The Alps Part 1 - Chamonix

Pat and I arrived in Cham, dumped the car, and headed straight up to the Tour Glacier. Once again the target was the Aiguille du Chardonnet. We'd wanted to do it for a few years now but conditions were never right. However this time the guardian at the Albert Premier hut said everything was all good; not only that but we had a perfect 3 day weather window that allowed for acclimatisation and the best forecast for our projected summit day. It seemed we'd never get a chance like this again.

The Aiguille du Chardonnet from our bivy. We climbed the hanging glacier left of the north face, and reached the top via the pinnacled ridge on the skyline.

We got up early the next morning to have a nose about on the glacier, acclimatise, and maybe look at a route on Aiguille du Tour if we could be bothered. A couple hours in we realised we were still knackered from the overnight drive, so we just plodded about a bit (taking our gear for a walk) then descended. After sleeping the rest of the day we both felt pretty fired up for an early start on the Chardonnet. It started badly, when for some reason we couldn't find the path down to the glacier and I had a bit of a 'teddy out the pram' moment. But we got there in the end. The approach took around 2 hours, traversing around the left bank of the glacier and underneath the north face of the mountain.

The Forbes Arête route climbed straight up a steep hanging glacier, via a ridge of ice, to reach the long, pinnacle-ridden summit ridge. The first section was pretty easy with 2 axes but crossed over several worrying snow bridges. A couple of them partially disintegrated while we stood on them. After negotiating the glacier, the steeper but sound ice was a relief, and we soon reached the security of rock on the ridge. Keeping crampons on we moved together through the pinnacles, sometimes climbing them directly, sometimes traversing below them on the north face. There was nothing too hard, and the snow was just about OK but declining fast as the day went on. We avoided a particularly bad looking and unprotected traverse by climbing a steep pinnacle then abseiling off the other side. It cost us a few minutes but was definitely the safer option.

A 3 year alpine obsession fulfilled; on the summit of the Chardonnet.

Eventually the ridge ended and we scaled the left-hand side of a final tower to reach the summit. It was awesome finally getting there but we didn't hang around long. The descent had a reputation for being tricky and dangerous in bad conditions. We downclimbed a couloir on the mountain's west flank then made a couple of abseils down a steep dry gully. Exiting the gully required moving over a small patch of bad ice. Here Pat had a bit of a slip and almost sent us both tumbling down to the bottom. His crampons skated off and I absolutely have no idea what he arrested himself on. A ripple, some flaw in the ice, god knows. I did the best thing when faced with a person struggling in a stressful situation; I shouted at him. We continued down and gained the glacier without further incident.

After that the weather got a bit rough, but we still managed a day of multipitch sport at Les Gaillands and an ascent of the South East ridge of L'Index in the Aiguilles Rouge. We did the latter in the pissing rain and it felt just like doing some horrible Welsh VDiff.

Perfect British conditions on L'Index.

The forecast was looking good for the next week and I couldn't wait to get one with some more routes. I hoped to do bigger rock routes until the snow conditions improved, then finish off with another big mountain. Then, rather unexpectedly, Pat came to the conclusion that his head wasn't in it this year, and decided to go home. I won't bother with any details. I guess he was right not to push alpine climbs while not feeling right, but I was absolutely gutted. What to do next?