Frendo Spur

The Frendo Spur

Mark had wanted to do this route since hearing about it before our trip last year … and with it in good condition, there were no more excuses to stay away!

We headed up the Aiguille du Midi cable car to the midway point the afternoon beforehand, and set up an outdoor bivvy on top of the moraine wall. After a few games of cards, and well before sunset, we called it a night and tried to get some sleep – we would need all the rest we could get the next day! True to form, Jen managed to drop off fairly quickly.

The alarm went off the next day at 1:30am. Ouch. We had a pain au chocolat, stowed our sleeping bags and mats under a rock and hit the path. Despite the (almost) full moon, we were glad to have sussed out the moraine route the day before and we were quickly on the ice ramp leading to the start of the route.

Once up the ice ramp, the crampons came off and the scrambling began. Route finding in the dark isn't exactly easy, but all in all, we were pretty happy with the path we took and never really strayed from what the description said we'd find.

Approaching a steeper section, we switched to rock boots – whilst this meant we had to carry our heavy boots, it made us more confident on the rock so we could move a bit faster. We were constantly concerned about our speed – above the rock, the icy ramp would soon be getting the morning sun …

Just after dawn, five hours of climbing done - happy faces all round?

This is a bit more like it!

We topped out of the rock about 10:30am – we'd already been on the move for 8 ½ hours! - and after a brief break to change back to the heavy boots and put on the crampons, it was time to take our steps onto the snow ridge.

Although it looks flat from here, it's really not flat.

This is a better picture of what it's like!

 

We were glad to have two snow stakes to protect the narrow ridge, but still moved slowly and cautiously – this is not the place to slip. And when the ridge steepened into an icy wall, Mark got some ice-screws in too: this was more familiar and comfortable ground! It's been a while since winter, so the arms and calves complained a little, but the motions of ice-climbing have not been forgotten.

Stuck behind two friendly (but slooooow) British guys, we pitched out the top - moving to the left of the last rocky rognon up steep but stepped-out ice, which was conveniently close enough to the rock to allow Mark to put in some rock pro too. Jen finally cheered up a little, having spent most of the morning grumpy and terrified … it had been a long morning of climbing, and a bit of lose rock at the start plus the break in her beauty sleep had done nothing for her mood.

Nevertheless, we eventually topped out over the ridge … and see? Jen is even smiling. (Pure relief?)

And thankfully, the descent did not involve 16+ abseils (we should tell you about Dent du Requin one day!) but rather two cable cars, packed with tourists, and a great view back over our route. We stopped at the half-way point for a drink and to collect the bivvy gear, and congratulated ourselves on a great (if long) day out. 

Refuges around Chamonix … a brief comparison.

Around Chamonix, there are a series of mountain huts for alpinists and climbers to use. Most of these are owned by CAF – Club Alpin Francais – and run by franchisees, who make a business of the restaurant whilst the accommodation fees go back to CAF.

Like any business, there are up-sides and down-sides – the hut wardens have a captive market on the mountainsides and can charge quite high prices for food and drinks that have been flown in by helicopter. But frequently the hut wardens find that people do not honour their bookings, meaning they prepare meals and people do not show up to pay for them. Or people show up late with no reservation, after the kitchen is closed, and expect a 3-course meal and warm bed.

Hanging around at Requin - a hut we would definitely recommend!

 Often, we take the tent – it means a quieter night's sleep, rather than being in a room with a mix of people, some going to bed at midnight after celebrating a good day and others waking up at 2am to start climbing. It's also cheaper (but means much heavier bags)! But if we're near a hut, we'll buy a drink or two or some food - but use their toilets and maybe their picnic room.

Recently, we have had two extremely different hut experiences.

The first – negative! - experience was at Refuge d'Argentiere. Although we were prepared to camp, when we arrived at dusk in the rain and found out the hut was quite empty, we thought we'd enquire about staying a night there there instead. But the hut warden was far from welcoming – yelling at us that we were too late, and we should have booked, and the kitchen was closed, and he couldn't (wouldn't!) help us – so we “must go down!” And lecturing us on climbing schedules, telling us we'd wasted a day.

All this before we could explain that we were planning on camping, had our own food and were not planning on climbing the next day – we had just come up earlier to have a day to recce our route and get an extra night of acclimatisation. We were less than impressed. Although they condescended to let us pay to sleep in one of their many empty beds, we had to be gone by 7am - something other huts have not demanded, as far as we know.

So, we put up the tent in the rain and slept far more comfortably in that instead. We didn't spend a cent in their hut – not a single drink or meal – and the next morning, moved the tent further up the ridge onto the snow.

The second – positive! - experience was at Refuge du Requin. We called and booked, but just for accommodation (yes, we're cheap … we have to be!). We asked about cooking our own food on the telephone, and the response was “No problem!”. When we arrived, although we were the only guests, the candles were lit in the colourful and tidy dormitory, there was a separate room for us to cook in (with crockery!) and we were welcome to eat in the heated common room downstairs. Delphine and Vincent, the hut wardens, gave us loads of information about our intended routes and all-round the warmest welcome we could imagine. Despite not being their best customers, just buying some wine and a breakfast for one early morning, we were really looked after … we will have to come back when we're employed again, to eat everything we could smell over the 5 nights we stayed there!

Requin: the hut and it's tooth

So, mountain huts are not equal. So far Requin and Envers are our pick... but we'll have to pass though some more to be sure...

Five nights at Refuge du Requin

_{We have already mentioned that we found the Refuge du Requin very comfortable and welcoming … we had intended to stay for only three or four nights, and carried in only that amount of food. But in the little kitchen provided for those too cheap to buy meals, the left-over food box contained enough pasta, dehydrated potato, powdered milk and stock cubes to stretch our provisions to five nights – well, with a few supplements from the friendly hut wardens too.} 

_{So what did we do there? On the first day, feeling like something “straight-forward”, we headed towards Congo Star. Michel Piola, the author of our guidebook and climber responsible for setting up many new routes in the area, states explicitly that “Nuts and friends not needed” for this route. He describes with some angst the re-equipping of the route by a previous Requin hut warden against the wishes of the original ascentionists, who presumably wanted to keep the line as predominately trad.}

_{However as we started to climb, we realised that Mr Piola obviously hasn't climbed the route since its infamous re-equipping. Yes there are a few bolts around – but we were very glad on the first few pitches to have a few camalots and nuts with us: if you were only to rely on the bolts, it would be horrendously and dangerously run-out! As it was not turning out to be as straight-forward as we'd hoped, and finding the third pitch still wet from the previous days' of rain, we decided to pull the pin and rappel off.}

_{The next day, we headed up towards the beautifully named “L'Eden de la Mer” (The Eden of the Sea). Thanks to the retreating glacier, it took us a while to find the start … an extra pitch of easy climbing has been added onto the bottom of the route, where once you should have been able to walk up the ice – sadly, not that uncommon these days! But we soon knew where we were heading and were enjoying some fabulous granite in the sun.}

_{We didn't follow the route exactly, however. There are some bolts on it, and the rest uses natural protection, but in many instances it seemed to us that the bolts took the climber a few metres out onto harder, smooth slabs and away from the easier and interesting cracks which for the most part took good gear – so we opted for the easier line and didn't always clip the shiny hangers. Again, Mr Piola's guidebook lead us astray – he clearly shows the line of the climb going to the left of a large buttress (the buttress being one of the few features he has drawn on his topo), and we foolishly followed this rather than the bolt we saw on the right … this lead us into easy but broken ground, with enough rock spikes to create belays, but we doubt this was the direction of the original route.}

_{At any rate, we shouldn't complain too much about the route, as the view from the top of the balanced boulder was quite lovely.} 

The Dent du Geant

 

_{And what next? The Dent du Requin – the Tooth of the Shark – loomed above the hut … taking a rest day to sort gear, eat and chill out, we sussed out the possible routes. According to the hut warden, the best route by far was Voie Renaudie: first climbed on 4th August 1946 by Mr and Mrs Jean Renaudie, it has 570m of rock climbing but involves 900m of vertical ascent from the hut. An early start would be essential.}

_{So, the alarm went off horridly early. With a group of Germans aiming to climb the nearby Chapeau a Cornes, we breakfasted, grabbed our gear and set off across the moraine. Hitting the ice, we popped our crampons on to head up what is described as a 35degree slope – the ice got steeper and steeper as we climbed towards the rock, and by the top we were joking that this was certainly an inaccurate geometry calculation! We may also have headed up the initial rock step the bonus-points way … (and still in crampons … urgh!)}

_{So, all told, it took us a little longer than expected to hit the official starting ledge, marked with a large white arrow pointing the way.}

_{Then the sun rose, turning the sky pink, then purple, then blue …}

_{Ditching the crampons and ice-axes, we set off – moving together over easy terrain, with Mark placing a few bits of pro between us. We quickly covered the first couple of hundred metres this way, and after being so slow on the approach, we were happy to finally be making good time. The description of the route matched what we were seeing (funnily enough, it wasn't written by Michel Piola), and we reached Step 7: The Cliff Becomes Vertical. Changing into rock shoes, we started to pitch out the climb – and pitch after pitch of great granite climbing followed. Nothing too hard, but consistent, we climbed towards the summit ridge.}

_{Hitting the ridge, we admired the steeper drop down on the other side and scrambling up and over the loose boulders, and through a small letter-box opening, we reached the step just below the block of the true summit around 2pm.}

_{All that was left to do was abseil down … following Mr Piola's instructions, we found the abseil point and (foolishly!) did the long 50m rappel – despite the intermediate rappel points we could have used. Of course, the rope then got stuck and Mark had to climb all the way back up the rope to clear the jam – a simple sentence to describe two hours of hauling, pulling, flicking and pleading with the rope, not to mention the effort required to prussik up 50m of very stretchy, thin climbing rope. Oh, and then the fog suddenly came in – with snow, then sleet and rain to follow. We had enough gear to keep warm, but ropes are far heavier when wet than dry and even once we'd cleared the initial jam we had at least 16 more rappels to go. It wasn't until we were half way down that we found the promised abseil bolts, as we had been using instead an older, more slabby abseil line with slings around rocks – these were mostly OK, but some we backed-up with our own tat, and the terrain made us quite concerned we'd catch the rope again (which, thankfully, we didn't). All up, it was heavy and hard work, and we slowed down. We were back at the ice-axes and crampons far later than we'd hoped, and were even slower heading back to the hut.}

_{Once finally at the hut, we were greeted with a warm welcome and the fire going … needless to say we slept well that night!}

Looking back - the hut on the left and the tooth on the right

Ah the Serenity

Cosmiques Arete

A few days lounging the valley resting and waiting for good weather, lead us to do something we had been avoiding - Comiques Arete. A short ridge leading to the Aiguille du Midi, it is extremely popular and we knew there would be crowds... but we wanted to do something relatively high to try and help keep our acclimatisation and the forecast didn't look encouraging enough to head in somewhere for few days. And we had to use our lift passes sometime.

So off we went, in time for the first cable car (6:30)... but not early enough – we only got on the second... not a good start. Chatting to those around us, many seemed to have just day packs... and yes, many of them were headed to Cosmiques.

A short walk from the Midi lead us to the start, and for most of the route, a pleasant mixed rcok and snow ridge, we weren't too pressed... but nearing the end we took the interesting way, instead of the simple route and the bonus abseil that entailed slowed us down, as more and more people flocked up the ridge.

Looking back at the hordes scrabling down ... and this was just the start of the onslaught!

Climbing the final slab and chimney system, parties began climbing over and around each other, with many people closing in on the shaking, cramponed feet of a tired second on one of the slower teams in front of them... and the traffic jam further down the ridge looked even worse. The crampon indentations in the rock tell you that this situation is nothing new and many, many cramponed feet have preceded you. (Or is it just that someone has drilled some conveniently spaced footholds in the more delicate sections?)

Jen was photographed next to a small girl having "gained the summit!"

Mark negotiating the treacherous final stretch, with yet another impatient climber behind him.

Up the ladder (!) back into the mid-station and it's all over. Not even half a day's worth of climbing, so we wandered off and lay around, eating in the sun with Jen chatting on the phone to Australia, increasing the time we spent up there.

Every summit needs a rocketship, right?

As we left in the early afternoon we looked back down the ridge and saw it was much quieter. So our advice if you want to do Cosmiques Arete is either to start from the first cable car and get in front of the crowds or wait a few hours and let the traffic jam subside – there's no descent that would be risky late in the day.

Aiguille d'Argentiere ,,, via Fleche Rousse

Skiing anyone? Found this on the walk in to the hut ...

Dehyd for dinner ...

Camp!

An early-ish start (before 4am - sigh!) from our bivvy on the snow saw us trudging uphill again, headed for a ridge on the east of Aiguille d'Argentiere. We slotted in behind a couple of guided groups, also headed for the same ridge, but who had already been going for 45 minutes having started from the hut. We felt a bit smug, having been able to sleep in 45 minutes later as our bivvy was 200-300m higher than the hut.

Dawn - and we're already a long way up (but with a lot further to go!)

As the light started to grow we approached the crest of the Fleche Rousse ridge, pressing on the heels of the group in front of us... only to get a short sharp lesson, as a flailing foot sent a shower of small rocks down onto us. With no damage done and our lesson learnt, we gave them some more space. Starting the on the mixed ground that continued most of the way up to Fleche Rousse, we reached the ridge just before sunrise and we were greeted by great views out towards Switzerland.

From here the route threaded along the ridge, often just off the crest, turning rocky gendarmes on either side as we moved together along rock ledges, snowy couloirs and everything in between. Even early in the morning we could feel the effect of the sun on the east and south facing slopes and were glad of the early(ish) start and that the descent was on the NW side.

A short rock pitch, that felt much tougher than anything in our topo had us to expect, lead us to the top of Fleche Rousse. It also lead us to wonder if we should have followed the group in front of us so exactly and also to curse climbing in crampons and not rock shoes... we think we missed the easy way up! Or are we just soft?

Just before the first summit of the day ... looking back down the ridge and at a very tired Jen!

Feeling the sun (but not feeling that we were climbing fast) we pressed on past the first summit of the day without stopping, abseiling down to the summit ridge of Aiguille d'Argentiere – the end of the mixed ground and now just simple snow plodding to the top. After a quick snack on the summit, we headed down the steep Mileu glacier, ending up frontpointing and daggering our way down for longer than we expected.

The summit shot!

Once down off the glacier, lunch in the sun called and then a stroll over the moraine back to the hut, returning some dropped gear to one of the parties who had been in front of us. Then we turned our back on the people lounging in the sun, with their beers, playing chess or cards at the tables... and faced uphill towards our tent, for that extra 200-300 vertical metres that we'd felt so smug about at 4am...

And down again ...

High tea?

We totally deserved this. 

(We also ordered coffee ... each of which came with another, probably unnecessary, macaroon.)

Rain in Chamonix (again!)

Duck? Yes please!

Ooh, roast pork! Yum!

We don't really have good luck with the weather in Chamonix! Last year when we first arrived it was the same story … rain, rain and more rain, but then it was warm temperatures. This year, there's loads of rain but cooler temperatures and a lower snow level. So whilst last year the snow and ice wasn't there to climb, this year there's too much of it and it's unstable, perched ready to fall.

 So once again we've been doing the usual Chamonix rainy day activities. We went shopping for a new tent (no luck in Chamonix itself – apparently the gear shops there only sell fashion, so we headed down the road to Au Vieux Campeur), had the “Menu du jour” for lunch a couple of times and sat around in the guide's office looking at maps and hoping things would improve soon.

Seeing a gap in the clouds for the 25^th and 26^th July, we decided to make the most of it and head towards one of the guides' recommended routes: the Table du Roc ridge, on Aiguille du Tour. 

The view from our campsite.

The new tent!

First we hiked up to Albert Premier hut, in light snow and a bit of rain, and set up our new tent out the back – there we met a bunch of English climbers who were planning on doing the same route.

However, when the alarm clock went off hideously early and it was time to climb, Mark was in no shape to get out of his sleeping bag. A sore throat and feeling a little dead saw the end of our plans to climb that day. Instead, at the much more sensible hour of 9am, we headed out for a gentle stroll along the glacier, aiming for the Col du Tour. Annoyingly the clouds rolled in the entire time we were up on the Col, obscuring the view, but it was good to stretch the legs and get used to a bit of altitude.

We became a bit worried on our return, however … we hadn't seen the English guys on the glacier and they hadn't returned to their tents. It started to get late, and when the clouds started to roll in we saw the first helicopter come out of the valley and hover over the Table du Roc. It didn't stick around, though, and soon flew off – was this a training exercise, or was it too cloudy to rescue someone up on the ridge?

We found out a bit later, when another chopper was heard … and watched from the hut along with all the other guests as 6 people were hoisted from near the top of the ridge, and dropped back down onto the glacier. When the boys returned to their tents, they explained that there was just too much snow – and just too much soft, unstable snow – on the route. They got into a position where they could not get across to the summit and down the normal route, and they could not get down the way they came. It had been a long and tiring day for them, and they were quite embarrassed by the fuss of the helicopters – but grateful to no longer be on the mountainside. We were pretty glad we had not decided to do that route after all! 

Anyway, the weather was going to be good the next day and Mark was feeling better, so we decided to head up Aiguille du Tour by the normal route – not up the ridge! - going across the glacier, up the col we'd been at that day, then around the corner to the rocky summit.

The summit shot.

We set the alarm for a bit before 6am, and were on our way by 6:20. And without any dramas, by 9:15 we were sharing the summit and it's view of the surrounding peaks with a large group of Spaniards. After making a birthday phone call, we easily headed back to the tent to pack up and wander down the hill. 

Then the next afternoon, the rain started again …