Chamonix TR (extended)

[Fattwins 0]

i like to look youll come away with more mountain skills training in europe than at any other spot. japan doesnt have big holes to fall into I kinda like that.

[mattlucas 0]

The matrix will be a good ski mountaineering boot. Good balance between touring and skiing.

 

Good job on the heli trips. They sounded like a blast.

 

Thanks for the pictures

[Yuki's Passion 1]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Bushpig:
drooooool.....

ditto that mate!! I love to mentally masturbate while looking at really sick ski porn... ohhh yeah baby keep it comin!!

So jealous...jealous...jealous...

need more porn please!

[Fattwins 0]

what is the matrix?

[Yuki's Passion 1]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Fattwins:
what is the matrix?

choose the red pill and ask Morpheous

[mattlucas 0]

Scarpa's Dynafit compatible boot

3 buckles

Looks like a good boot

[Fattwins 0]

yeah just saw it. im going to go garmont rappie said that it is the best boot for my foot shape.

[Goemon 0]

spud: Looks great! Congrats on the extended vacation and new locale!

 

(Sent you a mail at your now-defunct-old addy. I'll PM the contents to you.)

[ug 0]

Looks awesome. I really have to haul myself over there one year, I need to visit Europe.

[Plucky 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Ocean11:
What are you doing in Germany Plucky?

Hey Ocean,

I'll be doing 3D terrain mapping, basic GIS and GPS surveying for the Grafenwoehr/Hohenfels Army training areas. That's my niche (the 3D terrain stuff). Maybe I can learn something from the Swiss cartographers while I'm there. They are the best.

Hey, at least I'm seeing the world at the US government's expense This should be my last stint with the military, however. I plan on coming back to AK and setting up my own mapping/surveying bizzness.

I'm so stoked to live in Germany, though! If you remember, I've been trying to get over there for 3 years now.

spud - I'll contact you through the SJ board when I get set up. Only two more weeks until I leave!

PS - I'm going skiing tomorrow

[damian 0]

I’ve been busy. In fact, more has happened than I can recall and write about in an easy manner. At the moment I am having a few days off and then will be back into it, more ready than I have ever been. Sadly our time in the campervan has ended, but at least now I can shower and use the internet.

 

Here is a long summary of selected action to date.

 

Day 1: Hiked a nice route with my girlfriend in the les Contamines area, 45 minutes drive from Chamonix. The light was too flat on the descent but it was great to be out there, just the two of us and no guide. It was a 1.5 hour easy hike up over the indicated col and down a basic descent on the other side. Light blue hike line (not the exact route taken, just an indication)

 

Girlfriend in pink jacket enjoying some late season fresh snow, both up and down.

 

Day 2: Hiked a longer route past the first and around the corner, marked in green (above pic). About 3 slow hours walking in the sun with a nice cornice entry into a longer steeper wide couloir.

 

Entry point:

 

Looking back up after entering the line:

 

Day 3: Heavy rain below 1800m, snow above. Ate salami and cheese in the campervan. In the evening I met with some mountain guides to plan the Mont Blanc ascent/descent and meet the ‘summit team’.

 

Day 4: Went out for a warm up hike with the summit team. Howling wind, snowing. Hike was up and along a ridge that I have used before for couloir access. I normally walk directly up the thing and have never taken this ridge line approach. Having my 183cm Dupraz D1 strapped top my back made it hard work. Several moments of rock scrambling required pretty focused concentration. The ascent was either hand and foot basic rock climbing or powder wading along a corniced ridge. It was good fun and a good way to meet the team. The descent was rubbish: white out conditions and a little 6 inch soft windslab sliding around us. The below pic shows this well known Chamonix area ridge line taken a few days later in better conditions. No photos taken on the day as I was way too busy trying to stay attached to the ridge and not be blown off by the wind. My girlfriend was not part of the summit team and she rode the resort that day. The ridge:

 

day 5: Another warm up day with the summit team, this time with a moderately long hike and some altitude. We spent the morning making our way to the Argentiere Hut and then hiking a glacier line before having an easy afternoon with a beer on the balcony of the hut, which affords a view of the most awesome set of northern faces in the Argentiere basin. The alpine activity that takes place in this playground is incredible. It is my new favourite place and I could fill 2 pages talking about all the stuff that was going on that day in this arena. If you see it, you would become addicted just like I did. Earlier in this thread I mentioned my plans to ride the NE couloir of Les Courtes. Well, whilst hiking around on day 5 I managed to get a pretty decent view of the line and it is in great condition. Unfortunately I had to turn my back on it then, but will be booting it up early next week if the weather goes my way. Here’s a sneak preview….

 

Close up of the very top section. Some action from a serac fall going on as well.

 

Anyhow, during the day there was some rescue chopper activity and it was rumoured out that two people had been injured when their weight collapsed a cornice that overlooked the line we were riding the next day (the purpose of our hut stay). At first our guides joked that the falling cornice had likely purged all the snow from the couloir. It turned out to be the case. It also shortly became apparent that they had been killed, so the joking stopped. When I was on the actual scene the next day, I realised how appalling death was for these two guys.

 

After nice evening in the hut we made a 5am start to our 5 hour climb. From fuzzy memory we did it in a little over 4 hours. At the time it seemed like a big deal but so much happened afterwards that this particular climb and descent is already fading. Anyway, the objective was the bloody wonderful Aiguille d’Argentiere (Aiguille is French for peak, or needle, or something like that). When we reached the summit it was the highest I had ever been. I felt strong the whole way up and lost count of the switch backs we endured. The last few hundred meters of vertical ascent was in crampons.

[damian 0]

After climbing 1.2 vertical kilometres, we reached the summit of Aiguille d’Argentiere at 3900m.

 

It was a good warm up for things to come, the week’s objective…..

 

Part of what we climbed up that long morning:

 

The drop into Barbey Couloir. Someone had been down before us (you can the ski tracks dropping in, along with the pole placement as he looked over the edge!)

 

One of our guides taking a closer look at the line through our eventual entry point:

 

The Barbey is sustained 45 degrees for a few hundred vertical descent, with moments of 50 degrees, flattening to 30 – 40 degrees on the lower 100. All up there is 800m of vertical drop that happens very quickly. If you include the gentle slopes running out at the base of the couloir then the vertical fall is approx 1000m. For the purpose of scale, that is the same as riding from the highest lift served point of Happo-one down to the carpark in one steep narrow rocky gully. Once we had exited the couloir, the final ride out we chose was over some 7kms of glaciated terrain into Switzerland. This end ride itself was very long and fantastic, but we paid €170 for the taxi ride back to Argentiere!

 

Here’s one of the team way down in the couloir. Notice ruts and rocks on the right where the avalanche had run and quickly converged into the centre of the line where the rider is in this picture. The further down we rode, the deeper the gouged ruts became:

 

The run down was good but hampered by:

 

- some guys in the group being a little too nervous and taking too long

- the fact that 75% of the line was gouged out by the previous day’s avalanche which left 3 foot deep ridges that formed hard packed flutes (and left way to many rocks exposed)

- about half way down the clouds closed in and visibility reduced to 20 meters and stayed that way for the rest of the drop (as bloody usual).

 

The two people that died the previous day never had a chance. I don’t know how far their bodies were pummelled down the face but for their sake I hope they were knocked unconscious on the first impact and been oblivious to the remainder of their horrific journey down. The collapsing cornice triggered some slab which turned into as monster slide and gutted most of the couloir. Just after we dropped in I managed to turn around and take a quick snap of where they fatefully stood in their last moments of life at 3900 meters above the ocean. Rest in peace who ever you were. I’m not trying to be dramatic, it just left an impression on me. In the centre of this pic you can literally see the section of cornice that snapped out from under their feet and the crown wall of the resultant avalanche. When we arrived at the summit you could see their foot prints and where they ended. We dropped in just to the right of frame.

 

After an early start, 5 hours of steep ascent and a very long ride down, we were all pretty tired that evening. The next days were planned rest days before we had a go at the summit of Mont Blanc. But plans change, including the timing and the line of approach. By 8pm that night it was decided; we would start our summit attempt the very next day. I needed some serious sleep and something a little more substantial than the pissy shower in our campervan. I was very excited but at this stage I had no idea what was coming. The general plan had been to reach the summit the easy way and put our energy into the ride down, that is, we would be dropped at 4000m by heli on the Italian side and climb the remaining 800m and then ride down the northern side into Chamonix. As it turned out, we spent the next night at the Cosmiques Hut at 3600m and made a 2am start to a monumental 11 hour mountaineering effort to reach the summit with quite difficult conditions underfoot and snowboards strapped to our backs. This was followed by a ridiculously long 4 hour descent, about two hours of which was spent on foot (I will explain tomorrow).

[mattlucas 0]

That's sick Spud

Too bad for the people that died. Interesting write up about it.

 

I can't wait to see you pictures of Mont Blanc

[Fattwins 0]

good work spud i remember the little spudling days way back in the barok days.

 

what were they doing on such a big cornice. ak77 that is what i was talking about before bed.

 

keep plugging db

[bushpig 0]

nice spud!

[mattlucas 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Fattwins:
good work spud i remember the little spudling days way back in the barok days.

what were they doing on such a big cornice. ak77 that is what i was talking about before bed.

keep plugging db

Yes from the bottom it definitly looks like it overhangs. Not only why were they on the cornice but why were both of them on the cornice

Easy to judge now though. We will never know why they were there though. But have to give them the benifit of the doubt that at the time they thought they were doing what was right

[Fattwins 0]

aggreed just making a bit of a point

[Yuki's Passion 1]

sick sick sick

 

nice write up and great pictures.

[damian 0]

Thanks guys. You really should spend some time over here one day. It is busy but is also the home of anything goes alpine adventure. Obviously that comes with severe consequences for some people, either as a result of misjudgement, lack of experience or plain bad luck. Who knows what the story is behind the cornice fall? It sure broke off a long way back, perhaps the second person had no idea he was even standing on it. Later in the week after the Mont Blanc summit my girlfriend and I set out to repeat the tour pictured above where she is lunching near (not on) the edge of a cornice. Half way along the hike I changed my mind and the two of us agreed to take a shorter crappier route that had no cornice entry. It was a day with warm temps and a strong sun and I could still remember the cornice accident that we are discussing here. Except for very rare occasions, cornices are not for walking on nor jumping off. Every cornice entry I have done in the last week has been from the most benign point with no over hang. But even then, you are required to ride beneath the hanging axe. And in spring just a little bit of falling snow releasing from terrain above can start a catastrophic event. I will discuss this again later in an incident when my girlfriend and I came within about 40 meters of being pulverised 2 days ago.

 

day 6:

Leaving my poor girlfriend on her own for the 4th day in a row I met up with the other guys and we headed up to the Aiguille du Midi for a fun run down the true Vallee Blanch. Quite a few people confuse the descent along the Mer de Glace as the Vallee Blanch. This is not the case. There are a number of ways to access the crowded and boring Mer de Glace and the Vallee Blanch is one of them, but it has not been ridable for the last three seasons. The true Vallee Blanch is a shorter glacier that converges with the much longer and flatter Mer de Glace. For those interested, the true VB is the set of crevasses between Gros Rognan and Petit Rognan. There was good powder and plenty of steep pitches with lots of fun. This season the crevasses are well filled in. I didn’t take any picture but some of the other guys did so I will get hold of them later. I dislike taking photos, it is a disruption that you don’t want when in dangerous places. Plus, no matter how small, most digital cameras are bulky enough to be an unwanted hassle in your pocket: the camera is added bulk in an already crowded lower abdomen area (you have a harness on, plus the waist belt to your back pack, plus your beacon a little higher up…. the last thing you want is a little metal rectangle in your jacket pocket). And then there is the reliability in the cold issue. They are farckin useless. Please remind me to carry a super light disposable film camera in the future.

 

Anyway, we made our way back down to Chamonix and had a restful afternoon in preparation for the next day. The word was that we would have a 1am breakfast and that it would take us 8 hours to reach the summit if we were very fast. Ten hours was a more reasonable estimate. We spent 2 hours sitting in the valley sunshine eating bowls of pasta, drinking beer and looking directly up at the summit from the Chamonix township. What was the big deal?

 

That afternoon we went back up the Midi and traversed around the really cool Cosmiques Hut which sits at 3613m above sea level from where we studied our route. The plan was to take one of the classic approaches to the summit where you tackle it from the side but need to overcome two major peaks before getting first site or crack at the MB summit:

 

1. start at the Cosmiques hut, drop down to the Col du Midi at 3532m

2. ascend Mont Blanc du Tacul, and traverse the northern flank at about 4200m

3. decend to Col Maudit at 4000m

4. ascend Mont Maudit, via an icy gap in the rocks at approx 4400m

5. traverse ice to Col de Brenva at 4300

6. ascent Mont Blanc to 4810m

 

 

Sounds really easy, only 5km as the crow flies and no single pitch required more than about 600m of vertical rise. The fact that it had an estimated time of 8-10 hours was almost unbelievable (it is a much better route in summer where fit people can do it in 6 hours).

 

Sunset from the Cosmiques Hut.

 

Going to bed I was as excited as a frog and went to bed at 9pm. Due to the altitude of the hut (3613m) I couldn’t get to sleep. And then the adrenaline took over and I lay there until midnight staring at the ceiling, my mind racing. I think I drifted off for about 30 minutes but snoring woke me up. I was excited but really worried that I had not slept. At 12.30am I gave up any hope for sleep and got up 30 minutes before the 1am alarm. I got dressed, put my beacon and harness on and was soon joined by the rest of the guys for breakfast. There were 5 of us and 3 guides. It 1am in the morning and it felt surreal as we stepped outside and switched on our head torches.

 

This is where I will probably go into way to much detail, if not already. I don’t have many pictures as the first 4 hours were in total darkness and for the remaining 7 hours of ascent, happy snaps were not on my mind (plus my camera battery was useless in the cold). Not many of us were taking pictures.

 

We started out in snow shoes as we roped up and ascended the flank of Mont Blanc du Tacul. I don’t know much about this peak as the sun only came up after we descended to the col on the other side. I also don’t clearly recall this leg of the journey as so much hard work was to follow. I was very cold and also in awe of what we were doing, head torches on, stepping over narrow crevasses in the darkness whilst looking down to the twinkling lights of Chamonix 3kms below us. It was like being in a big cold aeroplane with one enormous window. Steve and I were roped up with our guide in front stomping away in the cold. After about 1 hour we switched to crampons and alternated between short roping and normal steep terrain crevasse travel for another 3 hours. In this time I managed to kick Steve in the face with my crampons but he was ok (I just missed his eye). At one stage I remember planting the shaft of my ice axe into the firm snow on the other side of a narrow partially filled crevasse and hauling myself over it, legs spread pretty wide. We zigzagged upwards between the massive towers of crevasse ice and waded through powder. Not much else happened until we neared the summit and one guy pulled out after about 3.5 hours work. We were above 4000m and the altitude may have got to him, along with the expectation of an increasingly difficult minimum of 6 hours to go. Dunno. But that left two roped teams of three.

 

After a wobbly walk down to the col, giving up a precious 200m of hard fought vertical I remember trying to eat a mars bar but was super cold and had snot coming out of my nose. On the walk down I tore my gortex shell pants with a crampon point, but nothing too bad.

 

Now for the second leg, Mont Maudit. I think Maudit means bitch in French. This peak was a bitch. I had never used an ice axe in the past, let alone climbed mixed ice and snow. Learn as you go. It didn’t look that hard but it too forever, I lost track of how long we spent getting up this 45-55 degree slope. By half way up my fingers kept freezing and my knuckle was swollen from punching ice as I placed the ice axe (with an apparently incorrect technique). Some pitches were snow that had turned into shiny white ice. Others sections were soft enough to kick a 3 inch deep toe step. I can’t say that this relatively easy ice climbing appealed to me much. It was just plain hard work at well above 4000m and I was starting to get a head ache and feel sick. Kick the front points into the snow-ice, lever the axe adze out of the surface and ram it in again higher up, kick step, on and on. Our guide would lead of and belay the two of use as we ascended as a pair. Then we would cut a ledge on which to stand and he would lead away again. It was genuinely very hard work and a little bit windy, which made the boards on our backs a temporary hassle. About 2/3rds of the way up we had to negotiate a narrow bergschrund. Whilst the lead belay was being set I was waiting just at the crevasse lip. It was pretty well snow lined and looked ok, but as I poked around with my axe the snow dropped away and the depth of this pit was revealed. I was glad to straddle that crack and get on with climbing firmer ice again. I got one picture as we approached this point but it simply does not do justice to the steepness and the altitude. By the time we reached the top our heads were thumping and I was starting to feel sick and weak. I think it took 3 hours to get up the icy snow wall. But we were feeling like winners as it was this hard ice that we expected to turn us back as our approach route is far better suited to warmer weather when a path can be cut ascending this long multiple pitch section and you simply walk up it. But we were at the top and the sun was shining on our bodies. I clearly remember Steve pulling on the rope and when I looked down between my legs to is position he said in a Scottish accent “we have this in the bag, were going to reach the summit of Mont Blanc today”. I agreed, it should be easy from now on. It wasn’t.

 

Our guide setting the lead to belay us up to a point just below the bergschrund and yet another pitch of hard shiny wind blasted snow-ice (the darker patch between the rocks at the top). It is a lot further away than it looks.

 

Steve, who was tied to me. We are part way up Mont Maudit just as the sun set itself in the morning sky.

 

After we rounded Mont Maudit we had our first view of the Mont Blanc summit. My camera failed me here and I am really disappointed. Up close, the summit looks exactly the same as it does from the valley: a big dome of snow and ice, like the pointy end of a massive egg. We had been at it for about 7 hours and had beaten two 4000+ peaks. The effects of altitude were starting to get us down but before we could start the Mont Blanc summit proper we had to traverse some more ice and move onto a wide col that had a massive drop off to the south east. Again, I wish my camera worked. The traverse sucked. In some places the ice over rock was shattering like glass, it even sounded like glass. We crabbed sideways about 50m and whilst the other team persisted with the sideways front pointing across nasty ice, we decided to dropped down 30m and traversed in knee deep powder that bridged a large crevasse above a shitty serac fall. This was the first time were I seriously wanted to get to the end of a pitch and onto safer terrain. If the snow bridge failed or the powder should slide down over the cliffs we would have been in big trouble. Likewise if one of the guys on the ice above use slipped whilst negotiating their sideways gamble. Bog standard stuff in mountaineering, but new to me.

 

We had lunch on the col, I was feeling good, but noticeably worn out and hindered by an altitude headache and queasiness. Steve felt sick and didn’t eat. One of the other guys really didn’t feel good at all. It was cold.

 

Then the hard part started, but it looked so easy. I really do not like the summit of Mont Blanc, it is the most unpleasant hike I have ever undertaken. Because of the convex dome, you can’t actually see the summit as you stand at the base and so it seems endless. It is also a lot steeper than it looks plus almost always very hardpacked snow or ice. There is a large outcrop of rock that gives a lone sense of perspective and scale.

 

Ascending the actual domed peak of Mont Blanc was unbearably difficult. After about 2 hours we were half way up, but we didn’t know it at the time. I had no reliable sense of how far we had to go nor how far we had climbed. Looking back down the dome made what was very difficult look very easy and looking up the dome made what I knew was very hard look like a stroll. To get to this point on the dome we has negotiated a few really steep sections of front pointing, sections that were not at all evident from the base of the dome. They just reared up as you approached their base. I can’t convey enough how out of whack our sense of scale and perspective was. There are so many variants to the route up that I was feeling frustrated as they all looked way easier than the one we were taking. Of course, they were not. The dome is also quite crevassed, although they are narrow and very well bridged (hidden). One long stretch of front pointing required us to start by climbing up and across a narrow crevasse whilst being belayed from above and then walk directly up what felt like a white cement wall. This was one of the hardest moments. I felt sick, my head was absolutely thumping and I thought I was going to fall asleep. My pack felt heavy and my legs hurt like hell. It was very frigging hard! After that nightmare all that was left was 2 hours of switch-backing a 45 degree icy slope. This was the drug stage, a long moment of not being me. Yeah, it sounds dramatic, but we were exhausted and completely flogged by altitude sickness as we moved well above 4500m. It sometimes took 10 seconds to take one pathetic step. We had to stop every 20m or so to rest. I was on the verge of vomiting and or feinting. My head was about to explode, my heart was racing, I couldn’t breath and my legs wouldn’t move. I can’t explain today how hard it was, how emotionally crushing it felt. I looked around and we all had our heads down and back bent. The other team had stopped 50m below us, one of the guys was on his knees, head in his hands. I yelled out to him that what we were feeling was no worse than an almighty hangover and tiredness and that I would prefer this to being in prison. They were really struggling. Even their guide was looking bad, and he is a very experience strong as an ox mountaineer.

 

And on the plodding went. I got to the stage where I couldn’t comfortably lift my head and my neck was cramped and I was getting irritated looking at the snow and the thousands of little frozen ice fingers pointing at where the wind had been blowing. Steve mumbled that he had to stop and our guide yanked on the rope and yelled “NO!”. Afterwards he explained how many times people have stopped in the last 200 meters of vertical, just to turn back and never reach the summit. If you took a break now, you would never make it.

 

I was simply incapable of reconciling in my mind how hard it was. It was only a big white hill, what was the fuss about? The struggle really annoyed me, but the more I thought, the more nauseous I felt. When I almost vomited I decided to stop thinking and pretended that nothing else existed in the universe besides the next step that I had to take. I wasn’t there, the mountain wasn’t there. There was nothing but the next step. I managed to refine life into a series of isolated one foot steps. It sounds ridiculous now, but it made sense at the time. Two hours of it. Another unrelated group that had been behind us the whole way folded at this stage. One was lying down.

 

As I placed one of my feet down on some snow I noticed a little crack encircle my foot and a plate of crusty snow dropped down about 3 inches. I noticed this. It took a long time to take each step and just as I weighted my foot for the next one my whole leg punched through the snow, then my other leg, then the snow fell away and I was up to my armpits in a narrow crevass. In a millisecond I just about vomited my heart right out of my mouth. Luckily I was too fatigued to feel much fear, but it took me a few minutes to crawl out of this crack. Steve and our guide were surprisingly not much help at all. Our guide said something like “what are you doing? Get out of there”. I was thinking something like “why am I falling in a crevasse in this pathetic state” and “I love you rope”. The effort of crawling out almost beat me. For the next hour I had to force myself to breath between steps and not throw up or feint. Every step was an exercise in not vomiting or feinting. Then Steve fell and slipped but we held him and continued upwards.

 

The last 30 minutes were utterly ridiculous. We were so slow. I just kept saying quietly out loud “win, never give up, win, never give up, win, never give up….”. I am not going to bother trying to put into words how incredibly hard it was to take another step. As the summit came into view it didn’t get any easier. The third last step, second last and last step were just as hard as the hardest step 300 meters ago. Knowing that you only had one more step to go didn’t make it easier to take that isolated step. After standing still for a few minutes our hearts slowed and headaches eased (as was the way each time we paused for rest). Watching the other group of three crawl up the last 100m was dreadfully painful. I really felt so sorry for them and knew exactly what they were feeling. The looks on their faces as they approached said it all. I was sitting on my back pack and was in simple disbelief at how chronically hard it had been. I was also deeply proud of each of us in the team for making it. Those men never gave up and I doubt that they ever would. We were a good team.

 

This is the other half of the team arriving on the summit just after we did. I am sitting on my pack suddenly starting to feel a little better. It actually still feels a bit emotional to think about it all.

 

We made it!

[damian 0]

Me and my board on the summit. I felt too sick to smile, but I tried.

 

The view to the south east towards La Grave

 

Looking down into the Chamonix valley. Doesn’t seem that high until you realise that we are twice as high as the ski resorts on the other side of the valley.

 

But we had met our match. After 11 hours of hiking and climbing we were in pretty bad shape. None of us had done any acclimatisation. It would have taken about 1-2 weeks of high altitude time to get to the top of Mont Blanc without so much as a headache. All I wanted to do was get off the summit, or get below 3000m so that I could breath and rid myself of the headache. It is easy to regret a decision now in front of my laptop, but I wish now that we had ridden from the very summit. The unfortunate fact was that we were beaten: after all that work we had not enough left to safely negotiate the descent right down the guts of the beast from the peak. I knew it at the time and what’s more, I didn’t even want to do it. There was no way I could snowboard powerfully and confidently, let alone take on the most dangerous terrain I had seen in my time on a board. Our guides decided against the direct descent from the summit and no one argued. I didn’t even feel like snowboarding at that point in time. As the sun rose 7 hours earlier I had noticed a lone skier way behind us, doing the same ascent route. Just as we were leaving the summit he arrived, alone! He sat down for 15 minutes, caught his breath, stepped into his bindings and rode from the peak right down the most gnarly crevassed middle line from the summit. It was like he had done it 100 times before. I was dumfounded. I pointed out how fit he was and that he was alone and our guide just said “yeah, you get some pretty skilled guys around here”. No shit.

 

So we decided to descend the first 300m or so along an appallingly narrow ridge. If you get vertigo then don’t walk on this ridge! It’s like a knife edge. We were still heaving with altitude sickness and although the down stepping was physically much easier, it was still very hard work and took us almost 1 hour. On the way I saw the lone skier ripping it up like he was in a TGR movie… alone.

 

We reached a shoulder from which we felt we could ride more safely. After a little bit of riding we hit nasty ice that required the boards to be replaced with crampons and more down climbing. One guy was so far out of the ice that he had to put in an ice screw to hold himself in place whilst switching into crampons. After that stretch of ice we had no more real problems and several moments of great powder above 4000m between the humungous glacial cliffs.

 

Some detail of the terrain over which we descended.

 

The only action picture I have been able to locate of our descent, taken by one of the guides. Hopefully one of the guys got some other shots.

 

Annoyingly, my head was still about to explode and every bump in the terrain caused an agonising thump in the brain. I wasn’t enjoying it much, except for the silky smooth powder bits and the sensation of racing downhill into oxygen again. Unfortunately there is a much easier way up the mountain (still requires an overnight hut stay) and the otherwise expansive slopes of powder had been reasonably well tracked. Further down it was really tracked out and the cut up bumps were torture for my headache. One of the downsides of Chamonix is that 5 days after the last snow, if you can ride it then there will be tracks on it. It actually takes a long time to ride down 2000m of vertical descent on extremely tired legs and we had some careful crevasse dodging along the way, particularly during a traverse stage. After that our headaches were gone and although we had jelly legs we enjoyed another 1000m vertical of riding which ended in perfect untouched fast corn. But the work was not over. We were now down around 2000m and the temperature was suddenly really high and we were having to hike out of a gully to access a direct line down the entrance of the Mont Blanc tunnel at 1300m. After that short hot sunny walk we had some scrappy tree riding to do and then a long walk down a rough old summer path. This walk down took almost an hour and was not the most glorious end to the hardest thing I have ever done. But it was a huge descent none the less with a solid 3000m of vertical drop sliding away below my p-tex base. That’s the same as riding from the summit of Fuji to the ocean. Excluding the boot sections it took about 2 hours.

 

By the time we were back in the valley I didn’t quite recall what all the big deal was about and once I made it back to the campervan, my girlfriend and my dog I simply announced that we did an 11 hour hike starting at 2am followed by 4 hours of descent. Including some breaks and walking we spent 16 hours in our snowboard boots and I was tired but felt like a beer. Only in writing this do have I suddenly remembered how amazingly difficult it was to take another step.

 

In the days after the summit my girlfriend and I took it easy and went for nice back country hikes around the area. When hiking at 2000m I was feeling amazingly strong after all that hard work at more than twice the altitude. I felt like I could run up a small mountain. I will follow through with reports on the final 4 days of hiking tomorrow. In the meantime, some comments on gear:

 

- Grivel G10 wide crampons work. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t mountaineer in snowboard boots. I wore my strap-on crampons for 10 hours of solid work and they didn’t once hint at failure.

- Get some Conformable custom inner soles. They saved my arches.

- Salomon Malamute boots. 16 hours and not one blister, no pain, no cramps. Awesome boots.

- Use an ice axe hat is almost long enough to reach the ground when you are standing (helps if you are short). Mine did and I had advantage over those with short handled axes.

- Don’t use those stupid Camel Backs. One guy did and 75% of his valuable water supply froze, leaving him close to trouble (I carried and drank 2 litres of water)

- Deuter 25l pack: it felt excellent on my back the whole way. I have some niggles with smaller design features, but as far as comfort under load goes, it felt great for the whole 16 hours. I admit that 25l is a little too small for serious day touring, especially if unguided and you need to carry your own rope and emergency kit.

- Screw tight three piece poles are ok when they are new, but everyone with older ones had huge energy wasting hassles with them freezing up, making it very hard to extend or compress them. Use flick lock poles if you have the choice.

[dizzy 0]

looks great!! what a trip you had (drool)

[mattlucas 0]

Really great write up

Took me a while to take it all in

 

One thing I noticed is that in your summit group picture you look taller than I remember

Stange

[Hokkaidough 4]

Nice report

[Fattwins 0]

nice spud. i will have to read that on a bigger pc later just scaning for 10 minutes with this pc is a pain in the eyes/azz.

 

You are gonna get some mad skills hanging with those boys. how much do you have to pay for something like that?

[mattlucas 0]

How much elevation did you gain in total?