Mellow Mountaineering

Di, Martin and Clive joined me for four days. Di and Martin had visited Chamonix many many times for skiing , but not much in the summer. It was Clives first time . The remit was to go to some interesting areas and learn as much as possible On our first day we climbed the South Ridge of Les Glieres. It is hard to find a climb in the Chamonix valley with a better back drop.

The next day we headed up the Grands Montets and after having a comprehensive re-cap on all things ices-axes and crampons we put the skills to work by climbing the East Ridge of Les Grands Montets.

The forecast for the next day was for torrential rain. I decided that the best thing to do was to go for a long walk. I choose to drive around to the Emosson Dam and climb the peak Bel Oiseau. Yet it did not rain one drop and we enjoyed fantastic views and even finished up with a swim in the Lake.

Our final day was to be a good way to finish: We drove through the Mt Blanc Tunnel and rode the Skyway lift to the Helbronner summit. We then headed across the glacier to climb the impressive summit of the Aiguille du Marbree.

It was not until we were back at the bottom and congratulating ourselves on a great four days that we had the biggest scare of the week. As we got up from the table and swung our rucksacks onto our backs, Clive let out a bunch of expletives : Unbeknown to him a snake had crawled into his rucksack and as he walked off it crawled out of his pack and attempted to crawl onto his back. Some bezerk like movements threw the snake off and off it slunked.