I sit here writing this on June 1st, where has May gone? In about an hour I am going to ride my bike down the valley with a friend about 3,000ft lower to a lake, take a nice swim, then ride back up and climb at a crag on the way home this afternoon. Three sports in one day, this is the life I don't want to leave behind. Chamonix has sucked me into its ways. I wear my climbing harness 6 out of 7 days a week now. I havent been skiing once here without my harness, ice axe, crampons, belay device, or avy gear yet. May has been a mix of foul weather down days and amazing days when the weather cooperates. I feel like my blogs are becoming somewhat repeatitive in the sense that it always has to do with mountains now. Which mean if you a keen to see more pictures of majestic mountains and messy adventures in them, then read on!
I covered the beginning of May in my last entry I think, which was awesome, but with lots of rain, so I will jump ahead a bit to:
MID MAY
Most recent mornings I see loads of cloud/rain, which reflexively causes me to roll over and sleep for another 3 or 4 hours, nothing else to do.
But some mornings, I wake up to this:
On these mornings, my eyes burst open, and the thought of sleep vanishes with a blink as I get out of bed. Cycling? Hiking? Climbing? Skiing?
On May 15th, freezing levels actually lowered to a reasonable level, which meant snow about half way down the massif. I knew May 16th was going to be a good day when I woke at 7AM to blue sky in the alpine.
I loaded my pack with shovel, probe, beacon, ropes, crampons, goggles, water, ate breakfast, and walked 3 minutes to the Aiguille du Midi cable car for the first cabin up. Chamonix sits at about 3,300ft. It was a nice comfortable temp as we loaded the first tram. Twenty minutes later, we are sitting at about 12,800ft in -10C air surrounded by fresh snow and ice capped mountains.
L'aiguille du midi is an awesome peak, it's a treat everytime I go up. There isnt a ski run off the top, it is literally just an access lift to the big mountains. From it, you exit into the rock, walk through it for a bit, and come out of a snow cave onto a knife-edge ridge:
My ski partner Sean on the arrette, with a nice 60 degree slope on skiers left
A clearer view of l'Aiguille
So if you have 50cm of pow at 12,800ft, and warm spring temps in the valley, what you have inbetween is basically every type of snow and not snow you could imagine. I am going to let you drool off the good photos, not bother with the rubbish ones, and then the bottom bits will get some credit because it was funny skimming a receding glacier on sheer ice passing mountaineers along the way eventually back to the valley floor.
After climbing for a few hours, we had a nice 3,000ft ride climbing back up to Cham. Absolutely wiped from a full day, stuff myself with some food, slackline, and pass out.
For the rest of the month:
But some mornings, I wake up to this:
On these mornings, my eyes burst open, and the thought of sleep vanishes with a blink as I get out of bed. Cycling? Hiking? Climbing? Skiing?
On May 15th, freezing levels actually lowered to a reasonable level, which meant snow about half way down the massif. I knew May 16th was going to be a good day when I woke at 7AM to blue sky in the alpine.
I loaded my pack with shovel, probe, beacon, ropes, crampons, goggles, water, ate breakfast, and walked 3 minutes to the Aiguille du Midi cable car for the first cabin up. Chamonix sits at about 3,300ft. It was a nice comfortable temp as we loaded the first tram. Twenty minutes later, we are sitting at about 12,800ft in -10C air surrounded by fresh snow and ice capped mountains.
Mont Blanc shrouded in clouds top and center
Chamonix burried under a warm spring and thick coat of crisp green grass just 9,000ft below
L'aiguille du midi is an awesome peak, it's a treat everytime I go up. There isnt a ski run off the top, it is literally just an access lift to the big mountains. From it, you exit into the rock, walk through it for a bit, and come out of a snow cave onto a knife-edge ridge:
The skiers in the upper right corner have just exited the snowcave about to descend the ridge
My ski partner Sean on the arrette, with a nice 60 degree slope on skiers left
A clearer view of l'Aiguille
Showing the seasons of the valley
Can you make out the skier in this pic? Nothing like freshies in late May!
No explaining
The rain was worth it...
Now the bottom of the run, glaciers pulling off their winter blankets
The epic outrun of the day, rock hard glacial ice, not so pleasant...but worth it
Nice and warm further down the run! After this consisted climbing up ladders welded to the rocks on the left to the train station just out of view, back in town at about noon!
After we got back to town, it was nice and warm. We jumped on our road bikes and rode down the valley to St Gervais to go climbing. By this time, it was hot enough to go shirtless and bake in the sun. For fun we did something called Dry-tooling. It is training for ice climbing. There are designated rock areas (typical France) for this type of climbing. It was my first time doing this but it was a blast.
Here is Sean demonstrating
Nice and high
After climbing for a few hours, we had a nice 3,000ft ride climbing back up to Cham. Absolutely wiped from a full day, stuff myself with some food, slackline, and pass out.
For the rest of the month:
LATE MAY
The end of May brought even more stable weather, which meant more climbing and even an introduction to some mountaineering:
The Arête des Cosmiques à l'Aiguille du Midi is a scramble along the ridge on the midi. You rope together and practice alpine style climbing. It was my first mountaineering experience and it was awesome. The route is amazing because on one side of the ridge you have the flat glacier and vallee blanche below you, and on the opposite side, you have 9,000ft of sheer mountain falling to Chamonix in the valley. Those weakened by fear of heights need not apply. There are several sections where one is walking across a 10 wide flank of snow/ice with a 4,500ft cliff on the side!
The Arête des Cosmiques à l'Aiguille du Midi is a scramble along the ridge on the midi. You rope together and practice alpine style climbing. It was my first mountaineering experience and it was awesome. The route is amazing because on one side of the ridge you have the flat glacier and vallee blanche below you, and on the opposite side, you have 9,000ft of sheer mountain falling to Chamonix in the valley. Those weakened by fear of heights need not apply. There are several sections where one is walking across a 10 wide flank of snow/ice with a 4,500ft cliff on the side!
Not my picture, but shows a breakdown of the route
The first abseil (rapell)
Sean on one of the knife edge ridges I was talking about
The second abseil
The picture for scale
Hugh starting up the Gendarme climb
And a bit further up
Showing Chamonix valley down on the left
And the final walk off the ridge
One of the cool things about living in Chamonix, is that it is on the border of Switzerland. I make the ride into Suisse a few days a week to ride through the villages and stock up on my chocolate addiction. Sometime in the third week of May, I took a trip to Leysin where I lived 2 years ago to visit some friends. It was ABSOLUTELY beautiful. Deep green hills in the mountains above lake Geneva. It is amazing when you are in a country and it meets all the positive stereotypes. We went up to a meadow on the edge of a mountain for a BBQ that overlooks the lake. There were swiss alpine pastures with cows grazing complete with cow bells chiming. We lit a fire, cooked lots of meet, and I ate LOADS. Oh, did I mention I rode my bike to Leysin from Chamonix? It was 85km with about 6,000ft of climbing. Definitely doable, but made the food taste that much better!
The second abseil
While living here, the best thing has been meeting other like minded people that want to take advantage of everyday and go crazy. The thing I have learned though, is that when you put us all in a room together, we stir up some crazy ideas. For some reason, we decided to tack on an additional sport rock climb in the middle of our first ever alpine climb. This meant that in the middle of the ridge, we would take off our alpine snow boots and throw on our rock climbing shoes and climb the first of 2 gendarmes(towers) on the cosmiques ridge.
I put up this picture to show some scale of the surrounding mountains, the cosmiques ridge, and the gendarme, to show how incredible small we are in relation to the things we are climbing! The rock route we climbed was the coolest thing I have climbed yet. I give Hugh tons of credit for leading the climb, as I was terrified to even follow him up it. It was an amazing feeling to be hanging on the side of this gendarme by your finger tips 12,500ft up above Chamonix in the mountains.
I put up this picture to show some scale of the surrounding mountains, the cosmiques ridge, and the gendarme, to show how incredible small we are in relation to the things we are climbing! The rock route we climbed was the coolest thing I have climbed yet. I give Hugh tons of credit for leading the climb, as I was terrified to even follow him up it. It was an amazing feeling to be hanging on the side of this gendarme by your finger tips 12,500ft up above Chamonix in the mountains.
The picture for scale
Hugh starting up the Gendarme climb
And a bit further up
Showing Chamonix valley down on the left
And the final walk off the ridge
One of the cool things about living in Chamonix, is that it is on the border of Switzerland. I make the ride into Suisse a few days a week to ride through the villages and stock up on my chocolate addiction. Sometime in the third week of May, I took a trip to Leysin where I lived 2 years ago to visit some friends. It was ABSOLUTELY beautiful. Deep green hills in the mountains above lake Geneva. It is amazing when you are in a country and it meets all the positive stereotypes. We went up to a meadow on the edge of a mountain for a BBQ that overlooks the lake. There were swiss alpine pastures with cows grazing complete with cow bells chiming. We lit a fire, cooked lots of meet, and I ate LOADS. Oh, did I mention I rode my bike to Leysin from Chamonix? It was 85km with about 6,000ft of climbing. Definitely doable, but made the food taste that much better!And I would like to wrap this blog up with yesterday, May 31st:
First failed attempt at climbing and skiing Mont Blanc!
Getting back to what I was saying about sticking us like minded climbers together, about 4 days ago we were sitting around, trapped inside watching some movie, when I dropped the words, lets climb Mont Blanc tomorrow. Weather, check, ski gear still out, check, motivation, check, no reason not to go, check! But wait, "we wanted to climb Brevent tomorrow" Hugh said, more flawless decision making followed...
The plan(if thats what you call it):
The plan(if thats what you call it):
Turn off movie 11PM
Pack for Brevent climb and get in bed 12PM
Wake up, eat, and hike to 6,000ft to the base of a 6 pitch rock climb 7AM-10AM
Climb Brevent, descend to Chamonix valley, eat ~3,000 calories 10AM-2PM
Pack to climb Mont Blanc, walk to Midi cable car, take lift to 3,800m 2PM-5PM
Pics of Brevent climb
And before I knew it, we were "camped" out against all rules inside the Midi Clable car station because we are too poor to afford one of the alpine huts. It was then a waiting game, the biggest thing I have learned about my climbing here is that for me right now, it is more of a mental game than anything.
There I was, sitting on cold concrete at 13,000ft waiting to set off to climb mont blanc at 1AM. There is nothing else to do but contimplate your decision making at times like these: Why am I climbing Mont Blanc? Is it worth it to climb the highest mountain in Europe? Do I have everthing I need? I just did my first mountaineering a week ago and now I am doing this!?!? WIll the weather clear in time for us to go? Are my parteners reliable in an emergency?
These questions go back and forth in your mind, building anticipation, causing excitement crossed with doubt, but this is what we live for.
As I said above, it was cloudy, but was forecast to clear through the night. At about 9PM the coulds started to break and we were treated to one of the most amazing sunsets I have seen from 13,000ft:
We stayed huddled in the Aiguille du Midi calble car station bathroom and passed cumulatively maybe 1 hour of sleep before 1AM turned up. It was time to set off! Exiting the station in the pitch black down the arrett (see above 22 and 24 pictures up) was a magical experience. The crunching snow beneath your feet, and Chamonix lit up 9,000 feet below is one of the coolest things I have experienced.
To climb Mont Blanc, there are ~5 famous routes to get up to the summit. We chose the 3 Monts route because it is friendly to ski up, and very scenic. This is, however, one of the most technically hardest routes, and demands good conditions to climb, and even better conditions to SKI, as we intended. We set off climbing on our skis, and were soon followed by, I am not exaggerating, nearly 200 people behind us with head torches on. We were on a 3,000 foot snow face in the pitch black making our first ascent. It was a sign for things to come that the climb would be difficult when we were forced to switch our ski's with crampons and start climbing by foot up the 40 degree slope. The climbing switched between 6 inches of powder snow ontop of ice, to sheer hardpack.
The climbing was intense, there were so many people around on one steep face, it was pretty scary to think about someone slipping (which would mean sliding down a crevassed snowfield for 3,000ft, your chances at surviving are very low). I planted each footstep carefully, making sure I had my balance in the dark. It is a humbling feeling climbing when you know that if you fall, it could be your last ride sliding down snow.
I feel at a loss of words to describe this morning to you through my keyboard, but it was an awesome experience mixed with chaos and question. Me and my 2 climbing parteners made it up to Mont Blanc du Tacul (the first of the 3 summits) and assessed our situation. The sun was out now, and we had pushed through the toughest climb of the route. We weighed out our options, but ultimately it came down to one scenario: Yes we wanted to push over the second mountain to Mont Blanc, yes we had our gear to do it, but the conditions we absolute crap for skiing Mont Blanc that day. And climbing with skis and trying to skin up the rest of the route would be very difficult, dangerous, and pointless.
We were rewarded with nearly a 3,000ft descent of fresh powder in crisp blue sky in the high alpine (albeit nearly June), and climbing Mont Blanc du Tacul ~14,000ft peak (the highest I have been), shouldn't be disregarded!
Too many people (look past to the other mountain to the masses climbing up)!
This is why I climb to 14,000 starting at 1AM
The sky seems a deeper blue at this elevation
The sky seems a deeper blue at this elevation
From the experience, I question if I still even want to climb true Mont Blanc. The sheer number of people was what made the route so dangerous, it really pisses me off. There were several helicopter rescues made that morning from people who made the plunge I described above, and ANOTHER Chamonix guide died yesterday while on Geant Glacier with 2 clients. They were roped together and all, the three of them died... On a glacier I have been trotting around on countless times these past months. I really do believe it is a matter of luck on who gets off the mountain alive.
I will digress in person when I return to you all and can talk face to face! I am coming home in 3 weeks. They will go faster than ever, and I am truly sad to be leaving such an amazing place. I am sooooooo thankful I have had a chance to live in these mountains though, and have had a go at some amazing ski routes, mountain tours, valley crags, and the crazy people to go along with them. On the other hand, I am absolutely 100% excited to return home to my friends and family. I am so blessed/lucky, no, blessed is the word... Lucky is me getting off these mountains alive every day, blessed is the fact that I come from an amazing state that has world class lakes, mountains, valleys and oceans to play in!
I may update this blog in the next 3 weeks, at least if I do anything worth updating it! If nothing else, I hope everyone is having an awesome summer and keeping safe.
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