Tournette Spur July 2015

So the day started at 8am on the bus from Chamonix to Courmayuer where we caught a connection to Val Veny. We hoped to climb the Tournette. It would be my first time summiting Mont Blanc and Ash's third alpine route and first time above 4000m.

Now, us being us, we got off the bus way too early. Ended up walking a good few extra km with an extra 300m of elevation to do! But the walk in is nice and pretty.

We got to Lac du Miage pretty soon. The place is stunning, even if the water is very low.

From the Lac du Miage its a good few km of boulder hopping along the Miage Glacier up to the Mont Blanc glacier.

We soon realised that it would be quicker to go on the right hand side of the glacier, which was a bit more straightforward with large patches of snow. But it is more exposed to rockfall.

All the way to the route there are little bits of plane wreckage from the 1950 plane crash at the top of the tournette spur.

Once at the foot of the Mont Blanc glacier you're immediately met by some quite serious climbing. 80/90 degree ice for several pitches. This is only the first two pitches.

We couldn't see a way to traverse left to the grass couloir and the rocky ridge, so we carried on up the Mont Blanc glacier to the snowy couloir. Don't think you're nearly there. This couloir gains 1000m of elevation before you double back on a rocky ridge to gain the hut.

We woke up early the next day to very high winds and decided we'd try to wait the winds out for a day before we carried on.

We spent the day checking out the route forward.

As well as what looks like it may be a new hut being built next to the Quinto Sella.

And we were marmot watching! Right outside the hut.

After two hours sleep, we set off at 11pm to head for the route. The approach consists of some very steep, bullet hard glacier ice. You have to stick to the left where it's less steep, but stick to the left too far and you'll end up climbing a couloir then on a rocky ridge climbing about 300m higher than you need to, which you then need to descend again. Easy mistake to make in the dark.

This didn't help our speed.

The route goes up a heavily crevassed glacier with some interesting climbing and a lovely mixed pitch about scottish 4. Then you're on the route proper. We started climbing the snow slopes and making good time, but about 11am the snow turned to slush. We traversed left onto the furthest rocky ridge at about the limit of the photo above.

The climbing probably maxed out at about severe 4a but is mostly easy scrambling. There is no need to remove crampons.

Soon enough, we were topping out on the route onto the bosses ridge. We basically carried on following the ridge on its right hand side, until we could see the final rock island, then traversed across the couloir to just below the rock island and headed up an easy, short snow slope to the top.

The windcrust was amazing!

After slogging up the ridge, the summit was ours! Approximately 17 hours after we set off.

We slogged down the Trois Monts route, never ever ever again. To arrive at the lift station and try and gain some kip before the first lift!

Things have changed since the last time I had to sleep in the lift station, they now lock the door to the heated toilets!

Below are some images of the route we took to the summit.

Details for anybody wanting to do this route:
- In current conditions, two axes are definitely needed.
- Ice gets vertical on the start of the Mont Blanc glacier. People may also notice we seemed to take a long route from the hut. Thats because the normal approach was completely bullet hard, overhanging glacier ice.
- Route finding on the approach is quite hard due to unreal amounts of crevasses. They are everywhere. They are huge. We had to cross several "Vertical Limit Style" by jumping with ice axes out. They start at the bottom of the Mont Blanc glacier and literally don't stop until the Bergeshrund on the route. The approach from the hut to the route took 10 hours because of the crevasses and our little routefinding error. The route took 8.
- For a competent (VS) climber, no point on the route should need pitching. A fair amount of the approach might though.
- The Quintino Sella hut is an absolute amazing place. Amazing location, well stocked, even with its own gas stove and large pans! There are, however, mice, marmots and some sort of reptile (according to Ash, the reptile fecal expert apparently) living in and around there. Don't leave food laying around.
- It's very remote. Once we left the Lac du Miage until we summitted, we didn't see any people at all, not even in the distance.

We probably should have been fitter. Ash is training to join the forces currently and I can hit a 20 mile cross country run no problem.

We probably (read definitely) should have been better acclimatised. I'd suggest this needs much more accurate acclimatisation than the normal Mont Blanc routes due to the increased time at altitude. We had 2 days at around 3900m before we did the route.

A badly planned diving trip, Valley Entrance to Aquamole 2015

So not so early on a saturday morning we found ourselves on the road outside valley entrance with lots of gear to go and dive from Valley Entrance to Aquamole. It was to be Matts first proper UK cave dive. 

Look how happy he is all geared up and ready to go!

Turns out transporting two 7L cylinders, in a bag, along valley entrance is a nightmare! We had them on the harness on the way back, which made for much easier movement.

But we soon got to cool down in the deep canals along the way!

Matt got geared up to go into the sumps, he's a little nervous at this point!

The visibilty in the sumps was amazing, with tonnes of these little fish and even a frog!

We got to Frakes passage and took some photos. It's believed these are the only photos from there, soon to be getting published in a book :D

I carried on up to aquamole, had a quick look and turned around.

We headed out, taking some photos along the way and went for beer. lots of beer. 

Failing on the Frendo 2014

The Frendo Spur. An iconic summer route that is well known as a summer test piece of the average alpinist. In winter conditions? Its a test piece for the advanced alpinist. 

August 2014 snow was being dumped on a regular basis with a decent freeze thaw low down and low temperatures all over. Basically, it was in winter condition! For some reason, we decided to have a go. 

We made the approach after catching the first lift with lots of snow around, we started to get worried when we noticed this rock, almost 10m high last time we were here IN WINTER, was now almost completely covered with snow!

So we started to head up what is normally a snow-free rock slab in summer conditions. But as I said, this is winter conditions. We moved together up the slab thinly plastered with snow and inch thick ice at about scottish grade 6. 

 We carried on up the climb, finding respite in what are normally the hardest section of the route in summer!

 We carried on up the route in incredible scenery but the hardest parts of the route were thin ice, and mixed climbing covered in snow where you could see no holds or gear placements. It was easily scottish grade VII at times.

We climbed well into the night, before bivving near the top of the rock section. It was a reasonably comfortable bivi when we went to sleep.

It wasn't so pleasant when we woke up.

We climbed another pitch before Dan decided he could take no more. We set off down. Below I've copied and pasted an excerpt from an email I sent my dad at the time:

"The system for abseiling is quite simple, you tie some cord around a boulder and back it up with a piece of proper rock/ice gear. Feed the rope through the cord to the middle point and then the first person descends on both strands of rope. If the cord/boulder doesn't fail the second person removes the rock gear, descends to join the first. You pull one side of the rope to get it back and repeat the whole process. Sounds easy but when you're trying to descend almost 3000 feet and can only move 90 feet at the time, its rather time consuming. 

The other problem with abseiling is finding suitable boulders to tie the cord around. So sometimes you can't descend the full 90 feet offered by the rope due to there not being suitable anchors, so sometimes we only moved maybe 30 feet! As well as other times we had to descend diagonally, almost horizontally, to get onto the route we thought an abseil descent would be easier on. 

Whilst abseiling you tie knots above 3 feet from the end of the rope on both strands to stop you going straight off the ends of them. One particular abseil I was descending first and going, looking for anchors but none appearing. I can see the the knots getting closer and closer and closer. Eventually I'm about one foot above the knots and can see the perfect anchor about a foot below the end of the rope, so four feet below me. I decided my plan of action would be to dangle upside down, make the anchor, return the right way up, untie the knots, slowly abseil down until I could clip into the anchor with a lanyard and then abseil off the end of the rope. 

This goes well, right until the point I untie the knots. Suddenly I start noticing large chunks of ice falling around me, a few hitting me. My brain instantly thinks "What the hell is Dan doing?" so I look up to shout some abuse at him and just see a large wall of snow heading towards me at a great rate of knots. I cling tightly onto the rope, put my head down to place my helmet uppermost and try and hide as much of my body under the helmet as possible, a rather fruitless effort. 

The avalanche lasted maybe a minute at most, but it felt like an absolute lifetime. During it my tatty gloves completely disintegrated! Before the avalanche I had gloves that looked like the mice had been at them, when the snow cleared I literally just had a velcro strap going around each wrist. 

Apart from this the descent was relevantly uneventful and we reached the glacier about midnight, but not before the mountain had one last trick for us. At the bottom of most mountain routes is something called a bergshrund. Its where the glacier (a huge huge huge chunk of ice) meets the rock. The problem with glaciers is they constantly move downhill, away from the rock. So to finish off the abseil I had to get an ice axe in hand, jump outwards from about 10 feet up, push outwards about 20 feet, quickly descend the rope and hook an ice axe over the edge of the bergshrund and pull up.

We crossed the glacier by half past midnight and for the first time since about 7am the day before got to remove our harnesses, crampons and pack the rope away. It was bliss. We sat there in the dark and mist (visibility had been little over 20 feet most of the day) just enjoying it for a few moments. Then we had to cross the moraines which are like large boulder fields. We were going to walk across to the lift station at 7500 feet and wait around until the first lift at 6am and catch it down to the valley. I wanted to walk down to the valley anyway but Dan really didn't have the energy required, he'd been struggling since day one. 

Around 2am and a few hundred yards from the lift (we could see the lights) Dan suddenly announces that he's stopping there and promptly lays down and falls asleep! Right in the open, no sleeping bag, no warm jacket, nothing. So I decide to press on and walk back down to town. 

I knew there was a path from somewhere near the lift station back down to town. Now, no matter how many times you have studied the map. No matter how many descriptions you have read. For future reference it is not advisable to try and find your way down off a mountain, in the dark, on a route you've never travelled, in fog, without a map and compass. 

This is how I found myself on a 60 degree steep loose boulder slope. Not normally a major issue except I couldn't see which boulders were loose and which were good to stand on as grass and flowers were growing a few feet high very thickly everywhere! So my method of descending this was very carefully placing a foot on a rock I couldn't see, slowly weighting it and hoping it didn't give way. Then repeating the process. They gave way and I fell, alot. 

About 3am during one of these falls I fell over the edge of a small cliff, when I started free falling I remember thinking "this is it, I'm done". After 20 feet or so my fall ended rather abruptly, what stopped my fall? The path! I'd managed to fall directly onto the path. I can't remember the last time I was that happy. 

I walked down the path through the woods, passing amazing glacial rivers and waterfalls and eventually got back to the apartment at 0419. That day I'd eaten one chocolate bar and run out of food and drunk a pint of water before running out. Combined with all the exertion and my limited intake the day before I was rather hungry and thirsty. So when I got back I sat down and ate an entire pack of chocolate bars whilst dipping them in nutella, as well as quenching my thirst with a beer or six. 

I woke up at 11am today to find Dan was back. So we decided to venture into Chamonix town proper to get some food. As we were walking there we were repeatedly accosted by people stopping us and saying "You were the British team on the Frendo yesterday, yes?" We felt like quite the celebrities. People were amazed these two young Brits had gone and had such an amazing go of it, especially as 4 other teams had been rescued in the past week."