A good friend Paul had a few weeks working remotely away from his office in London and had rented a pleasant Alpine apartment situated in the Haute Provence village of Manigod. It was only sensible to go and visit do some climbing.
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| Col de Colombiere. Huge! |
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| Walking in in blistering heat |
I arrived in the middle of a heat wave. Day upon day of stable sunshine that would have been perfect up in the higher mountains. However we were rooted to the limestone valleys as Paul had some loose ends at work to tie up and needed a few hours each day on the apartment WiFi. Highly frustrated in not being able to head to Chamonix to climb we non the less attempted to get out on the local limestone.
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| Multi-pitch 30 degree climbing, The temperature that is. |
The cliffs in the area are huge! They are all fully bolted too. Unfortunately they almost all face south. We managed some single-pitch climbing around Annecy (La Grande Jeanne – quality little sport venue), and attempted a multi-pitch route in Col de Colombiere -Tchau Godillo (6a, 210m), however the 30 degree heat got the better of us and we rappelled down after a couple of pitches.
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 | | Cragging near Annecy |
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 | | Cragging at La Grande Jeanne |
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We finally made the escape from the lower limestone country and headed east to the Granite peaks of Chamonix. However the weather window was closing and we new it. Still undeterred we got our camp established on the Teleferique mid station known as the Plan de l’Aiguille....
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 | | Setting up camp high above Cham |
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 | | Walking in to the Aiguille du Peigne |
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The following morning we jumped straight on Les Lépidoptères (D, 5b,180m), a short amenable route on the Aiguille du Peigne.....
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 | | Views across to the Frendo Spur |
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 | | An early Pitch |
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 | | Paul passing a guided party |
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 | | Perfect Granite |
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Les Lépidoptères being a short route fit the occasion perfectly as once back at camp we ate, packed up and headed up the second Teleferique to the Aiguille du Midi – the worlds highest cable car station. This amazing structure was our gateway to the Valle Blanche, a glacier, and our home for the next couple of days. We had loose plans to climb Rébuffat-Baquet (TD+ 6a, 250m) but the weather had deteriorated somewhat in the past few hours and our view from the cable car exit was far from favorable. Guides short-roped their clients back up the knife edge ridge and back into the station in droves. Paul and I headed out into it...
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 | | The ice tunnel from the station |
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 | | First views out on to the glacier - not good now! |
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 | | The Midi Arete |
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Once on the Ice and the hailstorm having passed over the beauty of the Vallee Blanch could really be appreciated. A tranquil sea of snow and Ice beneath golden granite spires. We occupied a vacant wind shelter (an improvised circular wall of snow ) and watched as others added to their already high protective walls. We assumed ours was good enough and despite not having snow stakes as tent pegs we set about planning the next days route. In hindsight the destroyed tent that was strewn across the glacier, and being collected by a couple of German climbers should have been a warning as to what was to come....
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| Storm Shelters |
That night an electrical storm came through bringing ferocious winds that seemed to last all night. The fly sheet of the tent was ripped off and I ran out onto the ice in my socks to retrieve it. The following morning whilst the snow and hail had stopped, the wind definitely hadn’t and it was still gusting to extreme speeds. We packed up our kit highly disappointed and slowly picked our way up the arete back to the cable car station....
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| Not the best night sleep of my life. | | |
