Deep day in the Cosmiques
With 80cm of fresh overnight on top of all weeks snow Sunday was one of the best Cosmiques! Thanks to Sylvain Reynaud for the photos.
Late to say im sorry- Aiguille Verte
As skiing conditions were poor Tom Grant and i decided to see if a route we had wanted to climb for a while was in condition. We got the second bin to the top of Grands Montets with Late to say im sorry as our target.
Leaving our skis at the bottom of the couturier couloir we make quick progress moving together up the calf burning 50 degree romp and intial two easy mixed pitches untill we reached the crux. It looked pretty tricky and was initally given a grade of A2 5c, but we had heard from other partys the roof can be drytooled at M6 and then an iced corner a few meters left of the origional peged up crack climbed at M5 for a free ascent.
I headed off on lead and managed to free the roof after spending a bit of time fiddling gear in, as i pulled round the bulge i saw above that the corner had no ice in so i would have to climb the origional crack which had also been freed but at M7, a little hard for me with no bolts! I tried to free this but got a little scared and pumped and had to rest on gear a couple of times.
The following pitch was pretty thin and had some tricky mixed climbing to but Tom dispatched of it easily, which just left us with three beautiful thin ice gully pitches to the top. Once we topped out we decied to rap off and not go to the summit which is bad style but a good call as an avalanche had come down the Couturier as we were climbing so as the light had gone by the time we reached the bottom finding our skis took a while!
Rabbit Ears, Late to say im sorry and more.
I havnt blogged in a while because my computer has been broken, but the last few months in chamonix have been good ones. Myself and Luca Pandolfi skied the Rabbit Ears which is a cool little line i hadnt skied before, check out Lucas report- http://www.lucapandolfi.com/2012/03/rabbit-ears-10-03-2012/
After that we had a long period of sunny warm weather but no snow so i took the oportunity to do some climbing, some sunny perfect granite on Mort de Rire on the aiguille du genipi with Luca and a mixed climb on the aiguille Verte north face called Late to say im sorry with Tom Grant. This was a great route with some of the best climbing in the mountains i have done, we got a lot of cool pictures so i will put them up in another post.
Pic of the Rabbit Ears
Now we are getting loads of snow and have been making quick hits on the rond, cosmiques ect. Hopefully the mountains will be coming into steep sking condition because of it and we can ski some big lines when the sun comes back!
Black Diamond alpine catalogue and Aiguille du Moine 4th descent
Jon has just put together Black Diamonds alpine catalogue, there is loads of great photography and one of the pics is of me(6th one). Check it out.
http://catalog.blackdiamondequipment.com/alpinism2012/en_us/
Luca Pandolfi and I also made the 4th descent of the South face of the Aiguille du Moine today which was first skied by Jean Marc Boivin in 1987!
Heres Lucas report- http://www.lucapandolfi.com/2012/03/moine-southeast-face-29-02-2012/s
Ross Hewitt was also with us to ski the line but unfortunatly had back problems, heres his take on things-
Aiguille du Moine, Mixed Emotions and Col des Droites.
Les Courtes- South face direct
On Wednesday afternoon myself and Luca Pandolfi caught the last bin up Grandes Montes with the aim of climbing up the N side of Les Courtes and skiing the south face. We headed for the swiss route early in the morning but soon after crossing the Burgshrund we realised there was a lot of hard ice on the route and Lucas snowboard boots would be too soft to climb the route safely. We quickly came up with a new plan to rappel off and walk round to the NE face so all was not lost.
We made quick progress up the start thanks to our new Spanish friends we had met the night before, who had already started putting a boot pack up the face. Unfortunately one of them wasnt feeling good and they turned around, so we carried on alone.
For any one interested in the general conditions in the Argentiere basin, the North faces are icy although the NE face is just about skiable at the moment with good snow low on the face and a small strip of skiable snow in the large ice patches in the top section. However the south-facing couloirs such as the Y on the Aiguille D’Argentiere and the S couloir on the Aiguille du Chardonnet look very good.
Once we arrived at the top of the NE face a short ridge traverse took us to the summit, where I down climbed a little to check out the two entrances. We decided the couloir was filled enough to ski from the summit using the direct entrance. The snow was deep powder on the top half and just a bit heavy lower down where it had been warmer in the sun. As there was so much snow and it hadn’t undergone any freeze thaw cycles the hardest part of the descent was controling our slough!
Luca climbing up the NE face
Me at the top of the NE face
View from the top
Luca climbing the ridge
Me climbing the ridge
Luca getting ready on the summit
Me checking out the line
Me skiing the couloir, great snow!
A long day, the sun setting as we ski back to town.
