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."