Page 23 - 2018 AMA Winter

Aig Crochues Travers and the Clocher/ Clochertons de Planpratz.
The first summit for the ‘Mont Blancers’ was the Petite Aiguille Verte and was completed with a record-breaking time from lift-to-peak-to-lift that was three times that in the book. They returned with tails of extreme exposure, a mixed couple being heli-evac’d off the mountain in front of them and knife-edge snow ridges all meaning they barely made the last lift down. Since departing France, some of you may have been watching the mountaineer’s news to see the Grand Montets lift suffered a devastating fire in September and you can no longer access this route without a substantial walk-in from the valley.
As the first week went on the two groups passed like ships in the night. The rock gods making the most of the daylight hours and depending on the lift times in the local area while the Mont Blancers were up early, driving sometimes for long distances to make the first lifts for their ascent, and sometimes descents before the end of the day. Alpinism is hard. Fact.
Their list of achievements included the Nadelhorn via NE Ridge from Saas Fee. This took in an overnight at the Michabel hütte. The weather wasn’t in their favour for the route up but afforded a spectacular cloud inversion on final stretch. If you want great views across to the Matterhorn this is as good as any.
From Zermatt: the Half-Breithorn Traverse. This is an awesome route with a bit of everything. Another route where the group just about made the last lift. Could this be a theme?
The last objective was the big push for the crown jewel (Mt Blanc) itself via the 3 Monts route. The Gouter route was struggling with political constraints at the time preventing any ascents via this route and was the precursor to the French enforcing 214 climbers on the mountain per day via the Gouter Hut in late Sep 18. Our intrepid explorers stayed at the Cosmiques hut but overnight a severe hail storm followed by snow lead to unstable avalanche conditions. As they rose at 2am conditions seemed adequate and the group climbed as far as Mt Blanc du Tacuil with no issues crossing some massive crevasses on the way, but at the bottom of the slope of Mont Maudit a dangerous slab of snow revealed itself higher up. Everyone turned round. There were no summits that day. On the way down, as a consolidation prize, the now also ‘Non- Blanc-ers’ did a short ridge route (Arete de Laurence) before heading down.
ITALIAN CHOSS-FEST
Meanwhile, the rock gods moved via the Mont Blanc tunnel into Italy and up the Hellbronner lift. The joy of the Torino hut was its proximity to everything, lift, glacier and routes. The hut is also, remarkably well priced, 50 euro’s for half board and with water and other (non-alcoholic ;) ) drinks being reasonably priced. However,
The Editor in the zone
as we soon learnt, the routes at the lower end (for PD and below) are very chossy. Rhys and Ryan, Chris and I ticked off the Petit Flambeau, and attempted the East face of the Aiguille de Toule the following day, backing off as the choss kept on coming. It wasn’t safe to be there and we let a neighbouring German pair continue up it alone. We did see them again later and they told us “yes it’s loose but a great route” - Lies, all lies.
Meanwhile James, Tom and Ryan, who had joined them for the second day, completed the Traverse of Aiguille Entreves - a fine ridge route within a hour’s plod from the hut. The big dream was the Dent du Géant, a pinnacle-like route that towers above the hut and Hellbronner glacier. It’s graded too high as
ARMY MOUNTAINEER / 23