An Alpine Adventure Around the Alps

I just got back from a short journey around the Alps. As always the long drive is the first hurdle. Our idea was to head over to the Bregaglia and have ago at the Cassin Route on the Piz Badile but after checking the weather and seeing storms, low snow/rain level, this was not the route or the place to be going early in the season in June. So we changed our plans and decided to head to Switzerland and climb there, also armed with downhill biking so if the weather does crap out then you can always get out and play.

First stop was a long route on Miroir d’Argentine, summiting the Haute Corde 2325m. An impressive 500m high north face was going to be a good warm up. 16 pitch 6a+ was the first route and it was a good route to start with, long pitches with some bolts and mostly bolted belays, which made the climbing go quickly. We did the route and walked off in 6 hours which was good going since we got out of the van after the drive and started straight away.

After that the weather started to turn which was going to be the theme of the trip. We turn our attention to downhill mountain biking and headed over to the Port du Soleil and started at Morzine.

Check out the video…………..

The rain didn’t seem to ever want to stop, starting to get the need for some climbing it seemed that Dry Tooling was the only option. I knew of a super steep crag just outside of Chamonix in Le Fayet that has about 20-30 dry tooling lines 30 meters in length, that range in difficulty but are all incredible steep and guaranteed to get you pumped. The day was spent mainly upside down on this crag with the rain like a curtain of water coming down behind us into the river below. This crag is so steep i am not sure if its ever got wet. After a few routes and red-pointing some of the harder lines, we thought we would pay a visit to Chamonix.

It was the summer solstice, 21st June and being the longest day we thought that a mountain route would be the best bet. Again the weather was looking grim and the forecast for the long term was terrible, with that in mind we choice to do a route on Aiguille de L’M 2844m. This peak is on the Aiguille side of Chamonix but being lower then most of its neighbours and a far shorter face, it was a good bet with the weather that we had. True enough on the first abseil after the summit the weather started to come in again!! and yes in times like these the last thing that you want is for your rope to get stuck………….guess what…………it did. After sorting out the rope and abseiling back down the face the rain came in and the walk down to Cham was wet and windy, which was nothing to the thunder and lightning that hit Chamonix only half an hour after we reached the van. Wow what a storm that followed.

The next day the weather looked unsettled (storms) for the next 3 days and considering we only had 5 days left of the trip, Pembroke seemed like a better option.