Last alpine
ice trip is three years ago when Jeroen and I climbed the north face of Les
Courtes. Since then either the weather had been unstable or conditions had been
insufficient or both… With the hot summers and dry autumns it is getting more
difficult to find routes in condition and worth climbing it.
Last week Jeroen
and I were lucky enough to recover the old alpine winter feeling although we
could not finish our route (Mallory-Porter on the north face of Aig. Du Midi).
We set up our tent at the plan des aiguilles and next morning startet at 6 AM.
At 8 AM we were at the start of the route. The steep first snow gully was
pretty filled with soft snow and after 1 hour we made traverse to the right
where conditions improved a lot. Steep neve brought us to the rocky section
(4b). It was really nice rock climbing for 25 meters or so. We took 4 cams with
us what is absolutely sufficient for this section.
We continued but were faced
with increasing wind that forced us to hide behind rocks… further up it looked
much more severe and we decided to retreat. At the cable car station we got
info that the Midi cable car did not go the whole day because of wind up to
100km/h.
A bit
disappointed but more important to me: revival of the alpine ice feeling, the
winter climbing, camping in the snow, everything worth the trip! As add on we climbed in LeFayet and Servoz. We'll be back.
Servoz
