Mt Blanc

Ahh, Chamonix. Mountain sport Mecca. Mountain biking, walking, rock climbing, mountaineering, paragliding - or just riding in a cable car from 1000 m in the vally floor up to 3000 m + peaks!

Normally you can ride a combination of cable car and funicular railway up to about 2,200 m but both were closed when we were there so we had to walk from the car park at 1,100 m to Tette Rousse hut at 3,200 m in an afternoon. This was actually Lindsay's preferred option - he called it "doing it properly", or something like that.

Heading off

The first 1,000 m or so was wooded and we had quite nice weather too.

The Chamonix Valley. By this stage it was getting quite showery and cloudy - quite common in the Alps, and particularly in June, and particularly June 2008. Apparently no-one had climbed in the 30 or 40 days before us because the weather and conditions had been so poor. That didn't bode well.

Partly because of the weather, I didn't take any more decent photos that day. This is taken from Tette Rousse hut looking up at the Grand Couloir. Gouter hut sits at the top skyline. This section of climb was actually the most technical of the trip - at times I felt that if I had been carrying a second tool, I would have used it. The route actually crosses the couloir then goes straight up the snowy line of rocks on the right. In normal conditions it is not nearly as snowy but there is a much higher risk of rockfall - the couloir has a somewhat fearsome reputation (undeserved when we were there).

This is a piss-sicle. Hmm, I think I'll choose a different flavour thank you. Facilities at the huts were more basic than I was expecting - perhaps because of the conditions, and being early season (Gouter hut wasn't even officially open), there was no water available. Not even for washing your hands. Drinking water had to be purchased at the astonishing rate of 5 euros for a 1.5 L bottle! And we each got through a few of those. We would have brought up a stove if we'd known. The crappers at Gouter hut were simply holes that dropped shit onto the rocks and snow below (I didn't take a photo). I assumed that the fragile mountain environment was the reason why camping is not permitted but this made me wonder!

We climbed from Tette Rousse up to Gouter hut (approx 3,200 to 3,800 m) the day after we arrived. We thought we'd be a bit pooped after our efforts the previous afternoon to attempt the summit, and the weather forecast was better for the next day besides, so we just had an easy day. As it turned out the weather was quite nice though apparently quite windy further up (no-one summited that day).

The rest of the pics are a mix between that day and our aborted summit attempt the next day. We got up at 2 am but it was snowing and blowing, again at 4 am. It had cleared by about 5.30 am but was a bit late by this stage to be making a summit attempt plugging steps in fresh snow (and possibly still quite windy further up). Everyone else (all guided groups I think) headed back down but we still went up a few hundred metres for a look.

That's Dan in the foreground. His alter ego, Dave, caused all sorts of trouble.

As it turned out, we got to 4,050 m, only marginally higher than on our recce the previous day! I discovered this sneaky crevasse in our path and we decided it wasn't really safe to continue. This was actually all we could see of it (just a little dimple from a few metres away) so I guess I was lucky to spot it. We had made a tactical decision to not take a rope, instead relying on following everyone else's footprints up the mountain over the glaciated terrain. Unfortunately, as the only ones up the mountain that day, we had no footsteps to follow!

It was a little disappointing not to make it up, but not altogether surprising, and we could take some comfort from the fact that noone else made it up while we were on the mountain. Most people who are serious about climbing Mt Blanc will plan to hang out in Chamonix for a week or more waiting for good conditions and weather, and the conditions and weather were pretty pooey, even for early in the season. Oh well, perhaps another time!

I had a great trip still, and I think the others did too - cheers to Lindsay, Dan and Matthijn for a cool experience.

I'll leave you with this photo posted to me by an anonymous Swiss security camera operator, that appears to show a man leaving a women's toilet. Any ideas who this might be?

Schweiz

This time last week, I was relaxing after decending 3,200 m down Mt Blanc in a day. But before we got to Mt Blanc, there was a boys' trip across Germany, Switzerland and a corner of Austria to get to Chamonix, France!



We travelled in style in Lindsay and Kerstin's Wohnmobile (campervan)

This photo was posed - actually there was complete harmony in the campervan, and definitely no finger pointing. Except, perhaps, when we supported a team other than Holland in the Euro Cup! As it turned out, taking pity on Matthijn and supporting his team turned out to be a good move as they've ended up top of their "pool of death", beating two recent champions in the process. So there you go.


I had heard that Switzerland was beautiful, but wasn't quite ready for just how green and mountainous it was in the South. Waterfalls galore!






They like to paint marks on rocks in these parts, or even directions! We climbed a mountain called Grassen, nearly 3,000 m.





Grassen is a bit further around to the left. In the saddle ahead, we met several groups, all roped (and presumably guided?) I think they were laughing at us for climbing without ropes, and in t-shirts, shorts and not the latest seasons' gear. We thought they were funny for using ropes.






The peak with the sun on it is called Titlis. It has a cable car going all the way to the top - like lots of European mountains. There is often an easy way but we always seemed to be walking...






On the way down.




We also based ourselves in Grindelwald (near the Jungfrau) for a couple of days and did two half-day walks. The scenery was stunning and we got our first close-up views of glaciers. Unfortunately we were quite early in the season and there had been lots of snowfall in the spring/early summer, so the mountain huts and routes weren't really open. This put the kibosh on our loose plans of climbing the Jungfrau.

The north face of the Eiger, a climbing route of tragedy and legend! Not really in condition when we were there.

Yes, the cows really do have bells. More amusingly, so do the sheep.

The next post will move on to France - in the mean time, Lindsay has done a post on our trip as well, check it out at this link (or by clicking on his blog on the right)

Edinburgh Rugby Sevens (a pictorial blog entry)

Adventure Race!

A couple of weekends ago Mark and I competed in our first adventure race down in glorious weather in the Lakes District. I was 5 hours long and set out like a rogaine: collect as many points as possible in the time. The tricks were:

- One side of the map was mountain biking, one running
- We had to collect controls from both in the time
- We could only transition once
- We didn't know how many points each control was until the start
- Some controls were worth 0

We ended up biking for 4.5 hours and then sprinting for 30 minutes to make sure we got some running controls. We thought we'd done okay, but obviously need to practise our tactics as we came 25 out of 35 teams in the mixed pairs. We made a couple of navigational errors (beacause our maps were duct-taped to our bikes rather than on fancy map boards) and I was a bit wimpy on the single-track sections. Also, Mark didn't have a bungy on his bike that I could grab on for a pull up the hill like the other mixed teams (and some of the girls had a harness for a tow in the running sections as well!).

For more details check out http://www.openadventure.com/open5/index.htm


Our results print-out

My car with our hired bikes (disc brakes!)