Righto, here's a mix that I did the other day, its basically a deep house kinda thing, so quite relaxed and chilled out, you can download it here (scroll down the page a bit and it's the September 07 one).
Tracklist:
1. Gudrun Gut - In Pieces (Burger/Voigt Remix) [Monika]
2. Naughty - World of Woman [Mood Music]
3. Mountain People - Mountain People 04 [Mountain People]
4. Hardrive - Deep Inside [Strictly Rhythm]
5. Serafin - Dream Sequence [Mountain People]
6. Vince Watson - Renaissance [Planet E]
7. Dj Gregory - Elle (Ame Remix) [Defected]
8. Coldcut - Walk A Mile In My Shoes (Henrik Schwarz Remix) [Ninja Tunes]
9. Torrance & Hochstrate - Shrinkage [Four:Twenty]
10. Marcelino Galan - House & Art (Charles Webster Remix) [House Cafe]
11. Funk D'Void - Lovin' (Hipp-E Remix) [Soma]
12. Burger/Voigt - Man Lebt Nur Zweimal [Kompakt]
13. Will Saul & Lee Jone - Hug The Scary (Partial Arts Remix) [Aus]
14. Kenny Hawkes & David Parr - Gemini [Rekkids]
15. Studio - Life's A Beach (Todd Terje House Mix) [Information]
16. Thomas/Mayer - Uber Wisen [Kompakt]

Fred's Wedding

It was my good friend Fred's wedding last Saturday down in Sussex so I made the long trip South and ended up having a cracking weekend. Went out with my sister to Fabric and then some random bar in Farringdon on Friday night and ended up having a fairly messy one, which wasn't great preparation for the following day...
I'm not sure there was any way that I was legally allowed to drive on Saturday morning but I somehow navigated my way through parts of South London I never knew existed and after getting stuck in a highly irritating traffic jam on the outskirts of East Grinstead I met up with all the Trants boys in the pub for lunch. The service itself was quite entertaining with a wise-cracking vicar and some good singing from the choir, because I'd been tasked with videoing the thing I got the privilege of sitting with the great and good in the front row. Reception was good fun as well, Jules lived up to his name by stumbling around clutching a bottle to his chest by about 8.30pm. Good luck Fred and Soph (who looked v.beautiful on the day) and hope India is fun.

Hackers

Not much has been happening in the last few weeks since I got back from the Alps, certainly in the climbing sense. Been trying to write this report for my supervisor et al. Having a rather big crisis of confidence about the PHD at the mo, not really sure if I want to be doing it and whether I can actually do it... To make matters worse I've just got the thesis of French academic through the post, its on my topic, written last year and seems to be the last word on the matter. It's also in French, 1500 pages long and I've got to have read it by the end of the month. Bollocks.



On a lighter note, the weekend before last was Hackers. After monsoon like conditions all week, once the weekend arrived it brightened up. Played two rounds of golf on Friday with the senior Hackers, beat Tim Begg in the morning 4/2 and Dad and I beat Tim and Nigel G-D in the afternoon. Dad won overall with 26 points, not a vintage year by any means. Unfortunately we lost the cricket on sunday for the first time in 10 years. The village have decided to make the match 45 overs a side, a little ambitious after starting at midday. We ground out 165 quite slowly in 44.4 overs, Nigel GD scored 74, Mark GD and Tim Begg 30 each and not much from anyone else. I notched up my usual duck, but at least it wasn't a golden one eh Harry. I did manage to get one wicket when bowling with the best ball I've almost ecer bowled, pitched about 2-3 feet outside off and ripped back to clip middle. We were cruising when they were 60-6, but they had a good partnership to reach 100ish-7. Then things became slightly farcial as it got too dark to bowl our fast bowlers and we had to send down gimme spin in the last few overs. This made it pretty easy for Alkham to knock off the runs, esp as the fielders couldn't see the ball. Nigel got two wickets in two balls with Alkham needing only 5 win (I dropped a catch at this stage on the boundary that luckily wasn't crucial) but they managed to hold on for a win in 43rd over and pitch black. Still, the village were super chuffed and we had a good drink afterwards in the new look Marquis with its friendly landlord.
Fred's wedding on Sunday, which is bit scary. He also wants me to video it, God knows how that'll turn out?

Alpine Videos

Just thought I'd upload some alps videos onto the web. Quality is a bit rubbish as they're from my digital camera. Favourite one is probably Konrad sticking lukewarm waterbottles down his pants...


The Aigle Hut before the storm arrived


How to cook bivvy pasta in a Gordon Ramsay stylee


View from the top of the Grande Casse after climbing the North Face


Beer and Bru after the Paroi de Bazel

Back Home

The north face of the Piz Cengalo (3370m) is supposedly the largest in the central alps at 1100m, we’d come to climb the classic Gaiser-Lehman route on the NW pillar, which was climbed exactly the same day in 1937 as Cassin and partners were setting out on their epic 1st ascent of the NE face of the Piz Badile. The route takes some initially broken ground before a fine series of clean slabs sweep for about 600m to the broken summit ridge. Although the climbing is not as hard as on the Cassin, the Cengalo definitely feels more committing, remote and is a more intimidating objective. The route finding is far more complex and vague, there are no amenable bolted belays, not a great deal of fixed gear, you have to carry big boots, crampons and an axe for the heavily crevassed approach and it’s necessary to continue up over the summit and down to Italy on the other side. This means you don’t get the crowds that flock to its illustrious neighbour. Whilst we were climbing we counted 15 people strung out over the Cassin whilst there was no one else on any other of the routes on the face and only us on the Cengalo. It looked a bit riduclous with a 3 hour queue at the crux and acres of empty rock either side. As a comparison, when Konnie and I climbed the Cassin in early July 2005 we were the only people on the whole face, I reckon if you’re keen on doing it then go early season and avoid weekends like the plague.



Another early start saw us trudging down under very bright moonlight to the moraine and then up the well-frozen Cengalo glacier, a recce the previous night had shown the best line to be up under the Badile, followed by a traverse and then a descent to the start of the route, avoiding the heavily crevassed central section of the glacier. Even so, there were still a few sizeable jumps over big holes and a precarious move over the rimaye to the start of the rock. The first few hundred metres were fairly easy and we moved together, initially too far to the right, before snaking back left to the start of the difficulties. From here the route just flowed up the wonderfully clean granite of the slabby crest, taking corners, cracks flakes, frictiony bits, never too hard but often enjoyably run-out. Soon we emerged into the sun and all too quickly we reached the shattered rocks of the final ridge that we followed for a couple of hundred metres to the top. Sitting on the summit in the midday sun, I reflected on the fact that it was one of those days where everything seems to go right and the ingredients of partner, fitness, weather and line all gel perfectly and you smoke the route. The views were pretty awesome as well, on one side the vast sweep of the Badile's slabs with the Oberland and the Mischabel chains behind and the on the other the Piz Bernina, the most easterly of the alpine 4000ers.




The plan from here was to amble down into Italy, spend two nights at the Gianetti hut in the upper Val Porcellizzo to climb a couple more routes before heading back over to the car in Switzerland. When I arrived at the rifugio I bumped into Luca Maspes who I’d climbed with on the BMC international meet in early March. He was helping out in the huts above his home in the Val di Mello in order to maximise his time putting up new routes on the surrounding cliffs. The two freebie beers on arrival were gratefully received. With the climb in the bag so surprisingly quickly a pleasant afternoon of sunbathing and sleeping followed before a dinner which was very tasty if a bit on the small side.



The next days route was the Spigolo Vinci (TD/TD+) - not named after Leonardo, on the Punta Angela, a subsidiary summit on the Cengalo’s south side. I can’t praise this route enough and looking back it now I think its certainly the best climbing I’ve done in the alps and the last five pitches the best in a row I’ve done anywhere. We inititally tried the integral of the ridge but the rock on the first tower was very lichenous, dirty and gritty so we abed off after a couple of pitches and walked up to the normal start. Its quality also ensures its popularity and it was by far the busiest route we climbed with about 10 people ahead on the ridge. However, our faff meant we were way behind the rest and we decided to move slowly up the initial easy section to avoid waiting. The first hard pitch is the crux, a layback crack up the slabby ridge crest, given Fr6a in the Italian guidebook and VII in the AC one, but certainly not feeling that hard at the time. After this followed airy traverses on chicken heads, steep bridging corners and more laybacks, all on the world’s best rock, in warm sun with cracking views. At one point I was enjoying myself so much I decided to throw my camera off the ridge, so all the photos here are courtesy of Konrad. Unfortuately we caught up with some very slow Italians (the first on the route in the morning) on the penultimate hard pitch, a slippery layback. Their leader had more gear strapped to him than Rob Reglinski would take on a big wall (I’m not actually joking here) and he placed around 15 cams in the 12 or so hard metres of the pitch (we clipped the two pegs and placed a wire). His two seconds then proceeded to haul themselves up on the cams, making no attempt to climb, even on the easy (VS max) top section. Now my ethics aren’t as strong as some and on longer alpine routes I have no qualms in the occasional bit of French free or maybe hooking a wire when seconding in winter. However this did take the piss a bit and Konnie and I suppressed giggles whilst watching them, but on a more serious note you wonder whether they should’ve been there to begin with and what would’ve happened if things turned nasty…



After an interminable wait for two pitched we skipped past them on the last and then slightly rudely barged in front for the abseils. This was fine until on the third one the rope would not pull at all. This coincided with a particularly uncomfortable hanging stance and we waited, and waited and waited. Eventually one of them appeared and communicated to his friends the problem and they helped us free the rope. It then transpired that the rope wasn't jammed at all, but the maillon that we had threaded it through was too small and was creating too much friction to pull the rope through. Despite our pushing in front, they couldn’t have been more friendly and patient and I was thankful they were a team of Italians not French. We finished with no further mishaps and I quickly ran around to look for my camera on the other side of the ridge to try and get the memory card. No luck unfortunately and the rest of the evening passed in haze of red wine and freebie liqueur.



The last route of the trip was the airy 400m Spigolo Mauri (V+) – the south ridge of the Punta Torelli (3137m), the sun/shade line in the photo. As we geared up we saw a mountain goat begin to climb some slabs opposite, at first they were easy angled but got progressively steeper. He kept on moving carefully up ground which most climbers would've found tricky until he reached the ridge crest! The first 120m of our route were fairly straightforward slabs so we soloed up to the foot of the two crux pitches. The first was airy and delicate the second a little thrutchy with sinker jams. After this, the rest was fairly straightforward and we topped after two and three quarter hours with plenty of time to get back over the two cols and down to Bondo. The walk back isn’t a great deal of fun, 4 hours of scree hell in the hot sun, I’m undecided whether abbing the North ridge of the Badile is less faff and easier than walking round the back. Anyway, Konnie bravely offered to walk the 45mins or so from the Sasc Fura hut to where our bivvy kit was stashed. I have to say I felt about all of about 10 seconds of guilt as I tucked into my rosti and beer while waiting for him but that soon passed…




When we got to valley the forecast everywhere in the Alps was pretty dire for the rest of the week so we decided to pack it in and head home a bit early. The next morning we drove to Cham, which we’d managed to avoid till now to meet up with Duncan and pick up some stuff for Chad. The weather was truly dire, non-stop heavy rain – our first for three weeks, and low cloud. Still in 12 hours we managed to tick off most of the fleshpots: Poco Loco, Beluga, English bars etc. Duncan cut his trip short and drove back with Konnie and I As all French cars have their home department on the numberplate, we played excellent game of trying to spot every one and by the end we’d managed to tick off about 70 of 95. There was particular excitement when we got 2A – Corsica, but unfortunately the big ticks of 64 – Pyrenees Atlantique and 29 – Finisterre (2 unconfirmed sightings) eluded us. Before we got on the ferry we made a detour via Ypres, visiting the Tyne Cot cemetery and then the Last Post, which is sounded at 8pm every evening at the Menim Gate. Tyne Cot is a very moving sight, it’s the largest war cemetery with 12,000 graves – many unknown, and a further 30,000 names on tablets of those who have never been found.

All in all an excellent trip, we managed 15 routes of over 10 pitches, 10 of which were high-mountain ones in three and a half weeks. I'd also drove about 2500 miles at an average speed of 41 mph and fuel consumption of 44.6 mpg (I love the computer in my new car). By the end I was exhausted and pretty climbed out, definitely in need of a break. I also found out some fairly sobering news when I returned home; 3 climbers had been killed by serac fall on the normal route on the Barre des Ecrins. We'd descended under these same seracs twice in the last two weeks and at the time they looked fairly stable, but... This sort of news does throw you a bit, especially as even the most solid looking ice cliff can collapse with no warning. You can minimise risk and climb as safely as possible but if you're unlucky enough to be under them when it occurs there's nothing you can do. Terribly sad news and condolences to all their families and friends. Doubt I’ll get much climbing done in the next couple of weeks as I’ve got lots of work to do and the weather looks complete pants. Still, the joys (???) of Edinburgh in the festival...



All Photographs courtesy of K.Rawlik

Beau Temps

Beau temps, all the time beau temps. The sun never seems to stop shining in the Ecrins, it actually gets a bit tiresome after a while, as there’s never any excuse not to go climbing. In two weeks we’ve had one evening thunderstorm and an afternoon and night of snow up high. It’s all change now as we’ve moved a few hundred kms East to the Val Bregaglia in northern Italy and I’m quite enjoying the rumble of thunder as a storm rolls its way up the valley from the plains.

Another aspect of the Dauphine is the long walk ins that you have to endure, no scenic telepherique rides to soothe the legs here. The grind from La Berade at 1800m up to the Promontoire refuge at 3100m is certainly one of them. The mountain festival of the village was taking place when we arrived and we had to drag ourselves away from delicacies like roasted Marmot although I was particularly sad to miss the competition to determine La Berade’s largest goitre. Just before we left, my brainless co-pilot piped up “Sam, how much money have you got?” Now, we were planning to climb the Meije in style, staying one night at the Promontoire and the next night at the Aigle hut, mainly because we didn’t fancy lugging bivvy equipment up the Pierre Allain route and then along the ridge crest. Obviously refuges and meals cost money, but Konnie (bless his first in maths and special university prize) only had the princely sum of €20 with him, despite the fact we’d passed at least 5 cashpoints since Briancon. It hadn’t crossed his mind that he needed any cash ??*&%$£???? The nearest one was now 30kms away, the carpark was full and I wasn’t driving back, “looks like you’re sleeping in the snow or doing the washing up then…”



The Promontoire hut is placed right underneath the sizeable bulk of the Meije’s south face and the couple that run it are, to borrow a French phrase ‘super sympa’. Unfortunately after telling us for week that Monday was going to be a great day, the evening forecast was predicting very high winds and an afternoon blizzard. Not being French super-alpinistes there was no way we’d be down much before dark so after a bit of umming and ahhing we decided just to do the voie normale (AD+) to the Grand Pic, followed by the traverse of the highly crenellated summit ridge (D-), still a good day. Luckily the refuge wasn’t busy and only two other pairs were going for the traverse the following day. No one feels like breakfast at 3.30am and after losing a couple of fillings trying to chew the hut bread we set off behind the other two teams. This worked rather well, as out in front was a guide and client so we didn’t really have to pay too much attention to the complicated route finding in the dark. Nowhere is the climbing very hard, probably about severe at most, but it is long – 800m, and we moved together in big boots the whole way. At the hanging Glacier Carre about ¾ of the way up we passed the other two teams and went in front for the last 150m. By now it was seriously cold and windy, balaclava and warm jackets were donned and we battled up to the top. It was too baltic to enjoy the view on the summit at 3980m and there were some menacing looking clouds surging in from the west, so we quickly found the abseil anchors and began the traverse. The only really tricky section of the crest is turning the spectacular 1st ‘tooth’, the Dent de Zigismondy. However the nice French mountain people have put a huge wire all the way round it, so you clip in and it becomes a sort of high altitude via ferrata. It was still very icy on the north facing side of the tooth but mercifully out of the wind. After this section you stick to the very airy ridge crest itself, meandering up and down the various teeth with drops of hundreds of metres on either side. By the time we reached the end we’d been engulfed in clouds and were pretty happy to tumble the shelter of the Aigle Hut just under eight hours after we’d set out.




The Aigle is the most atmospheric refuge I’ve ever stayed in, it’s a small tin box strapped to the ridge at 3450m (the highest in the Ecrins) with a row of bunks down one side and a table and bench on the other, with a little room for the guardian at the back. We debated descending to the valley but the car was parked 60kms away on the other side of the range where we’d started and we didn’t fancy spending the night in the rain by the side of the road. Konnie managed to sweet talk the guardian into letting him pay for his stay when we got down to the valley so he didn’t have to test out his washing up skills (something he seems to have avoided in two years of living with me as well…). The storm arrived a few hours later the hut groaned in the wind as the snow began to fall. Dinner was top notch and in the morning there 15cms of fresh snow outside. The initial part of the descent isn’t easy and we needed a couple of locals to point out the correct ledge we had to traverse in the fog. After a long wind down to the road I had to begin the task of hitching back to La Berade to pick up the car, luckily I did it in two lifts and only waited 5 minutes for each one.



The weather was now clearing up and with a good forecast we decided to head up somewhere that evening. After trying to find some food in La Berade (don’t bother the shop’s crap) we had to drive all the way down to Bourg des Oisans to find a supermarket. We settled on the striking granite spire of the Aiguille de Dibona (3150m) as the next days target and walked up to a bivvy site by Soreiller refuge, arriving just after dark. The Dibona is bit of a honey trap, with lots of routes (many bolted) on a distinctive mountain with excellent rock. Luckily the previous days bad weather seemed to have scared most people off and the mountain was relatively quiet – when we got down in the afternoon there must’ve been at least 40 people around the hut and a further 20 walking up to it… The routes start a lazy 200m above the refuge and we watched the early starters freeze in the shade, wisely waiting until the sun moved round and started to warm the rock. We climbed the classic ‘Fissure Madier’ (TD/6a) which is sportingly bolted, taking an obvious fault line up the south face before the ‘highlight’ of the graunchy ‘fissure’ itself. The rock is excellent, knobbly granite, reminiscent of Chair Ladder in Cornwall, just a bit bigger and busier. Konnie got to lead the fissure itself, which succumbed to some sustained grunting, probably only VS on grit and we were soon down by the hut, basking in the sun with omelette and beers. A good day out but a bit akin to high altitude cragging and slightly tame…



With beau temps on the forecast for the foreseeable future, I decided we needed to get on something hard and committing (insert appropriate innuendo here…). The original plan was the Gervasutti route (TD) on the north face of the Olan, but supposedly most of it fell down in 2003 and it’s now a suicide mission. Instead we went for Gervasutti-Devizes (ED-) on the Ailefroide, this is an 1100m pillar on the North-West face often referred to as the “Walker Spur of the Ecrins”. The guide mentioned icy chimneys, verglas and rockfall potential amongst other things, certainly sounded like a ‘classic outing’, perfect. The route is pretty remote, requiring a 4 hour tramp up Glacier Noir, underneath the imposing nordwands of the Pelvoux, Sans Nom and Ailefroide, then climbing a loose couloir with a river running through it to a breche (definitely one for the connoisseur of Scottish gully climbing), before reaching a good bivvy site. We looked up the wall, my inner hope was that it would be too snowy to attempt but no such luck, so the alarm was set and we turned in.


Until I learnt that it was much better to stay relaxed and enjoy yourself, whenever I used to play cricket at school, in the hours leading up to the match I used to have a really tight knot in my stomach and all I could hear was the sound of broken wickets in my ears. I get a similar feeling now before I do a route that I’m not really sure I should be attempting, the sound of being bowled is replaced by the noise of ripped belay anchors and the sudden plummet towards the ground. As you can imagine I didn’t get much sleep and just after daybreak we began moving up the initial part of the route. The first 400m or so are slabby and no more than IV so we easily moved together to foot of the steep central pillar. The next section is probably the crux, 9 pitches up the well-defined crest. At about one, just as we reached its top, the sun hit us for the first time. Despite enjoying the warmth it also created a few problems. After the pillar, are the grey slabs, often wet or vergalssed, in addition they can be threatened by considerable stonefall as the sun loosens the rocks in the icy upper reaches of the face. Fortunately this didn’t affect us too badly, I got one direct hit from a pebble in the middle of the helmet and few glancing blows on my shoulders but nothing serious. The slabs are fairly compact with some mind focusing run-outs, I was very glad to fiddle in a dubious wire after particularly exciting one of 10m or so. The last and easiest pitch actually turned out to be the most serious. It was soaking wet, covered in gravel and it finished on an icy ledge line, I didn’t really enjoy it. At the top it took me a good while to construct what I thought was an acceptable belay, the main component of which was a flake with a sling around it. I brought Konrad up and directed him to some pegs I’d spotted further left and we proceeded to change into big boots and crampons, a fiddly task on a hanging belay. Once set, I told Konnie to lead off and lent back fully onto my belay, at this point the whole flake began to rotate and pull out. Needless to say I wet myself and decided to go instead. The next 80m were terrifying. The terrain was easy, an icy ledge sloping at an angle of 45 up to 65 degrees but the rock on either side was like weetabix and eventually we had to move together up the ice and gravel slope with one dubious cam between us until I reached the safety of better rock.



The next pitch looked vile, an icy chimney gully with a river flowing down it, luckily we could outflank it on the tower to the right and we were soon faced with next obstacle, an gully plated thickly with ice. It turned out not to be too bad, the ice was good as were the runners and as it was now about seven thirty we began searching for a ledge for the night. Eventually we found a fairly poor one, I hung on a downwards sloping ledge with my feet dangling over the void whilst Konnie wedged himself between some rocks. The night actually passed fairly comfortably despite my partner dropping the sauce for the smash and we set off around eight the next morning, more icy chimneys were dealt with, delicately bridging up them on the rock embedded into their surface and at midday we pulled over the summit crest, 23 pitches and 400m of moving together since the leaving the ground. The descent was fairly non trivial, a delicate ridge traverse, followed by 250m of vdiff/severe down climbing and a couple of abseils before reaching the worlds wettest glacier. After wading down it, were faced with hundreds of metres of scree followed up by a decidedly dicey traverse/downclimb on a path that even mountain goats probably turn their noses up at, I think it may have been some bad French joke. Having gone down it, I can’t see any redeeming features to the voie normale on the Ailefroide and wouldn’t consciously recommend it to my worst enemy. We finally rolled into Ailefroide village at eight thirty and had a well deserved steak frites before enjoying the band that was finishing up the last night of the bouldering festival. As we went to sleep under our boulder in the wood, I think both of us were relieved but pretty elated that we’d managed our most serious route in the mountains.



For our last route in the Oisans we were going to try the Voie Giraud (TD+) on the south face of Les Bans. We knew it was a bold and serious route and were all set, but I got cold feet however after reading about long passages with no runners, poor and hard to arrange belays and tricky route finding as well as the assertion not to bring any wires as you couldn’t place them. I felt a bit pathetic and I suspect that Konrad probably thought so as well but I think it was the right decision, no point ending up as a statistic on holiday. Instead we chose the 450m South Pillar (TD) of the Barre Noir (3770m). Despite a guidebook description that bore little reality to the route itself, it was an excellent climb on great rock with extensive views from the summit north to Mt Blanc.



Once we’d got down we decided on a change of scenery and we headed for the Bregaglia on the Swiss/Italian border, a few kilometres north of Lake Como. We’d been here a couple of years ago when we climbed the Cassin route on the Piz Badile and the area’s perfect granite had drawn us back. On the way we stopped off in Pavia which we quite like, especially the 12th century Church of S.Michele and Lugano which we thought was a bit of a hole. Yesterday we managed a 400m 6a+ on the Spazzacaldera in the Albigna valley, which finished with a climb to a small rockfang and tomorrow we’re off to have a crack at the 1100 N.face of the Piz Cengalo (TD).

Alps Part 1

I didn’t feel very good on the walk up to the bivvy below La Grande Casse, I’d left Dover at midnight and driven through the night and early morning to Chambery, being kept awake and getting suitably psyched by the autobiography of Ed Viesturs on my ipod. A couple of hours of mediocre dozing in a motorway services and then negotiating my way through the (surprisingly attractive) centre of Chambery to pick up Konrad at the station before taking the familiar Albertville to Moutiers route and finally the winding road to Pralognan. In fact, I felt absolutely stinking, nearly threw up about five times on the slog up, before settling in to a really well deserved sleep of all of 4 hours.



Alarm at 1.50, the air certainly felt cool enough, a brief moraine bash and then a monotonous crunch up the glacier to the Col de La Grande Casse. The only light piercing the night was a lonely piste machine grooming the summer skiing above Tignes. We were now standing beneath the north face of La Grande Casse, at 3850m the highest peak in the Vanoise and easily visible from the crowded slopes of the Val d’Isere and Tignes. Having skied in the area for most of the last 20 years, I’d looked up at the face many times and since I’d started climbing had harboured designs on it. The classic route we were going for was the Couloir des Italiens, a D+ that traverses under the seracs before climbing up past them, topping out on the summit ridge 50m from the top. We weren’t really sure what condition the face would be in, it’d been done 2 weeks previously in supposedly good nick, and a brief call to the guardian of the Col de la Vanoise refuge the day before had revealed that it should be ok, but in recent years it had been out of condition by mid June and it was by now the 13th July. There were no tracks on the initial traverse, obviously no one had done it since the most recent snowfall and the initial going was slow in knee-deep powder, meaning we spent longer than we’d have liked wading under the seracs. The moment we reached the left edge of the face however things turned to perfection; lovely crisp squeaky neve or 5-10cms of snow covering lovely squeaky neve. No need for a rope, we romped up the face as dawn broke, passing the seracs as they were turned pink by the rising sun, with views across to the Himalayan bulk of Mt Blanc’s southern faces. Avoiding the cornice on the left we ambled up the final ridge, our unaclimatised (and in my case unfit) frames feeling the altitude. Still, we topped out 7am, a respectable 3 hours for the 800m face, to ‘endless vistas’ (© V.Scott) stretching from the Matterhorn to La Meije. The descent down the Grand Couloirs was also in great condition and soon we were sweating our way back to the car and the prize of an unopened and still cool bottle of Irn Bru. A cracking start to an alpine campaign.



We decided to stick around in the Vanoise and headed to Val d’Isere where there was another route I’d had my eye on. Despite being about twenty miles as the crow flies, we had to wind our way back to Moutiers and then all the way up the Isere valley. As we passed St Foy, every single layby had a caravan stationed in it. Then came a sign saying the Tour de France was due past in a couple of days. Now I can just about see the attraction (just) of watching the race, but sitting waiting for it for 3 or 4 days in your caravan by the side of a busy road just seems incredibly perverse (but then so does the idea of owning an RV). What was even more funny was the sight, on arrival in Val d’Isere, of portly, moustachioed (and probably German) men, the wrong side of 45 dressed up in replica pink T-Mobile kits cycling up the main street in a wannabe peloton.

On our first day we climbed a 300m Fr5c on the Roc de la Toviere. It had enough grass on it to make a first rate winter climb, wandered around a bit, had a fairly unbalanced crux and was situated above some attractive roadworks with views over the ‘beautiful’ hamlet of la Daille. Despite these handicaps it was actually a reasonable route, which ended with the aforementioned bottle of Bru exploding over the car and me.



In the evening we walked up to the reason we’d come here, the Paroi de Bazel. This is a huge 400-500m high cliff, very Dolomitic in appearance. The route we were going to try was the 480m Pilier Sud (TD), the first put up on the wall and opened in 1970 by two guides Albert Bozon (who was unfortunately killed in an avalanche in the 1970’s) and Jaques Dupont. Albert Bozon was father of Laurent Bozon, who taught me how to ski properly and who I’ve known for about 15 years and I’d met Jaques Dupont at the Prariond Refuge a couple springs previously, before a rather scary Genepy fuelled ski down a decidedly out of condition Gorges de Malpasset. I’d heard the route was a classic and was therefore keen to do it. The walk up to the bivvy site was pretty grim, unrelentingly steep in the Stob Coire nan Lochan mode and my new boots were giving me considerable gyp, still we saw some chamois very close up.


The route itself was brilliant, it was equipped about 10 years ago which is a bit of a shame as there are plenty of opportunities for natural gear but the bolts are sensibly and sparingly placed only where you need them, often with 10m runouts between. The rock is wonderfully clean, steep and juggy mountain limestone and I can only remember about one loose hold the whole way up. After an awkward 6a pitch to start in the cold of morning, nothing was harder than Fr5c with particular highlights being a couple of overhangs on massive jugs, some very steep rock near the top with great holds wherever needed and the final pitch which traverses the top of the pillar with 500m of air beneath your feet. I can’t recommend it enough and the climbing is definitely up there with anything I’ve done anywhere. It just goes to show how much good climbing there is in the Alps away from the honeypots and also in areas that have a reputation for dubious rock, it’s definitely stoked the exploratory fires in me. The descent was round the back down a vast glacier into Italy before a col takes you back to France. Konnie had decided to do it in trainers, we had visions of a local newspaper headline along the lines of “tourist dies after slipping off side of Ben Nevis clad only in trainers” but in fact it was fine as the glacier was covered in a 4 foot deep layer of heavy slush, slow going in the afternoon heat.



With dubious forecasts further north we headed south to the sun of the Ecrins. A couple of days of lazy valley cragging on the excellent granite of Ailefroide followed. We did Snoopy (currently the subject of an interesting debate on whether to de-bolt it and return it to its original state) and Les Orages des Etoiles (both D+/5c). The former was varied with slabs, laybacks, cracks and corners whereas the latter was constant slab padding. I have to agree with Chad here (sorry) that slab padding can get very monotonous and when they’re bolted they lose most of their edge. I can hardly remember a single move on Orage and was rather underwhelmed when I got to the top, Konnie enjoyed it though (but then he does maths and computing so is probably rather into constant monotony).



The guidebook did warn us that the route was only really included for historical purposes but it did point out that it was ‘obligatoire pour un grimpeur attaché a la bonne connaissance du massif’. It sounded like a ‘classic outing’ and those words are effectively a red rag to me, second only to statements like ‘tweeds obligatoire’ or ‘one for the serious body contact enthusiast’. So we made our way up the moraine of Glacier Noir to the Pilier Sud (TD) of the Barre des Ecrins (4102m) – there was also a bit of shameless 4000m bagging involved in the decision too. We started in the afternoon and had a guide and client for company, which helped the route finding throughout the rambling lower section. After a bit of squirming under and through the bergschrund, we soloed up the first 600m to a bivvy site. The climbing was fairly pleasant but nowhere harder than V.Diff and never sustained. As we gained height the rock got steadily looser and the area we bivvied in was rather slag heap-like. Despite chilly feet, the night passed fairly comfortably without sleeping bags, one of the highlights being Konrad stuffing lukewarm water bottles down his pants (the mind boggles, probably a Polish ‘tradition’ along the lines of potato stick). It would be an exaggeration to describe every hold as loose, probably only 95% were and the following day was certainly an adventure. I’d only taken big boots along (unlike Konrad who had rockboots) and managed to slip off a traverse, which proved tricky in cumbersome footwear and fingers frozen from belaying. This led to a rather large pendulum and the loss of significant portions of skin from my left thumb and right index finger, after rigging a backrope and having left lots of blood on the holds I finished the pitch. I managed to patch them up with compedes and they weren’t too painful to prevent me continuin leading. We eventually topped out of the steep bastion section and after a bit a faff loosing the way on the final rocky arête and snow gullys, we topped out. The clouds looked a bit menacing so we quickly soloed down the ridge to the glacier, with Konnie deciding to avoid the last 30m of downclimbing by throwing himself down the snow slope and over the bergschrund (6.0 for technical execution, 0.0 for style). If anyone has ever been up the Barre, they’ll know it’s a very long slog back down to the road at 1800m from the summit at 4100m. What was even more worrying was the fact that we might miss the pizza van at Ailefroide, despite a very rapid jog down we missed the van by all of two minutes (he really does shut at 9pm). I then had a major tantrum and drove around the towns further down the valley in search of hot food, every place was ‘desole mais…’, in the end it was crisps and beer at the campsite, ho-hum.



Just had a couple of days resting in the valley letting my fingers heal. They’re beginning to feel ok again so we’re off to La Meije tomorrow for an attempt on the Pierre Allain route (TD) on the south face followed by the traverse of the arêtes. Going to be a looong day…
Postscrpit
Just found a wifi place: Walked in to the promontoire hut, bad weather forecast, snow afternoon etc, managed to do the normal traverse in very windy (60-70kph) conditions. Snow afternoon and night at Aigle Hut (3500m) 10-15cms, back in La Grave now. More details to follow.