Rain Stopped Play

Take a good look at the big rock and you will see me standing under it. Then look at the same rock a month later. The glacier has melted at such a huge rate that the rock the size of a house has toppled over. This was a sobering thought for Casey and Chuck Brown who had come to join me for a weeks mountaineering. We started with a very hot day on the Mer de glace and then the next day we headed up to the top of Les Grands Montets for some further climbing

But then on the Wednesday it just stormed and stormed. The forecast was awful too so we mad the descision to reconvene some time in October.

Training up the next generation

I spent the last couple of weeks climbing with all ages of people , but all who wanted to understand a little more about what the Alps has to offer in the summer. I spent a few days with Katie and Mark Locke and their 2 boys Max and Charlie.

Perfect Conditions for an ascent of Mt Blanc via the Cosmiques

Its never great when you go to bed and then have to get up the same day. We were in our beds at 8.30 pm then up at 12.50pm, breakfast at 1.00am and away from the Cosmiques at 1.40am.
The reason for the super early start was that it was the freezing level was due to rise to 4500m and traveling at night is the safest option. Plus there was virtually a full moon.

The clients were super psyched and had gambled that traveling all the way from Austin, Texas just to climb Mt Blanc would be worth it. Brian Roark was on my rope and his very good friend David O Chambers was on the rope of Hannah Burrows Smith, the other Guide I had asked to join us.

Brian and reached the top in a fast time of 5 and half hours, the other two were about 40 mins behind us. The track and conditions were perfect. The only issue was the summit of Mt Blanc was in cloud, and so the summit shots were a little under whelming . Yet a couple of hundred meters below I got this fantastic sunrise.

We choose to go the same way back and again due to perfect conditions we were back at he Aiguille du Midi at 11.30am.

Which just goes to show the saying " You never regret getting up early" is true.

Stand Out climb of the season so far..

Peter Little turned up for a weeks climbing. Peter, having climbed everything in the Alps that its practically possible to climb is always looking for the thinking climbers climb . With this in mind we headed of to climb the classic ridge the Arrete de Saille on the Grand Muveran , high above the Rhone just before Sion.

We walked up to the Cabanne Rambert from the top chair lift of Ovronnaz. The hut isn't great primarily because it is run for the sole convenience of the Hut Guardian and not the customers. For example he insisted in cramming everyone in the same dormitory where it was hot and stuffy and I was very pleased when it was time to get going in the morning.

The climb its self is truly fantastic . It consist of 7 pitches of spectacular climbing in a stunning setting , with the added bonus of seeing no one all day. However when the climb was over , there was a very very long ridge to reach the summit, which quite frankly could have done with being shorter.

The reason we had headed off for such a big route without warming up on some easier routes was because the forecast for the week had been indifferent for later in the week. Although the actual weather was never that poor , the forecast had always been bad and so we couldn't plan for another big route. We therefore did a lot of different rock climbing the second standout route of the week being "Missing a Meter" at the Col de la Colombiere.

World Record

I don't normally write about our family holidays unless there is a mountain related incident or event. We had a trip to Zip World - The longest zip wire in Europe high above Bethesda,North Wales. There are two zip wires , a warm up one and the full mile long one , which we were told you can hit speeds of 100mph.

The whole family went on the zip wire including Grandpa Seaton. We therefore held the record for the youngest and oldest people to travel down the zip wire. Sophie is 7 years old and Grandpa is 83 years old. Sophie was too light to go on her own [ there was the issue of not having enough momentum to reach the end] The solution was to strap Mum and Sophie together and for them to go down in Tandem

If your coming to the Alps soon - probably worth bringing your skis

James Vernon joined me for a week. The aim was to have a bit of a refresher, get some acclimatisation under our belts and at the end of the week make an attempt on Mt Blanc.
We kicked off with a day on the Mer de Glace. The weather was unpleasant cold and rainy, by the time we got off the Montenvers train it was snowing. It turned out to be a good use of the day because ice axes and crampons are impervious to the rain.

The next part of the plan was to gain some valuable acclimatisation and I came up with plan to combine this with some ski touring. The Guardian at the Mantova Hut said skis would be by far the best way off getting around. The journey passed by Arnad so we stopped for some brilliant rock climbing before picking up the cable car in Staffel and then skiing to the Hut.

We spent two nights and climbed two 4000 meter peaks, Pyramid Vincent and Balenhorn. We were treated to excellent skiing and sparked a lot of jealousy from the mountaineers on foot.

In addition we were able to make a memorable descent below the Mantova hut and skied all the way to Paulo our Land Rover pick up

We were now very well acclimatised and in good shape for our attempt on Mt Blanc. It was at this stage that the plan unraveled. The weather had other ideas , we had to cancel the reservation in the Cosmiques Hut and go rock climbing instead.
Still an unusal week combing many of the facets of Mountaineering.

Summer season kicks off with mid summers day skiing

The summer mountaineering season started on Monday and the tempertures soared to a mighty 36degrees.
Reuben and I started the week with an ascent of the South East face of the Gallinhorn which over looks Kandersteg.

On the Tuesday we headed around to the Stockhorn where we climbed some good routes while gazing over Lake Thun and the Oberland.
Afterwards we headed round to Grindlewald and caught the train to Kliene Scheidegg and checked into the Hotel Bellvue des Alps. In my view the best hotel in the Alps. It has been carefully preserved just as it was when it was first openend in the 1930's. The food and service was perfect.

On Wednesday we caught the train to the Jungfraujoch and headed to the foot of the normal route on the Monch. The weather was not good and I met a couple of my colleagues who had just bailed from their attempts. We decided to go and "have a look" without committing ourselves. We made the right call the weather improved , the wind dropped and we had the summit to oourselves.

After the Monch we headed back to Chamonix where the next day Thursday it was raining off and on, so we spent it at Les Gaillands rockclimbing.
On Friday we did something unconventional for mid summers day : We went ski touring. We drove to Les Diablerets took the firt lift up and climbed the peak of Les Diablerets. After which we skied some very good "Spring Snow" back to the lift system.

Being in the right place at right time is key to making most of weather windows.

May is the time when the weather settles down after the normally unsettled weather of the equinox. This wasn't the case this May and we have had no periods of settled weather.
So when James Vernon joined me for a weeks ski touring the weather forecast was looking distinctly mixed.
What we decided to do was head round to Grindelwald and take the mountain train to the Jungfraujoch. When we exited from the tunnel the weather was misty and windy and so we headed up to the Monchsjochhutte 3627m which is about 45 minutes skin, still never easy with no acclimatisation.
Despite the Hut being run by a world class Git we had a pleasant evening meeting some very interesting fellow ski tourers from the Valais.
The next morning the weather was fantastic and we were in exactly the right place to take advantage of it. We made a wonderful traverse over the Louroitor col at 3676m before skiing down the wide open slopes of the Kranzberg glacier to join the Aletschfirn glacier. From here we stuck on the skins and climbed up to the very welcoming Hollandiahutte 3164m.
Unfortuanetly Tuesday had been the only really good day and while Wednesday morning threatened to be okay it was in fact very windy and so we decided to ski down the long beautiful , wild valley to Fafleralp where the snow finally ran out and we walked down the road to Blatten where we jumped on the Post Bus.
On our final day we revived James's rock climbing career after a 20 year break. To me he never seemed as if he'd been away.

A Lake District wedding

Peter Little and I have climbed together at least twice a year for the last 25 years all over Britain and the Alps. It was therefore only natural that when he told me he was getting married that I should be there.
However the subplot of what happened before the wedding is worth telling:

We decided that it would be good to catch up with a walk up Blencathra , a mountain I had never climbed before. Our plan was to ascend via Sharp Edge- an interesting scramble well known to thousands of visitors to the Lake land fells.

I arrived at Peters house at around 11.30am and we headed off to the start of the walk. As we set off it started to rain and the mist came in. Peter was frustrated for me because he was keen to show me as much as he could of "his" beautiful Lake District . Frankly I didn't care , I was just happy to not be in charge and was just out for a walk.

Now Peter is a member of Keswick Mountain Rescue Team so when a text came through he was obliged to read it. "Guess what ? Some one's fallen off Sharp Edge." Peter announced.

Through the mist we could hear someone shouting for help. Finding the casualty was relatively quick , but actually getting to him proved to be one of the most scary things I've done in a long time. We found our selves on a mixture of super slippy loose wet rock interspersed with equally treacherous vertical grass. Thrown into this toxic mix were some huge cliffs meaning that one slip would almost certainly be your last slip ever.

We couldn't get to the casualty so we reversed our route which was even more terrifying. Eventually we got to the casualty from above via the "Bad Step " on the actual Sharp Edge Ridge. If ever rain can turn rock from grippy stuff to super slippy nightmare it is on Sharp Edge. This was turning out to be no walk.

The casualty had broken his lower leg . Peter and I stablised the situation and then waited for the rescue team to arrive.
Even going as fast as they could they were still obliged to Pitch the Bad Step and belay in the traditional manner.

The weather was too misty to get the Sea King Helicopter in to winch and so the rescue team had to do a 150 meter stretcher lower down the cliff to below the cloud level.

Eventually the helicopter attempted to winch but the cloud came in and trapped the helicopter in a hover for over 20 minutes.


The next day I met up with Peter Folkman for a wonderful ascent of one of the Lake District's most famous mountain rock climbs: Corvus
Finally the Wedding Day which was granted Mediterranean style weather.

Worst Avalanche Forecast I have seen

So it went from 24c to 30cm of snow in the garden over night and the most widespread high avalanche forecast I had ever seen. All this coincided with the arrival of Agust Gudmundsson and his great pal Astvalur [Valti] Gudmundsson for 5 days ski touring. Clearly we needed a plan B and we needed it fast.
So we jumped in the car and 3 hours later we were climbing above the Mediterranean at Capo Noli
We found a hotel and climbed some bigger routes the next day. This was Valti's first real multipitch climbing and he was impressed.
The next day was very un Mediterranean - it rained so over a cappuccino in the port at Genoa we hit on the next idea : The weather forecast and avalanche forecast were now good for the next few days and so we took a helicopter form Sion to the top of the Wildhorn as a way of catapulting ourselves along our originally planned ski tour.
We arrived on the summit at 8.30am and enjoyed very good spring snow skiing , followed by a hot climb up to the Wildstrubel Hut where we were the only guests.
It was an early 6.00am start for our ascent of the Rohrbachstein 2950m
From its summit we skied and skinned back towards the lift system of Crans Montana , [where they obligingly opened the drag lift inorder to get us back into the lift system] before some more spring snow where we arrived at 10.00am for an a "late morning beer.

The Western Bernese Oberland High Level Route

Charles Sherwood and his daughter Tabatha joined me for the ski tour which sets off from Les Diablerets and arrives in Kandersteg. The most remarkable thing about this tour was that it all went perfectly according to plan. We enjoyed perfect conditions [although rather hot] brilliant huts which were hardly occupied and not least some sublime spring snow skiing.

If only all ski tours could work this well!

Can't go ski touring lets go powder skiing

Once again the ski touring options became limited by the huge amount of snow that seem to keep spewing out of the ski. Francis Bridgeman his nephew Sahil Sinha and Vin Smears all had great plans for a ski touring hut based trip.
We had a wonderful day traversing the col de la Fenetre high above Les Contamines followed by a perfect descent on spring snow. Only disappointment was the bar at the foot of the gorge was closed.

We then had a couple of days skiing off piste around Chamonix before we learned once again that Itlay had had spectacular amounts of snow so we headed to Punte Crocce for some knee deep trail braking which was rewarded with some knee deep powder descents.

On our final day we headed back to La Thuile where we managed to hit conditions which were as good as any this season.

Bad weather stops High Level Route but its not all bad

Anik Mercure and her husband Francois Brissette traveled all the way from Canada to join me for an attempt on the Haute Route. The dates had been in the diary for a long time and every detail talked through. All the huts had been booked back in December.
We had a brilliant warm up day skiing the Crochue -Berard traverse in the Aiguille Rouge and Francois made a quick video of the day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aGUiUl9NDQ

All was good except the new weather forecast. Yet all we could do was pack our bags and turn up at Les Grands Montets at 8.30 am the next morning and hope the weather forecast wasn't as bad as predicted. It was snowing . We weren't going anywhere. Well anywhere near the Haute Route. Instead I quickly came up with a plan B. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPisS5RC0hM

All it did was snow and snow and snow. The next day we decided to head for Combloux to take advanatge of the last of the tree skiing of the year. This plan went awry when we discovered that a Piste Basher had crashed into a pylon on the key Christomet lift and closing half the resort. We did manage to rescue the situation by using our skins to access the off piste runs. There was a lot of snow:

The next day it was snowing so hard that we did nothing. However the forcast was now very good and so we decided to head Arolla and then the Dix Hut. It was from this point that we got a pretty fantastic mini ski tour in. From the Dix Hut we traversed the Pigne d'Arolla and down to the Vignettes Hut. We then headed to Zermatt and managed to ski all the way into the village.

The next day things got even better because we flew back from Zermatt to the top of the Pigne and were lucky enough to get knee deep fresh tracks down the Tsijore Nouve Glacier all the way back to the Land Rover certainly the descent of the season. Here is a quick you tube summary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbAOIlg55K4

We should have left it at that but on their arrival in Chamonix Francois and Anik had booked onto a Vallee Blanche descent where they had seen nothing. I suggested we ski it again . This time they did get to ski it , but had to endure the winning combination of chopped up frozen snow interspersed with boiler plate ice. In addition by way of a sub plot we narrowly missed seeing a plane force land on the Mer de Glace when the pilot seemingly realised he hadn't enough power to clear the Geant Ice fall

A week of anecdotes fuelled by strange incidents

Bill Mills & Greg Knott joined me for what was to prove a packed and eventful week with a sprinkling of unpredictable encounters.
We kicked off by heading over to Anzere high above Sion. We skinned up to the Audannes Hut in brutally artic conditions. We had to wear every stitch of clothing while battling up hill.

Fortunately the next day dawned bright and the wind had died. We climbed the Wildhorn in perfect weather.

The weather forecast the next day was for snow so we headed over to Italy to climb Punte Crocce. This proved to be an eventful day. We exited through the Mt Blanc tunnel to be greeted by thick snow. As we drove up to Arpy we rounded a bend to find a Fiat Punto dangling in the trees having just tobogganed over a precipice. There were many Italians jumping up and down and from what we could see our assistance wasn't necessary.

Around the next corner we were greeted by a coach which had slid down the road sideways [but hadn't actually left the road.] However its passengers had abandoned it and were flooding down the road in what was an apocalyptic scene. One particular women was having a full blown panic-attack which seemed to be having a domino effect on everyone else.

Clearly they needed help but they couldn't get any mobile reception and so I offered to use my Police Radio. Having summoned help we left as fast as we could, unfortunately this was not as fast as we would have liked because it was necessary to put the chains on the Land Rover.[Something I have never had to do on a Tarmacked road such were the treacherous conditions]

Eventually we skinned up the start of the climb but at the lake there was just too much snow and we decided to judiciously turn around and [ski waist deep powder]back to the Land Rover. Here we put the extra set of chains on the back wheels too.

The next day we decided to ski in Courmayeur. It was shut due to too much snow. We headed to La Thuile where it was open but there was still enormous amounts of snow. Unless we found somewhere steep it was practically impossible to move.

On our final day we went to ski in Combloux/Giettaz. This was exceptionally good with near perfect conditions of acres and acres of fresh snow, no one around and beautiful weather. The only problem was that the whole of the Aravis was hit by an electricity power cut which shut the lifts leaving us stranded in Giettaz. Fortunately we had our skins.

The Foehn; The word no skier ever want to see in the forecast

Yes the foehn is the word that is like a death sentence to a good skiing forecast. Its effects are well documented but needless to say it can wreck the best laid plans.

This is what happened to me Ian Ansell and Charlie Crossley Cook.

On our 1st day we decided to skin up to the Gd St Bernard Monastery [in beautiful weather] Yet by the next day the dreaded foehn had kicked in. We did manage to climb Mt Fourchon and then ski across and down to La Fouly but the conditions were frankly crap and it was a relief to get the skis off.

So we headed around to La Thuile because it was due to snow in Italy. It did not and we skied around La Thuile firstly finding some half decent snow before the mist socked in and the wind blasted us relentlessly.
The forecast was still for snow which the next day eventually came and we managed to get some excellent skiing the trees in Courmayeur .

Our final day was in Chamonix where we again struggled with the weather and poor snow conditions and contented our selves with skiing the pistes all over Chamonix