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).