End on a High Note
Tour Ronde, Petit and Grand Capucin
Looking as enticing as ever
Day 1 on Majorette Thatcher
on the W face of the Blaitiere
End on a high note - quit while you're ahead.
However you look at it, the last full week of my alpine summer season in 2011 has been pretty special.
For a start, the best unbroken spell of "grand beau temps" since the start of the season in June. August had been unpleasantly hot. Rockfall had been causing some major worries all over the Alps, but especially on Mont Blanc.
Steepness on
Dame du Lac
S face of Midi
But after a dump of snow in mid September, the skies cleared and the whole of the Alps was bathed in anticylonic serenity for 10 days. Time to get on some technical ground and stretch the envelope.
The classic Chéré couloir on the Tacul.
Climbed to the summit for more points
Usually by this stage of the season, everyone is winding down and starting to think about valley cragging or even going further afield for exotic rock venues. So it was with unexpected anticipation that I hooked up with Andy M for 5 days of technical climbing. It's also fairly rare for me to be guiding anything much harder than alpine V, or VS in proper British money. So to have the opportunity to wind it up to 6b or E2 was a treat indeed.
Airy finish to another jamfest
on the Pointe Lachenal
Scratch 'n torque action on
day 5
Over the next five days we managed 3 big mountain rock routes, a 4000m summit and 2 mixed routes, one of which felt like about Scottish 6 bit with perfect visibility and a light breeze (and therefore not Scottish at all!). Routes on the west face of the Blaitiere, the south face of the Midi, Pointe Lachenal and the Triangle du Tacul gave us a rich mix of steep jamming and delicate face climbing with a classic heping of scratch 'n torque to top it all off.
So NOW I can relax and go valley cragging, still with 3 days of "grand beau" before the snow arrives on Friday.
Thanks to everyone involved over the last wonderful three and a half months of alpine action:
Fellow guides, clients old and new, hut guardians, wine merchants and fellow climbers on and off the hill.