Finally Some Climbing

Today I went up the Midi with Dorian and Graham to do a quick lap of the Arete Des Cosmiques before lunch. Its been snowing a lot up high recently and to be honest when we got up and started the walk to the route we kind of wished we had had our skis. The snow was super deep and powdery. A couple of lucky ones did take skis up and got some amazing turns.

Check that fresh pow!

Anyway we plodded over to the route and it luckily was not busy so we made good time on it , we were not going for a speed record on it but we moved fine over it at a good pace , stopping for a laugh now and then. The route varies loads depending on snow conditions but its never very hard , a couple of abseils(sometimes only 1) and the odd little step and there is also one little steep crux wall with a couple of moves of about UK Vdiff/Severe , after the crux wall comes the best part , you move over onto the North side and climb an awesome chimney to the top , today it was in brilliant Scottish winter condition but sadly its super short and doesn’t last nearly as long as you hope for. After the chimney its up some ladders onto the viewing platform of the Midi station to have your pictures taken with all the amazed Japanese tourists. We were Midi and back to Midi in 2hrs 30mins. For the record my current fastest is 43 mins , hopefully this will be beaten this season. 

At start of route

Me just getting up to the last chimney

So back in Cham at 12pm we headed off for lunch then met back up at 1.30pm to finally go rock climbing. We went a short drive out of Chamonix and walked in for about 35 mins to the Chezery Slabs. Its was super quiet and I climbed with Dorian and Graham brought along Lorne. I took the first lead on a 5c Slab(French Grade 5c is meant to be roughly UK VS/HVS. I don’t reckon this was anywhere near an HVS pitch but I did make a meal of it , I didn’t fall and didnt feel I was going to but I wasn’t that comfortable on it( also my feet were killing me in my rock shoes) and took a while but got up it , I hate slab climbing , I just don’t trust anything about it!

Dorian cruising up the Slab

After that Dorian cruised up the slab and then managed to get to lead the best pitch , an awesome section of about Severe , quite steep but great holds. Then I took over another quite easy section with probably a little bit of Severe at the start and then easy Vdiff. It was then decided to abseil from there as the climbing above was still wet from the past few days pouring rain.

Dorian on the Awesome 3rd Pitch / Lorne above belaying Graham who was on the next

Ace belay spot

Well the abseil was funny. We were all just using the same ropes to get down so Graham went off first (not descending the way we came up) and took ages then finally Lorne then Dorian then me. When I got over the little overhang of rock all I seen were the 3 of them anchored to different places and quite far apart! I had a good old laugh and made my way to Dorian who had picked the best line. It ended up that Graham didn’t have enough rope to make it to the next anchor so just clipped to a bolt then Lorne came down and had to find a bolt and then Dorian found a new anchor so I went to him. Me and Dorian then clipped into the same point (quite an awkward stance) and started pulling the ropes down to us as we knew that from where we were we could make it down to the ground and Lorne and Graham could get to the rope as well so all good. Well surprise surprise the rope got stuck whilst pulling it down , it was quite funny and myself and Dorian made the most of the hilarity as we were both clipped the same anchor attempting to free the rope (it was a pretty bomber chain and bolts we were clipped to Mum!). Just when all looked lost we (well actually I with a genius bit of rope swinging) eventually managed to free the jammed knot and then it was a simple task of rigging the new abseil and down we go.

Fun Times

Abseiling down to rescue Lorne and Graham

An excellent day. Only in Cham can you swing an Ice Axe in the morning at 3800m then come down to a roasting hot valley and go and do some great little mutlipitch rock routes.
Its back to work tomorrow and I reckon back to running on lunchbreaks.