Monday 3 October 2011

Moine Ridge, Aiguille Verte

At last!!! Fifth time lucky, Peter and I finally got up the Verte yesterday, via the Moine Ridge. Away from the Couvercle Hut by 4am, we were amazed by how mild it was, and were not overly jealous of the numerous teams visible making their way up the north face of the Jorasses.


Heading up the Couvercle ladders



Chilling at the hut


Grand Jorasses N face


Looking up the Talefre basin with the old hut in the foreground

The walk in was fine, but we struggled to find our way through the maze of crevasses in the dark, eventually doing so and getting onto the route at daybreak. Having climbed most of the ridge a few weeks ago we made good time early on, and found a much quicker way through than we had last time. The route was much drier than last time, and I think for future reference that basically, the drier the route, the better. There were still some snowy sections higher up, but these were pretty brief. 


Looking towards Mont Blanc at sunrise


Enjoying some mini fruit cakes - highly recommended alpine food.

Although the climbing on the ridge is constantly easy, we kept the rope on as there was quite a bit of loose rock. There are so many spikes though that we managed to climb the entire 700 metres placing less than 10 pieces of gear and still felt protected.


Nearly there - "a cheval" on the final rock section

The final snow ridge to the summit was amazing - I think I was relieved more than happy! The view from the top is unbelievable, you can see just about every bit of the Massif, and then all the way across to the Matterhorn, and even to the Bernese Oberland.


The promised land - the final summit ridge


Peter arriving on top


Peter on the summit


Me looking surprisingly unhappy on the summit


Thats more like it! Aiguilles de Chardonnay & Argentiere behind

By the way, for those with designs on the big north faces, we sat on the summit in T shirts and Peter didn't put gloves on all day! People are raving about current conditions on north faces but I'm not quite so convinced. From first and second hand reports, some of the big lines are seeing ascents....but only just. There are plenty of people climbing them, but all report very hard climbing, and with it being so warm its only going to get harder in the foreseeable future.

Anyway, back to the Verte. The descent back down the Moine went (mainly) quite smoothly, but is quite tedious, with a few switches between crampons on/off, and several abseils thrown in. We only actually abseiled 5 times between summit and bergschrund, but these are interspersed with long down climbing sections so it is all quite time consuming. We kept the rope on for the descent and I was glad we did for one section, when I was downclimbing first and the entire slab I was on came off the mountain. I've pulled loose holds off routes before but never have I had the rock that both my hands and feet were on come off. I somehow managed to slap for a higher hold, held on and then swung there with legs kicking in space for a few seconds before finally getting back onto something solid and carrying on down, before swiftly changing my underwear. We luckily had a good sling clipped between us, so had I not held on we would at least have been caught on the rope, but it was still fairly gripping. Despite the slab hitting my foot on the way down there is no visible damage, just a slight throb, which may signify a metatarsal or other footballer-esque injury, but I'm sure a few wines tonight will sort it out.

Having finally regained the glacier we took a much better line through the crevasses and finally got back to the hut and a well earned brew. There was talk of walking to town that night, but with a half empty hut and plenty of food, we opted to stay where we were and walk down the next day. 

So, the Verte falls at last! Now Peter wants to do it by another route - let's hope it doesn't take another 5 attempts.