steal onto the electronic
superhighway for a little pleading and whining. i found a new partner,
mark- a fellow my age, my ability, with similar goals, who was looking
for a partner in cham the same time. perfect.
a flight, a couple buses, six trains (would have been five if i hadnt
gotten wrapped up in a distracting conversation with a euro-hottie and
missed my station) and a short walk later i was waiting for mark to
meet me outside the railstation. lo and behold, a short squat friendly
fellow (bloke?) ambles over. seems nice enough. i just wish he wasnt
limping.
mark gives me a strong shake and warm smile. well thats nice, but i
work the ankle question in within a few sentences. 'um.. yeah, that. i
took a big pendulum rapping yesterday and twisted it. it'll be fine.'
right.
mark winces back to his pad, where i drop my pack and poke his ankle
for a minute. well, its not broken. thats a step in the right
direction, but its definitely damaged. i roll through my internal ankle
injury archive and guess that he'll be ready for climbing in three
days. that would leave one day of climbing. i tell him he should wrap
it up and stay off it tomorrow, but he says he's here to climb, not
rest. hmmm. i ask him how it happened. he spins a long yarn about how,
out climbing with a guide the day before, he was on a traversing rap
where you hook the rope over some rebar sticking out of the rock to
redirect the top anchor. apparently, he didnt do a good job, the rope
popped off en route, and he pendulumed a long long way and whacked his
foot. said it was the guide's fault. mm-hmmm.
i tell him he should chill tomorrow. he wont do it. we settle on
roadside cragging in the morning. he can go easy, and i tell myself it
will be good to get a feel for european grading. 10am (and a taxi..)
finds us at the bottom of some sorry looking polished chunk of junk,
surrounded by dozens of whimpering chubby tourists, and chain smoking
rock guides who walk on their ropes. i lead some easy overbolted
walk-ups, skipping clips and rapping off and im bored. mark isnt
looking good. he follows tentatively. he favors his ankle. i have a
crack at a harder route which has one real move on it, a yard over a
bolt, and i feel hardcore for pulling it becuase everything else was
such a give away. i lower off, past a guide belaying a veritable
conga-line of five clients all clipped into butterflies on a single
belay line, two of whom are gripped out of their minds and flailing. i
watched the guide burn his rope sheath with a cigarette.
whatever, man. mark cant follow this anyway, so i rap to the bottom of
the rope, pull it, and downclimb the rest of the slab. i eat my feta
and bread and tomato next to the sole man at this cliff who seems on
the level. my rusty stunted french yields a few minutes of pleasant
banter before he leaves his own bread-cheese lunch for a little easy
soloing- tan, shirtless, and 76 years old. Its noon and i tell mark
we're finished for the day. he needs to rest up tomorrow and we'll take
it from there. i walk back to the village and troll the maison de
montagne for potential partners. i ask the climbing information lady
there whether she has recommendation for easy routes to solo, and she
starts yelling at me in french that im going to kill myself and no one
solos anything. no, she says, you can not go alone on mont blanc. i
back off because it looks like she is going to hit me. i guess ill
stick to the partner notebook. subsequently armed with a lifetime
supply of cell numbers i hit the phones, but dont find anything or
anyone. bummed, i spend a restless night battling a stubborn campground
cat intent on rending my tarp into confetti. in the morning i wait for
the maison to open, chewing meditatively a chocolate croissant that
costs as much as a day's climbing grub in the states.
when i drag myself up the stairs, there is a young fellow scrolling the
partner notebook. "need a partner?" he looks up. 'yeah! let's do it!'..
It seems we're both clawing to get up something right now, so we bomb
down the stairs. I tell him my name. He cocks his head. 'um, dude, im
really sorry. i'm paul. The canadian guy. i meant to stay in touch but
i was on a climbing trip where i coudlnt get to a phone.'
imagine that.
its 9:30 in the morning now. 10:30 by the time we have groceries for
three days (cable cars are 30 euro. the hell if im coming back down
every night..). 11:30 by the time we've packed to climb and stashed the
big gear in a hostel, rented crampons for me, and bought a guidebook.
12:30 by the time we're at the aiguille du midi with 8 liters of
dripping platypus bladders and baguettes sticking out of paul's pack
like lightweight snow pickets. we stroll around the rock tunnels and
find a blockaded maintenance corridor marked in big french letters
'stay the fuck out of here' (translated) and go in. we need to stash
our night gear, and we dont have anything to put it in, so i volunteer
my pack and we stuff in the sleeping bags and the food and the water.
this all gets tucked in behind a water storage tank in the dank depths
of shoudlnt-be-here. then we toss the climbing gear in paul's pack and
jog down the snowy arete to the snowy plateau beneath the aiguille. our
route is the Eperon des Cosmiques, a four or five pitch face that we
figure will spit us out on the Cosmique ridge which will walk us up to
the visitors center which will re-aquaint us with our stashed gear. the
guidebook rates it 5+, and although i cant recall its time estimate,
the combined route was still attainable within good daylight. a
bergschrund and ugly looking snow dictated a slightly different start,
and we were off. i took the first pitch, a short ice ramp then a blocky
rising ledge left to gain the standard bottom of the route, then right
again up an easy blocky ramp, belay paul, then climb to a belay under
a tricky looking overhang, the crux of the route. paul is the stronger
rock climber, so we agree that he lead this pitch. oops.. he scampers
across a creaky-thin granite flake, up and over, and i watch the ropes
follow him until he calls the belay. this is where reality kicks in.
i, or possibly we, made a number of mistakes that day. any couple
oversights would not have been too much of a hassle. the cumulative
effect, however, made the rest of the climb a true adventure.
first, completely uncharacteristically, i decided to leave my headlamp
with the gear stash. despite our late start, it appeared that we were
both strong and fit and fast on the terrain we were charted to climb,
apparently well within the time limits dictated by the guidebook. i
opted to bring a keychain LED instead of my spaceshot, a heavy clunky
6AA belt-pouch headlamp. it was the first conservative decision ive
ever made with emergency light, and it came back to bite me.
second, the route-starting difficulties and route-finding intermissions
and not-being-as-badass-as-gaston-rebuffat difficulties resulted in
climbing times a lot longer than we expected. this came back to bite
me.
third, we were leading on motley doubles: my semi-dry 50m 10.5 and
paul's 60m 9, becuase he didnt want to climb on a single ("Americans
and their single ropes. pah.."), and didnt want to put all the wear on
just his ropes. this meant a real headache in the rope management
department and added a lot of tangle time. this came back to bite me.
fourth, we did not think through the one-pack method. both of us were
used to carrying our own packs on alpine climbs. because we left mine
to stash the gear in, we ended up with one. then we added four leather
boots and two ice axes to it, in addition to two people's snacks,
water, an extra layer, paul's two cameras, and paul's absolutely
enormous first aid kit in a tupperware container. this was all fine and
dandy while paul, the hard-climbing muscley dude was following with the
load. only when i finally picked up this pig to transfer it to the
belay below the crux did i feel how heavy it was. this came back to
bite me.
fifth, i did not look at the altitude. the valley floor is under 3,500
ft elevation. turns out we were now climbing at around 12,500 ft
elevation and we had had about 20 minutes to acclimate. though fit,
carrying what i truly believe was a 45 pound pack while following
became, with understatement, a truly arduous task. read: seriously
heavy breathing. needless to say, this came back to bite me.
sixth, i didnt bring any pro and paul doesn't have cams. we were
climbing with nuts, small hexes, and midrange tricams. this came back
to bite me.
seventh, i should have lead the crux. it was well within my limit, and
paul might have been able to pull the move with the pack on. maybe. i
just figured paul deserved it since he had wanted to climb hard and i
talked him out of a grade 7 for our first climb. at least one decision
was a good one.
that said, paul calls on belay, and i grudgingly saddle this fat beast
of a pack to pick my way across the flexible flake. closer to the crux
pull, i decide theres no way my sorry ass is going to pull it free thus
encumbered, so i yell to paul that he should be prepared to belay the
bag on the ratty 9 and me on the 10.5. i shuffle, breathing a storm and
a half, as high as i can. clip the bag to a butterfly on the loose end
of the 9, and tell paul to take up the slack. then i pull a move or
two, yell to paul to haul the bag up a bit. whoops. rope drag, its a no
go. i lodge myself in a stem and tell him to uprope on the count of
three, count, and i yard on the dangling orange pack. it squirts up a
yard. i do it again, pull another move, and take, hanging-belay style,
over the void, pushing the bag over the lip, pull it myself, catch my
breath, pull a little more, find a stance, re-saddle the beast, and
amble as fast as my racing heart will take me to the belay, a sorry
looking alpine affair. i slap in our big hex to beef it up, drop the
heinous burden in paul's care, and suit up feeling light as a feather
for the lead. a little web browsing a month later reveals that the crux
lip is rated, depending on who you ask, 5+, 6a, A0, or A1. i can't
say i was really thinking too hard about the grade at that point, but
its nice to hear that so many people are aiding the thing.
the next pitch is rated 4+, and i have a choice between two starts. i
choose the wrong one, and end up 20 feet higher, no pro, in a groove 8
feet to the right of the route, and ponder whether if i wish hard
enough that maybe the heavy tricams i have strapped to me might be
replaced with a cam or two to attempt to protect this slopey traverse
with flared cracks. a minute of whimpering goes by quickly enough, and
the tricams stayed tricams. facing a hell of a fall, with the
high-voltage uninsulated supply lines to the aiguille visitors center
not too far below us i figure i might conceivably be fried before i had
the standard opportunity to die of head trauma should the cold slopers
yield inappropriate friction. thus committed, i pull some tenuous
sideways friction on near-vertical terrain, lock into the correct
crack, get my first nut in, and monkey out to the end of the rope,
belay paul, and soon we are on the crest, long past admiring the
alpenglow. i wonder to myself whether i can say i climbed 5.10 alpine
just because i got offroute. now it is dusk, just light enough to take
a squinty peek at the cosmique ridge before the headlamps come out.
make that headlamp, singular.
at this point i tied my little keychain light to a prussik and looped
it around my neck. despite my intentions to tape it to my helmet, the
little piece of shit woudlnt stay on so i climbed with the thing in my
mouth, occasionally biting it to get the switch to re-engage. we tossed
on the leather boots, and set up for simulclimbing on the single. paul
in front with the headlamp and the guidebook. we ate the food, drank
the water, and now the pack wasnt bad, but when paul volunteered to
carry it i didnt complain.
so, off we went. simulclimbing unknown terrain in the dark. it was easy
enough, though my mouthlamp(tm) went out at a few inopportune times,
and even when it wasnt causing trouble i had to deal with more
open-mouthed drooling than i imagine the standard mountaineer usually
grapples with. we climbed reasonably fast, all things considered. paul
would stop for route-finding breaks, and i would climb on, reeling in
slack through my atc, coiling loops in my hand. then he would take off,
and i woudl pay it out, jogging along behind when the rope ran out. the
ridge is rated grade 3, something like 5.6, but most is just blocky
mountain terrain. at one point we had to downclimb a short slab of
completely slick melt-water ice. with only two tools, and unwilling to
don crampons, we decided that paul would just lower me on my ass, and
keep the two tools for the downclimb. emasculated, i had my chance to
get my mojo back when we came to a step where the guidebook said there
was a squeeze chimney. paul pointed up at an ugly black crack in an
imposing face with sling material up higher. looked about right.
psyched, i rearranged my harness, borrowed the headlamp, and charged up
the entry moves, clipped slings around a horn, and had a look around.
the headlamp didnt throw far enough for a reality check, so i wedged
higher and higher until i clipped another leaver sling and was having
trouble turning my head left to right in the slot. unhappy with my
progress i called down. 'yo, paul! what does the guide say this thing
is rated?' paul tells me its grade 2 or 3 or something. 'yo, i dont
think this is no grade 3 chimney, dude.' maybe its the boots, but im
working harder than i did on my last 5.9 squeeze and in a minute i'll
have to take the helmet off. i move up a move, then squirm down again
for a foothold, and do some reconnaisance. above the crack pinches.
terminal. the only way out is traverse left and out 15ft into a
downwards flaring squeeze slot, 25 ft from the last pro, on polished
looking rock with absolutely no chance at any pro whatever, and no idea
whats above. 'yo, paul. how sure are you that this is the chimney?' he
doesnt see what i see and thinks im turning chicken. i ponder for a
bit. maybe i am chickening out. its not a 5.4 chimney, but hey,
everything turned out harder today. i move up a move, my helmet
catches, and i move down again. fuck it. 'paul, im coming down dude. if
you want to try this, i say go for it, but let me scope out the route
first.' i call off belay, run the rope through the leaver sling and rap
out. i grab the pack, leave him the rope to coil, and run around until
i find a doable traverse option. he solos over, and we re-rope under a
balls-easy 'chimney' more likely to be the sort of thing normal humans
climb and live to climb again. a few minutes of speed climbing, and we
hit snow. i hip belay him, grab one of the axes, and send him off. the
rope pulls and i follow, gingerly stepping cramponless on the frozen
icy ridge. tiptoe to a platform below a visitor center observation
deck, and see paul belaying above a ladder. i think to tell him he can
pull the belay now, but dont bother as he's taking the slack in fast
enough. turns out the hackjob ladder is sketchy enough, attached to the
deck with clotheshanger wire and luck, swinging wiht my weight, that i
silently thank myself for not running it sans rope. i pull over the
rail, and paul says something about 'glad you had a rope there, eh?'.
we shake hands and make big noises about what a funky climb it was.
below us the valley is a river of light. to the other side the vallee
blanche and the staging area for mont blanc. already, climbers were
rustling around their tents taking their pre-alpine-start leaks and
making little circles of light in the snow. far away on the distant
peaks a couple pairs of headlamps reveal partners in crime, similarly
benighted climbers.
but they didnt have cheese and chocolate waiting for them. we tossed
the gear in a pile on the wooden deck, walked in the door, and diddled
around behind the water tanks until i pulled the stash out. paul messed
around with his camera for some long exposures. i gnawed huge hunks of
wholegrain and emental and spicecake and chocolate. and got out my
headlamp..
the visitor's center was warm, but with closed doors it seemed to have
accumulated more diesel fumes than oxygen, so we opted for a cold night
on the deck, a sunrise, and descent to the plan d'aiguille to climb
again the next day.
two weeks later found me on an island in the north aegean, tooling
around on beaches, catching octupus with my hands, eating white peaches
and tomatoes and copious amounts of feta. in greece i did only two
short afternoons of perfunctory exploratory climbing to make the
toprope gear worth the travel weight, but it didnt feel like a letdown.
that chamonix jaunt would carry me for a while. It was the first climb
that ever really caught me by surprise, and we pulled it off without a
hitch. ill have to repeat it someday- i have a hunch the classic
cosmique ridge is better when you can see farther than you can feel.
Chiloe
> so, off we went. simulclimbing unknown terrain in the dark. it was easy
> enough, though my mouthlamp(tm) went out at a few inopportune times,
> and even when it wasnt causing trouble i had to deal with more
> open-mouthed drooling than i imagine the standard mountaineer usually
> grapples with. we climbed reasonably fast, all things considered.
This is great stuff. Thanks!
Lord Slime
> i ask the climbing information lady
> there whether she has recommendation for easy routes to solo, and she
> starts yelling at me in french that im going to kill myself and no one
> solos anything. no, she says, you can not go alone on mont blanc. i
> back off because it looks like she is going to hit me.
Classic!! Nice TR.
My own adventures in Chamonix revolve around trying to find a
laundrymat. I barely missed being benighted. ;-)
- Lord Slime
Paulina
> ---
>
> ant's yearly december getting-my-ass-handed-to-me TR :: chamonix alpine
> the hard way
>
<snip great TR>
Thanks for that! Glad you pulled it off. Still not quite sure how you
got to the cheese and hot chocolate in the end, but it's all good.
Cheers
Paulina
ant
> Thanks for that! Glad you pulled it off. Still not quite sure how you
> got to the cheese and hot chocolate in the end, but it's all good.
the aiguille du midi is basically a huge visitor's center carved out of
a pile of choss. i mean rock. about 80m below the actual top (much of
which is netted with miles of steel to stop rockfall) is a platform
with a railing, level with the top of the telepherique. very cushy.
free high power binocular thing, view of the valley, mont blanc, and
the range. and the door to the visitor's center wasnt locked.
here's a stitched picture at sunrise the next morning from our 'bivi
ledge'
http://tinyurl.com/4j5ky
well *i* thought it was cushy, anyway.
anthony
Paulina
Nice panorama. December last year I was looking onto Mont Blanc from
Aiguille Rouge, having gotten there by cable car, like hundreds of other
resort skiers. :) Still the only glacier I've been on. Sigh.
I thought before that you had arrived back at your gear stashed in the
shouldnt-be-there hole. Now I see.
Cheers
Paulina