A Flavour of Italy - Adventures in Cogne Winter 2012

Above and below: Enjoying a steeper section of Cascate di Lillaz (WI4) among friends during our January mini-expedition. Both photos copyright David Linton.

Above: Inspecting the opening pitch of Patri (WI4/5) in Valnotey and below: leading the upper crux of the left-hand route. Both photos copyright Brooke 'John Harlin' Borden.

Above: Fresh from the morning drive from Geneva, David Linton navigates the initial traverse of the first and crux pitch of Lillaz classic Tuborg (WI4+), in temperatures of minus twenty. On our walk-in we witnessed a Belgian climber peel from the top of this pitch and later helped to retrieve his gear.

Above: David probes the fragile final pitch of Tuborg (WI4) capping off a rousing Saturday morning's work. 

Above: An Italian climber tops out on Tuborg, with other Lillaz classics such as Stella Artice (L) visible in the background.

Above: The opening pitch of Stella Artice (WI5) up close and personal. This pitch of 57m follows the line of least resistance to the left up deceptively steep and entertaining passages to the crux icefall visible above.

Above: Saluting the mass of blue ice which constitutes the Grade 5 crux of Stella Artice.

Above: The Good Soldier Svek: A half-buried but still cheerful Petr appreciates our return to the beaten track after an abortive attempt on L'Ago di Money (WI4/5).

Above: Vincent and David finish up the first pitch of Lillaz Gully (WI4, M4+) in pristine cold conditions.

Above: Another perfect day as we top out (again) on Cascate di Lillaz. 

From Russia to Sagarmatha - and back again

Above: Enjoying the last climbing of the autumn in Europe ahead of my recent Russian odyssey. Photo copyright David Linton. 

I flung open the curtains and sharp autumn light flooded into the room, revealing the glinting rooftops of Kutuzovsky Prospekt and the white swirls of steam clouds rising straight into the blue-white morning sky.  The cityscape, which was somewhat hazy, fanned out to a vanishing point in all directions, this being almost the middle of the inner circle of concentric rings that make up the capital city of the Russian Federation, where for some time, I had been watching autumn collect itself in the parks and gardens, and with each layer of leaves my knowledge of the city had also been growing deeper.  I lingered at the window for a few moments, recalling some of this as the sunlight waged a brief struggle with my desire to go back to sleep, and won (the weather was too appealing, and it was after 10, time to renew my regular conversations in Russian with the short-order cook downstairs).

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Brooke slung the rope over his shoulder and enquired if anyone else was coming.  As usual, we had parked illegally on the side of the hiking path, which brought up regular troops of Sunday walkers from the Geneva side of the Saleve.  A few of them inched past us now as we hoisted our climbing gear out of the boot of the Golf, and onto our backs.  My airport tags were still on my rucksack along with a small blue sticker that read 'Domodedovo Airport'.  I looked Brooke in the eye and answered with a serious face. 'Yes. I'm expecting Wim Wenders.' 

We hiked several minutes through the old undergrowth, skipping over one or two fallen tree-trunks until rocks began to crop out and the path ascended a series of steps winding its way round to the front of the mountain.  Here, the path forked, leading leftwards toward the summit of the Saleve in a series of steep hairpins through the trees and right, to a narrow traverse along the top of some tall cliffs to the place we knew as the Canopy Sector.  I picked my way carefully over the tree-roots, a 300 metre drop yawning immediately to my right, following the climbers' path past the first outcrops of limestone on my left harbouring ancient bolted routes, past the overhangs and through the brambles, jumping over a cleft in the path, feeling relief when it widened slightly into a patch of trees on the right as the angle of the mountain eased back slightly.  Gone for several weeks, I had been visualising these cliffs in my sleep, eager to return and work on my project Sagarmatha.

Above: Not quite airborne. Enjoying the West Face Classic early one summer morning, before boarding another international flight in the afternoon.   

The Saleve, in many ways, has been the mountain which captures most of my year. I have climbed it slightly more times than the number of different countries I have visited, or the number of appartments I have lived in; perhaps not as many times as the number of words I have learned in Russian or the number of times I have lain awake trying to imagine what is going to happen next.  Yet, it has been faithful to me throughout, greeting me and bidding farewell each time I land or take off from Geneva on another voyage and helping me to make use the brief intervals when I can visit it again to become a tougher and technically better climber on its bold mysterious routes.  There is nothing that hardens the heart more than being away from home (unless home is where the heart is) and since for me it often has not been in the same place, I can say that the best way to climb on the Saleve is when a certain amount of suffering has made you tough enough to stay calm (that voice that says 'I have seen this all before') while the wind whips at your ropes, your fingerstips are holding you in balance and you need to delicately glide through fear to reach what looks like a belay, up there among the brambles. 

Above: David navigates a section of tricky slabs on pitch 2 of the West Face Classic, Le Saleve (6b, 150m).

True, in the spring and summer I had flirted with the Alps, tempted by some spells of excellent dry weather but more and more hampered by a lack of high mountain fitness as the months went by.  In April, after all the avalanches had come down, we scrambled the Mer de Glace from Montenevers to the Couvercle Hut on Saturday morning. I had just returned from Prague the previous night after a difficult week, sleeping poorly on the Friday night but managing to show up at the planned rendez-vous around 8am nonetheless.  We were floundering in the soft snows below the Courvercle by lunchtime (even snowshoes were no help) and the last hundred metres up the gentle slope were like the death of Elias scene from Platoon as we kept sinking in up to our waists.  The hut, as I recall, was in an atrocious state and terribly overcrowded; outside under the giant pebble that gives the hut its name, it was too warm in the sunlight and abruptly too cold in the shade as we melted snow, rehydrated and filled our bottles for the morning.  The surrounding mountains were all shrouded in low afternoon cloud and it was impossible to see our intended route.  In the early evening, some guides skied down from the Talefre basin (possibly from Les Courtes) and together we enjoyed a break in the mists which revealed, directly opposite, the north face of the Grandes Jorasses in all its cold magnificence, at the head of the Leschaux Glacier.  I thought about this far harder proposition as I wondered how I would wake up at 1am.  Would I even make it to the bergschrund?

Surprisingly, I did sleep for several hours and at one o'clock, having donned all my layers and put on the correct boots (at the send time of asking, an easy mistake) I forced down some food and a bowl of searingly hot tea while redeyed faces lit (somewhat grotesquely) by headlamps drifted in and out of my vision.  I went outside and put on my crampons. It was an ultra-clear night which meant that a headtorch was somewhat superfluous, but I kept it switched on nonetheless.  The glacier was capped with crisp neve, and progress was swift but, like all nocturnal adventures in the Alps, slightly surreal and disembodied like de Nerval's concept of a dream.  Here and there, the snow curved away steeply to the right into moat-like crevasses; to the left, now and then, we passed under green, weeping seracs that menaced us silently.  Occasionally, we picked our way through the avalanche debris containing huge heavy blocks of snow and ice - these had all come down in the last couple of weeks flushing the couloirs clean of risk - and all the while, back in the darkness below us, the headlamps slowly snaked their way up from the hut indicating that two or three other parties were on their way. 

Above: The Couvercle Hut, despite its atrocious state of upkeep, is perhaps the best vantage point from which to observe the north face of the Grandes Jorasses.  Below: exiting the Whymper Couloir at dawn.

Others were gathered at the bergschrund squinting up the Whymper Couloir and a couple of parties had set off on the first pitch over the crevasse.  I found a place where the snow almost bridged the gap and planting both axes in the neve above, awkwardly pulled across. It was about 3am and bitter cold, the mountain infused with pale starlight.  The angle was not particularly steep but it was unlikely to be helpful in the event of a slip. I noticed that the other teams were belaying (probably due to the darkness) but decided to carry on and get ahead of them, so we could have the couloir all to ourselves.  We shortened the rope considerably and I led off up the 'narrows' - a steeper section of mixed ground, which eventually leads into the wide bowling alley of the main couloir via a leftward traverse.  The snow and ice were in excellent condition, and the climbing was secure on first-time placements, without the need for much additional protection.  With darkness enveloping us, the climbing was mainly by the feeling of touch, only the circle of light around me providing a visual confirmation that all was well.  I accepted this and continued, breathing hard and trying to maintain a good pace.  My throat was dry and after a couple of hours I tasted blood on the roof of my mouth, noticing it was hard to voice instructions.  Yet slowly, as we reached the upper slopes of the Verte, a soft alpine dawn began to melt over us as we exited the couloir.  I paused, resting on the sixty-degree slope which seemed so benign compared to Italy's waterfalls, and watched the famous peaks dissolve into view from their camouflage into their characteristic profiles: Les Droites, Les Courtes, Pointe Isabella and, of course, the Jorasses. 

Above: Rappelling the Whymper Couloir after a long night of adventure. Our approach and descent across Talefre Glacier is visible far below.

But apart from this flirtation with Alps - which increased in amplitude if not in frequency later in the summer with an unpremeditated one-day attempt of the notorious Gervasutti Pillar on Mont Blanc du Tacul's East Face in July - I can say that the Saleve has been my core companion for most of the year.  Part of the reason is no doubt proximity to the various ephemeral places I have been living in, and that in turn has allowed me to manage to defeat the twin vagaries of travel and weather (for the bad weather this year has almost always descended on weekends) and improve my level of climbing without adding in unnecessary risk. 

Above: Improvising on the entry pitches of the Gervasutti Pillar to avoid rockfall affecting the traditional start; Below: perspectives from top and bottom giving a sense of how long and complex the route is. 

Or has it? Traversing high on the slender, treacherous granite pillar a snow-ledge collapsed under my feet and almost dislodged me into the Boccalatte Couloir. I held on with one hand while I regained my footing but in that moment I felt as though I had lost control.  This kind of episode will tend to happen in the Alps: some hours later, my partner dropped her ice axe a full 600 metres down the Supercouloir as we were preparing to tackle the mixed ground below the Red Tower.  Gervasutti also dropped his ice axe opening the route in 1946, and then lost his life while rappelling in a storm.  Many of the old pitons we clipped in the lower section looked like they could have been hammered in by him. 

Old pitons are commonplace, too, all over the Saleve and they are worth about as much as their cousins in the Alps.  I have clipped more of them this year than I have had nights in my own bed.  Brooke has had to endure many hours of tetchiness as I have re-opened some old routes around the Canopy sector, but he is fortunate to have not had to belay on old pegs with 800 metres of air below as cold evening winds rake Mt Blanc nor contemplate why gardening seems such an alluring passtime when your bare fingers numb to cardboard and you are five metres beyond your last small cam, air between your feet as you press them against the unfeeling rock and try to stay stuck on, the fall unthinkably long.  He quite sensibly opted for a gentle ascent of the Gran Paradiso and rather a lot of cycling in the Jura.    

Above: Looking down the line of Panoramix, one of the many neglected old-style routes in the Canopy sector. 

It was cool and dry when we reached the cliffs of the Canopy sector.  We spent some time experimenting with an old route up an off-width crack which aroused our curiosity from the path.  I had just touched the ground again, when we heard footsteps approaching - an unusual event in this quiet area, where only the passage of the telepherique was a regular occurence.  Soon David, who had not been seen for months due to an unfortunate 'mono' finger injury, rounded the corner lugging gear and photography equipment.  'At last,' I said to Brooke, who was tying into the rope. 'Wim Wenders has joined us!'

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There is a moment, usually in the mid-afternoon, when the sun illuminates a steep pillar of rock in the Canopy Sector so that the very prow of the buttress stands out in fine detail.  The small pockets are outlined in tiny shadows as though filled with ink, and a yellow hue becomes visible in places as a faint subcutaneous layer swimming beneath the grey surface of the limestone, which dissolves in the sunlight into a rainbow of possibilities.  This prow is known as Sagarmatha.

While the Alps always tempt, this quiet place among the trees has become a special refuge of repose and regeneration.  In Moscow, it is afternoon and the orthadox churchbells are raining their soft chimes all over Kropotinskaya, marking the end of autumn as they ripple through the freezing air.  It is a moment of similar contrasting beauty - the counterpoint of what is most expected as I fight my way onto the street from the afternoon crowds of the metro.  I am adding up these moments, and hoping there will still be more of them to come. 

  Above: The 'Sagarmatha Buttress' as we have named it. Photo copyright David 'Wim Wenders' Linton. 



Road to Repentance - Part 3

'Seems like you're stepping on the pieces of my broken shell...' - Jamiroquai.

The silence in the pine trees was broken only by snow falling from the heavily-laden branches. As the sun warmed them, they became feeble.  I had the feeling that the whole valley was beginning to wilt toward spring, and that there was something new, dangerous about this transition.  At length, David emerged along the snowy path in his characteristic black alpine garb, like a tiny Dostoyevskian figure bearing all his possessions in a bundle out of the steppes. 

This, however, was again Val di Cogne and the season was mid-March. The minus- temperatures of the morning, in which we glided fortuitously along the winding road from Valnotey without mishap, had entirely vanished soon after dawn, the insipient spread of warmth finding us floundering in the soft snows which carpeted the vague forest track.  Neither of us had spoken about what we intended to climb today; it was our first forray into the right-hand branch of the twin valleys at Cogne. But when, from far away over the trees, I made out the first smears of pale, blue ice clinging to the steep, water-stained cliffs on the left-hand side of the valley, I knew the first layer of uncertainty had just been stripped away. 

'Sandwich?' David offered, producing a strong-smelling smoked-salmon supermarket sandwich from his pack. It felt like we had been living on them for months. 

'I'm ok,' I replied, munching part of a Snickers bar (I was up to three per day on our climbing weekends).  'It's a bit warm now isn't it?'

I glanced uneasily at our surroundings, listening intently.  Years ago, I once ventured into the mountains at this time of year, deep in the remote Kackars in north-eastern Turkey. Spring was racing under the snowpack restoring life to the steep Kavrun valley, the snow-slides were gone and yet the rock fall which swept down without warning just behind me, large blocks detonating like mortar-fire in the steam-bed, should have already happened and revealed a miscalculation on my part. Spring, in the high mountains, signals a deeply unpredicatable transition: the cirques and valleys sound (more than they look) like battlefields full of clashing rocks and torrents of meltwater, flowers poke out tentatively and the first insects swarm in the sunbeams. 

I reminded myself of this as I surveyed the small clearing where I waited for David to catch up.  Here, the path divided into two, the left-hand fork ascending a long, suspect slope to a remote circle of tiny-looking ice-falls overhanging the valley some three hundred metres higher up.  The other fork went right, initially almost underneath the massive rock walls which crowned the opposite side of the valley, bending slightly left again as the valley opened out in a couple of hundred yards.  Suddenly, the group of Italians we had overtaken pre-sandwich came clanging and clattering into the small clearing; perhaps there were seven of them. 'Dov'e Patri?' they demanded, as if we were bound to know the answer and guessingly I said 'Alla sinistra!', hoping they would give consideration to the snow conditions on the way up there. 

'Let's go,' said a voice in my head, as David relished his breakfast.  I hoisted my pack and started wading off again.  Soon afterwards, we passed opposite a large gully where avalanche debris had piled up at the base of a well-known ice route called 'Erfaulet'. The route mounted a scimitar-shaped cleft in the rock for some two hundred metres.  It was now coming into the sun. 

The path now crossed the river via a small snow-covered footbridge and re-entered the forest. I was relieved to be away from the fall-line especially because I was convinced that parts of the mountain were rumbling in the sunlight.  Then again, it may have only been the grating of my teeth.

Last year, I had come across the world of Cogne in an article that remembered Gian Carlo Grassi, a brave and talented pioneer with sad piercing eyes who discovered many secrets in Gran Paradiso and on the Italian flanks of Mont Blanc and who perished in an avalanche in the prime of his climbing.  Asked about Repentance, Grassi would recall the moment when he was walking deep in this same branch of the Val de Cogne, and rounding a corner for the first time he set eyes on a majestic vertical sweep of ice, so steep that it astounded and immediately appealed even to his saturated gaze.  So strong was the impression, that every time he approached this place, he would notice again the moment when it first came into view, from far below; the moment of magnification, when its true size began to be revealed; the deceptive angle of the approach slopes, which were actually quite steep; and finally, the moment when, close enough to observe in detail, he could pick out the exact nature of the difficulties amplified into close proximity - the relentless, fluted, fragile ice of what Grassi named 'Repentence Super', Cogne's hardest route, and indeed one of 'the hardest of the Alps'. 

- - -

Three weeks earlier.  Brooke and I crunched through the avalanche debris fanning out from the base of Cold Couloir, meandering our way toward the broad tongue of water ice protruding into the valley from the narrow gullies above, inviting us to climb.  I sorted the twin ropes into separate coils, tied onto them, watched them unfurl into space below me as I crept up the blue wall.  The ice was banked out and bulging, something that became more apparent as I looked down to check my progress.  I felt strong mentally, not minding the run-out climbning and settling onto a hanging belay, I became like another part of the wall, suspended and still.  Brooke came up, landing first-time placements and weighting them with typical southern insouciance: briefly I wondered how the idea of a Texan climbing on ice would go down with his folks back home.  Possibly there would be the same depth of incomprehension as we used to find among the villagers of central Anatolia with our rock climbing. 

Above: Texas hold'em: Brooke deals with the opening pitch of Cold Couloir

At length, he arrived at the belay and we rearranged ourselves for me to begin the second pitch.  I traversed gingerly rightward onto more steep ice.  The whole glacial basin funneling down from the Gran Paradiso massif was framed in the background, glinting in the late winter daylight.  We didn't actually hear the avalanche until it crashed down past us thirty metres to our right.  It wasn't particularly big, but I noticed that it had come from the low-angled slabs bordering the couloir higher up, the snow losing its adhesion to the mountain under the first rays of the sun.  We decided to retreat: the couloir had won the day.

- - -

One week earlier.  La ultima settimana and the clock ticking invisibly down to...something.  A cold blue zenith.  Back on Cold Couloir, and the opening pitches were considerably less steep than a fortnight previously, and somewhat hollowed out by the aggresive appetite of a spring freeze-thaw.  A Cormayeur guide, ruddy-faced and small as a pygmy, sped past us in a fury, his two clients in tow swinging wildly at anything white. A carnival of destructiveness.  David, climbing an attractive gully, was heard to enquire after the axes of one of the clienti as they met en passant (sic): 'Are they carbon fibre those? Can I try them?' I didn't pick up the response because I was myself coming up, ducking shards dislodged from the over-zealous progress of the Italian party (and it was a nice gully, so I tried to abstract the discomfort) - but when I arrived at the belay David was still twirling his old axes, indicating that the barter had not been successfully. 'He let me hold them,' he pronounced with a mild air of satisfaction.

Above: Climbing in the cold, cold heart of the Couloir. 

Magnificent scenes opened up beneath us as we ascended higher. The rock on both sides was bare of snow, the disapperance of which had triggered avalanche jitters in us previously (we needn't have worried overly in fact judging by the real line of the upper couloir that now revealed itself to us); the sky was hardly touched by any blemishes of cloud; and with the Courmayeur-led ruffians already beginning their descent (most likely they would be alfa-romeoing it back to Milano), a silence enveloped our climbing and sharpened our senses to the point where we could begin to appreciate our environment for the first time that day.  And it was a wonderful route.

      Above: A number of steeper cruxes (all of which we climbed direct) are punctuated by easy sections and atmospheric belays offering a chance to appreciate the beauty of the Paradiso.

- - -

'I think we'd best be moving on,' I said, refusing the second offer of a smoked salmon sandwich.  The hills were alive, it seemed, audibly waking up and preparing to shake off their quilt of winter debris. 

An hour later and we were sheltering under a large boulder, at the foot of the route. We found a group of four Spaniards cowering there as well, as thick chunks of ice thudded into the snow all around and spun off down the approach path with the destructive force of...sinister frisbies.  The two who were preparing to climb were chain-smoking and the other two, standing somewhat aimlessly in their snow-shoes and garbed in garish woolen hats, pinched limp hand-rolled cigarettes which they were constantly relighting and adjusted the settings on their cameras, preparing no doubt to capture the action for posterity. 

Above: A comforting view from the belay.

We coughed and peered out at the icefall.  Two Italian teams were nervously wending their way through the second and third pitches; I saw the red-helmeted head of one climber emerge from a small cave about seventy metres up, in order to get established on the perfectly vertical face; abruptly the head retreated, then a minute later re-emerged along with a hand that extended out above the cave, and attempted to twist in an ice-screw - seemingly before the climber was prepared to commit to stepping out, fully exposed, just the beak's length of his axe- and crampon-points pecking shallowly into the ice. 

At length, the leading Spaniard moved off, and began to weave a complex line through easier-angled ice on the left-hand side, but which consisted nonetheless in a landscape of moulded shapes resembling the sockets of faces frozen in anguish, not unlike the human expressions one sees in Goya's paintings of atrocities from war.  His second continued to smoke while paying out rope, knowing that every inch was bringing him closer to being involved in something distinctly unpleasant.  His companions glanced about nervously.  We sorted our gear and did some dry tooling on the underside of the boulder to keep warm (this side of the valley was in shade and bitterly cold compared to the valley floor).

Suddenly, from the mountain opposite there was a loud report as though a shotgun had been discharged. We turned in time to see a giant avalanche, released by the warming of the upper slopes, pouring down into the Erfaulet gully.  A huge quantity of snow had been released, and as it collided with the valley floor, an enormous cloud of powder rose a hundred metres into the air.

'You'd get a bit of a dusting if you were on that route,' remarked David with typical understatement.  I nodded - the guidebook said as much - a little uncomfortable, but relieved that we had timed our approach well enough. 

'Let's get going then,' I said, moved by the silence that had suddenly descended again, and David handed me the ropes.  They were 7.8mm, the slenderest threads I had ever seen, but no doubt a notch above parachute cord.  To the right of the icefall was a beautiful ephemeral pillar of completely vertical, fluted ice. I glanced upward to make sure there was no debris on its way down from high above, and scampered across the slope.  I cleared away old snow and made contact with the first of the ice; a few flutings collapsed inwards with a tinkle.  At once that the icefall, which had seemed so compact in perspective, was a synthesis of rotten and solid material masked in blue and white - mostly evil and occasionally benevolent.  But it was past the point now, the hour was now or never.  I was already several metres up, straining with the steepness and the caprice of Repentance, and it was too late for any regrets. 

Road to Repentance - Part 2

Cogne Ice Climbing - Cold Couloir from John Carney on Vimeo.


Cogne Ice Climbing: Cold Couloir, TD-, WI4/5, 600m.

Road to Repentance - Part 1

'Bad men are full of repentance.' - Aristotle

Above: Free climbing Milan's Castello in May 2010, one highlight of a visit that included plenty of skirmishes with the authorities, an epic trip to nearby Como, almost via Turin, but ultimately no regrets.

'What the hell are they?' I asked in astonishment as David pulled what looked like a pair of rusty pliers from the pile of timeless, incomprehensible clutter lying mangled in the boot of his car. 

'They are my...ice axes,' he said, smiling proudly in the gloom of a grey but mild Annemasse dawn. 'I did some good things with these fifteen years ago,' he added, referring to another epoch, when by all accounts he had seen the best of the Eighties come and go in North Wales, sharing a house with various unholy notables (not merely misunderstood, or clad in tights, just bad men, he recounted); and now here he was, brandishing forth a couple of obscure relics (the sword that once was broken and now was rusted as well!), as if to recreate the ambience of mismatch where the limitations of technology left ample room for baring one's soul and risking one's all on a climb. 

'Er, how are they for...climbing?' I asked hesitantly, clearing a space in the back of my car for him to load in his gear.

'Pretty good, actually,' he said without detailed elaboration, adding: 'And I've brought my old ice screws as well in this carrier bag.'

It was the second weekend of January, and the weather conditions north of the Alps were unseasonably mild, with the thick snows of December all but stripped from the low-lying valleys and the tops of the Jura.  Even so, there had not been much sunlight since the New Year, and in the last few days the arrival of some sunshine had signalled the beginning of a freeze-thaw cycle that left us speculating fervently about the possibility of abundant ice in the valleys higher up.  Today, we planned to find out. 

The sun was absent this morning, as we pulled onto the motorway leaving the concrete monochrome of Annemasse behind us, but even in the half-light we could see the tall silhouettes of the Alps, still capped by rainclouds, beginning to dissolve into view on the horizon, much as the mountains of Mordor appeared to Frodo and Sam, I imagined, as they wound their way across the Dead Marshes.  We were now in Les Houches, a graveyard of skiers lashed by the rain, where little orange lights twinkled from the wooden chalets at the foot of the Mont Blanc massif.

David passed me a rosette sandwich which had been recently purchased from the supermarket.  'Would you like some fruit juice?' he enquired. 'I have apple and fig here. It's really good.'

'I was just thinking you know. I hired a guide from here last year to do Les Courtes,' I said, navigating onto the winding viaduct and taking over a truck.

'Really? How was it?' David asked, munching on the other half of the butty.

'We didn't get that far, actually. He buggered off with my money and did the Haute Route instead.' I had recounted the story quite a few times as if to purge the sensitivity of the memory.  'And even before that it was 'bivouac' this, 'extra day' that. It would have been cheaper to go to Mt Kenya for a full-scale expedition than spend three days on Les Courtes - I know because we did the calculation!'

'Did you get your money back?'

'In the end, yes. But I wasted a lot of time thinking it was going to happen and then nothing came of it.'

Fog drifted across the road as we ascended the steep hairpin bends leading up to the Mt Blanc tunnel. Fortunately, there was little traffic as if the rain and mist had quelled any mass desire for excursions in the hills.  We paid the toll, eliciting a terse 'au revoir' from the attendant, who seemed keen to return to her television, and glided into the mouth of the tunnel, and although it was not the first time I had ventured inside, I was still surprised by the state of economy which pervaded it, the traffic passing down a single carriageway in the hope that no-one coming from the opposite direction would fall asleep along the monotonous twelve kilometre journey.

Above: Stupendous views from the top of our climb on Day 2 at around 2,000 metres, looking towards the Grandes Jorasses and Mont Blanc massif from Val di Cogne, with the village of Lillaz visible below.

 Wet snowflakes were falling on Cormayeur as we segued into Italy - it was my third visit in the last year, but the first that had an exclusively alpine purpose.  Venice, with its plague-monuments and stench of defeat (to the Ottomans), had been last, in a rainswept September marked by unconvincing renditions of Verdi, overpriced fish of the day served under torrential rains in a flooded piazza and dark spider-limbed graffitti covering the cornerstones of the Rialto Bridge. As we scrambled on tables to see the frescoes of St Mark's Cathedral above the medieval mob massing in the Square, I wondered what it would take to see this place with no crowds, the kind of inviting emptiness one finds around Hagia Sofia in January for example.  Probably nothing short of a fresh dose of the Plague could keep things at bay (and cow the restaurant owners into human behaviour). 

In the snow-bound car park at Lillaz, David emptied his ice-screws into the trunk of my car from an old plastic carrier bag no doubt bearing the name of some retail chain that went bust twenty years ago.  I stared at the screws disbelievingly - some were at least 30cm long.

'Are these screws or stakes to kill a vampire?' I blurted out. Once upon a time, the Alps may have contained ice thick enough to absorb them, but with global warming and the recession of the ice pack (something my friend Stefan climbed mountains to take readings on) there seemed no possibility to make full use of them, unless it were to obtain soil samples as with an augur. 

'They'll be fine,' David replied calmly. 'Look, we can just tie them off using the small bit of tape on each of them.'  He removed a metal file from my IKEA bag, something I had rushed off to the DIY store to complete our kit list for the weekend. 'I'd better just sharpen up my crampons, I haven't done it for a while.'

As the sparks flew and clean steel escaped from the rust of ages under the precise scraping of the file, six French climbers filed past us, clad identically in yellow soft shell jackets which hugged the body more like menswear items from French Connection (and were probably about as effective against the cold).  One or two of them cast a mocking glance at us as they strode purposefully across the small bridge into the village of Lillaz towards the tall blue ice formations that plunged down the steep valley sides into the treeline.  David brandished his resurrected ice gear before stuffing it into his pack. We had come a long way, through tunnels and even timewarps. Now, as a faint sun palmed the peaks of the Gran Paradiso, we were ready to climb.

Above: David relaxes on yet another 'plunge pool' belay, while making a quick ascent of the Lillaz Waterfalls (WI3-4) on Day 1. In places, torrents of water ran visibly under the thin sheets of ice as the temperatures soared well above freezing.   

Above: The top pitches of Lillaz were in better condition and a brief vertical crux provided us with ample opportunity to enjoy the situation of being high above the valley, between snow and sky (and sun!). David shows impeccable technique on the crux.

Above: Perspectives from the belay as I lead the route E Tutto Relativo (WI4) near Lillaz on Day 2 of our disorganised but highly enjoyable forray into Val di Cogne.

 

TO BE CONTINUED....

Learning to Fly on the Frendo Spur - Part Three

'Only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain." - Richard M Nixon

Above: Out of the light, into the shadows.  Climbing into the upper icefield below the rognon, the crest of the Spur illuminated from the east far above the dark rubble of the glacier (or possibly Chamonix High Street).

I opened my eyes and the world was completely dark.  The voice came again, more insistent this time.  I could hear someone shouting my name, but the surroundings were completely black.  Then I dimly remembered the wind during the night teasing my face like a chilled razor blade; I had thrown the hood of the bivvi bag over my face to stop it from waking me every fifteen minutes.  I threw back the hood, and sunlight washed over me illuminating the hunched figure of Rob, who was already engaged in melting snow in a small gunmetal pan.  'Morning,' he said affably (probably for the seventh time), as I sat up and found myself confronted by the most spectacular sunrise view of the Aiguille du Plan and above us, etched black against the eastern skyline, the tiny silhouettes of three climbers already at work on the Midi-Plan traverse, maybe four hundred metres above where we prepared to tackle a breakfast of cold chocolate-filled crepes. 

Above: Rob and I passed a comfortable night on this generous rubble-strewn ledge, 

using the array of granite blocks to construct a standard of home comfort the Ingmar Bergman design team at IKEA (or whoever they are) would have found it hard to match (especially the TV).

I munched a crepe and sipped the noodle-flavoured tea, my limbs feeling surprisingly free of the rigor mortis I had expected to set in immediately after the rock festivities of the previous day drew to a close even as a curtain of alpine night unfurled itself amid a freezing starlight.  Nonetheless, looking upwards at the immense furrowed sweep of the icefield, in whose blueish folds rocks appeared to have been sown as if by a giant plough, I began to feel a rising sense of trepidation that today's climbing could be harder still.  In terms of what lay ahead, neither of us could tell because the ice curved up behind our bivouac ledge and the only way the difficulties could be revealed was for us to get moving.  The angle of the slope was by no means as steep as on the ice routes I had done before in Scotland, but the scale was bigger.  To break out of this one, we would have to climb Point Five Gully and then some, the challenge gargantuan, and the dimension unknown. 

I composed myself on the wide belay ledge, squinting up at the huge sweep of ice and sky which the winds blended together as the sun rose, steepening the perspective further.  Stepping into the loops of my harness (the ledge was kind enough to allow us to avoid sleeping tied in after we checked that neither of us was a sleep-walker) I remembered Rob's famous Point Five phone call earlier in the year.  It was an exceptionally cold February in Scotland, and the temperatures had been cold enough in Glasgow as I stood, headache and all, waiting for the Fort William bus that never seemed to arrive.  I noticed the presence of two other men nearby, each one lost in a train of thought or perhaps attempting to look tough (a good thing to do in Glasgow even in the early afternoon) carrying rucksacks suggestively stuffed with what seemed to be ice climbing equipment.  Eventually, I turned to the short, silent bald one who seemed to be regulating his breathing in an effort to appear more collected than anyone else who could possibly emerge from the multi-storey car park or descend from the bus (if eventually it came).

'Are you...planning to climb something?' I ventured, a little upset that I had committed to a packet of cheese and ham sandwiches and found them an unappealing counter to my Easyjet experience earlier.  There was another deliberate intake of breath, and eyes the colour of windscreens flicked from side to side for a few moments before the reply came, in a low, tense voice.

'Maybe.' Fascinated at this minimalist response, which bordered on the enigmatic, I pressed the question further.

'Are you...going up to the Ben? Lots of good routes up there.' This drew another rapid movement of the eyes and from this a dismissive air infused his next carefully-chosen words.

'Oh no. Not there. Somewhere else.'  He spoke little, but I could tell he meant to speak volumes with these six quietly-uttered words.  The boy next to us with the one ice axe fastened to the outside of his pack seemed to be paying attention now.

'Really? Like...Glen Coe for example?'

'No. Somewhere else.'  I glanced down at the black Jagged Globe stencilled hold-all planted on the concrete, which bulged excessively - no doubt from a concealed payload of extreme mountaineering hardware.  I wondered if my companion was in the right place or had confused Glasgow with Grindelwald.

Just at that moment, in a blur of metallic green our bus rounded the last of the innumerable traffic obstacles implanted around the airport perimeter since an attempt had been made several years ago to drive a flaming car into the terminal in the name of insanity.  Resembling the Flying Dutchman and already packed with a clan of Glaswegians heading north, two-thirds of them drunk and one-third cowering behind broadsheets or pretending to be asleep, it was clearly also late (perhaps not unrelatedly) and of course the time would have to be made up along the twisting shores of Loch Lomond and especially on the descent from Ranoch Moor into the Coe where there were no passengers to drop off and our self-appointed captain of road safety and comfort on board could go full steam, bends, stags verglas and all. 

Some time later, I lay half asleep with a pounding headache in my room at the Guisachan Guest House, the nausea just beginning to subside.  This being the Highlands, there was no meal available in my lodgings until the morning, when I could expect three Weetabix and two teabags to be deposited outside my door, assuming I would forego the full Scottish breakfast in order to be able to climb in the manner of an athlete, rather than a bricklayer, the following day.  Dimly I realised that the hour was fast approaching when there would be virtually no place open in Fort William other than the Polish-Russian fish-and-chip shop tucked in between the now-defunct Woolworths and a couple of sectarian pubs.  I was just about to fall asleep, when my phone rang somewhere inside my head.  Rob launched straight in.

'I've spoken to some people, and conditions on the Ben are really good.  I was thinking we'd just go straight up tomorrow and climb Point Five Gully, what do you think about that?'

I sat bolt upright on the bed, weak lamplight streaming in from the street, trying to focus. 

'Oh, er, yes absolutely, sounds great!' I mustered, realising that I probably had not consumed enough calories that day to climb a set of stairs. 

'Fantastic,' Rob said, then 'Listen, I'm on a plane now,' he paused momentarily as I wondered how that could be possible. 'We're stuck at Gatwick and I don't know what time we'll get in...so how about six am tomorrow?'

I winced. 'Fine with me.' It was aspirational, ambitious even.  'See you then,' Rob said and clicked off.

After some choice words mingling despair with some choice words for Easyjet and National Express, I pulled myself together, lead-limbed, seeing stars, and stumbled down the stairs, into the cold, crypt-like streets of the Fort and did the only thing I could possibly do under the circumstances - continuing past the brawling, the karaoke, the cellar pubs all the way to the Indian Garden for an enormous curry and a ginger beer.  The next morning, in pristine weather, we climbed Point Five Gully without a hitch, and without anyone else on the entire length of the route. 

***

Rob bolted up the initial ice slope with an air of liberation I could well understand, after spending the night stretched out on rubble. I paid out the rope we had slept on, piling the opposite ends into small, wiry pillows connected by a few metres of spare rope.  It did not seem to be kinking like the previous day, despite the extra cold.  Presently, there was some kind of shout which, although reverberating into an incomprehensible echo in the ampitheatre of the upper Frendo, indicated that I should start to climb.

Above: From the snow-arete, the ice quickly steepened and became leaner, far from the fat and easy bacon one can often expect to feast on having completed the 'rock crux' of the lower Spur.

At first contact with the ice slope, I realised it was not since June, with my abortive attempts on the Z-Couloir and Doigt de Dieu of La Meije, that I had properly set foot on terain such as now confronted me. On the other hand, my axes went in easily as I warmed up on the first easy pitch.  Occasionally, a patch of hard, blue ice offered more resistance amid an expanse of much softer neve, but I was too concentrated on climbing with the pack and the altitude to pay it too much attention. 

Rob was enjoying the views, shooting some more video footage of the Aiguilles and eyeing up the curving arete which floated up towards the Rognon, a rectangle of resilient granite which crowned the Spur and appeared more massive with every pitch we now added.  We moved together onto the arete, which the effects of a long summer had reduced to a ribbon of ice rather than the neve one could be forgiven for anticipating.  Rob stabbed the top of the arete with the one axe he carried, cramponing along the side of it; I needed to use both axes, not so much for balance as for comfort as what had seemed a benign and charming snow-ridge revealed its teeth, one side in softening sunlight - but now we were climbing ourselves into the shadows below the Rognon, and with this the temperature fell and in place of the sun was a feeling of menace from the rock barrier above which blocked out the sky. 

At a stroke, the blue ice we had seen only sporadically in the first hundred metres revealed itself to be the carapace of the entire upper slopes.  Rob climbed directly up from the arete, hoping to find an amenable way to the left of the Rognon (the normal exit) and having run out most of the rope, I saw him drive in a couple of ice screws and signal for me to climb.  Dinner plates skitted off the surface as I progressed upwards, split by the first blow of the ice axe, whizzing off down one side or another of the arete which hovered beneath my feet, returned to a state of innocence.  I persisted with the axe placements, and they would eventually bite just enough to allow me to make two or three cramponed steps, and then repeat the process.  Gradually, the climbing felt more secure as I got used to it and soon I was at the meagre belay (two screws and a sling), kicking out a small ledge on which to place half a foot while belaying Rob. 

'I think it's going to have to be right of Rognon,' Rob announced, as if referring to a political event. The ice to the far right looked brittle and dangerous up to the left where in good conditions climbers could be expected to encounter a pitch of 85 degree ice which would be the crux.  It was not what we needed after only a couple of pancakes - we would have to take the long way round.  Rob began to traverse boldly out right, across a large icefield resembling the back of a freshly-ironed shirt, occasionally twisting in an ice screw and moving quickly but without seeming to be anything but unhurried.  Somewhere in the middle of the pitch, I realised that I had never done a lot of traversing and that rightward traverses in particular were my least favourite form of movement on ice.  Then I realised that rightward traverses on steep, splintering ice with a thousand-metre exposure and a potentially enormous sideways pendulum in fact topped this discomfort.  I concentrated as only the desperate can on the physical motions of axes and crampons, stepping sideways always on front points, trying to avoid the easy temptation to climb upwards...more often than not one of the axes would rock in its placement but my front points did not feel insecure and I crept to the next belay point getting used to the unfamiliar movement. 

We traversed three pitches to the right, and the ice varied in steepness and quality.  Sometimes there would be a furrow in the slope and Rob would disappear over it and I would climb towards the brow of it not knowing what was on the other side.  Small hopes began to form that there would be an easier gradient, an end to the Rognon, a sight of the way out; inexorably, fresh obstacles crushingly emerged - here, there was gravel in the ice, or an aerated, rotten section; here, the angle steepened for a few metres but there was no protection until that distant ice screw. Approaching these, there was a small release of tension as fear of the pendulum receded; but it was soon replaced by the worse fear of dropping a screw on Chamonix - not for humane reasons of course (it would be terrible if one of the local commercants or, in particular, the officer in charge of pricing the telepherique had been speared with a freshly cut Black Diamond) but for the reason of our scarce resources. 

I counted the number of turns required to loosen each screw, so that I knew when to expect they would detach from the ice, and focused all my spare concentration on clipping them to my gear loop having first removed any slings or quickdraws that could interfere with such delicate operations.  My other efforts were directed at maintaining my balance on the ice while turning the screw, not dropping an axe (going leashless had never been so bold as until today) and not thinking of flying.  Belaying was difficult on the relentless slope, since it was hard to stamp out any kind of ledge, and invariably one leg bore all my weight while I pressed the other one into the slope at my waist in a half-kneeling position intended to maintain balance and not weight the belay too much.  After several minutes, I would reverse the position and transfer my weight onto the other leg when my calf could no longer stand it.  There was no chance to think about taking off the pack, but it was much lighter than the previous day with all the ice gear now in use. 

After three pitches of delicate traversing, we gained the corner of the Rognon, where the grey granite was rooted in its foundation of ice, which stretched over the rock like a transparent film of speckled jelly.  We belayed right on the corner off a screw and an old peg driven into a crack higher up.  Soon Rob was out of sight around the side of the Rognon, and I was left paying out the blue rope as a cable car glided up from Plan de l'Aiguille a hundred metres to our right, resembling a red coke can on a string.  Two days ago, we had been the ones in the car, observing the Spur and seeing a rope working its way up this vast icy section, the going seeming to be easy.  Now, with the roles reversed, I felt in a different world altogether, remote from the hermetically sealed perspective of the alpine voyeur, harsh and yet splendid because it was so very fragile. 

As the rope came tight with a series of tugs from above, I stepped up to remove the sling from the old peg and painstakingly removed the screw and tapped out the pale core of ice on the back of my ice hammer.  Stuffing the screw into the carabiner, I moved out right onto the ice ramp, and saw a little of what lay above: the beginning of a vast blueish ramp, tapering up the smooth, grey flank of the Rognon like a moulded porcelain vase on whose polished surface two climbers such as ourselves would show as the tiniest stencil, a mere decorative ink. 

Above: Rob searches for protection in one of the few cracks in the blank wall of the Rognon on the second ice ramp pitch. 

The rule of mixed climbing is to protect on rock first - if it is available.  For the most part, we relied on two or three ice screws per pitch and the odd sling round a spike of granite jutting out of the ice.  Climbing past one of these spikes, I recalled the story of a climber who fell from this ramp, and whose body could not be found by the rescue team because, in reality, he was hanging off his jacket hood which had snagged on one of the very few protruding rocks, saving his life.

Above: On the glassy surface of the ramp, the second of five pitches of Scottish III above 3,000m.  What would have been a cake-walk in the Highlands was made a lot more physical by the effects of altitude and the uncertainties induced by long routes - being able to ignore these doubts, and climb rhythmically, repetitively through uncompromising ground is one of the hallmarks of a strong alpine mentality. 

On the third pitch, with ice raining down from above, I adopted the gullyman's technique of clipping my rucksack into one of the ice screws as a protective shield. Moments later, as I looked down to ensure the rope was not going to snag around my crampons as I paid it out, a large chunk of ice penetrated these defences without warning and smashed into my thigh.  Pain flared through the muscle, the dispersive effects of adrenaline a sudden reminder of how cold my body had become from climbing two hours in the shadow of the Rognon.  Rob glanced down in the aftermath of this shrapnel attack, but he had little room to choose a line further out to the right - we had to protect these pitches as much as possible from the Rognon's cold walls and avoid getting too committed to the fickle plates of ice that slanted towards an azure sky with the smooth quality of drying crockery. 

Above: Easy mixed climbing in the 'finishing gully' - somewhat easier than the ramp because here, finally, the quality of the ice improved and we were able to get easy axe placements in plastic ice and neve for the first time since leaving the bivvy ledge.  It was a just reward for several hours of exacting physical effort and a great relief from the peculiar mental strain that only unyielding ice can provoke.

Above: Reaching the final technical belay just below the summit slopes, the cares of the entire climb began to lift. 

I waited impatiently as Rob clambered out of the gully and sped up the hard neve slope, disappearing over the ridge momentarily to belay on the far side.  The release of tension was bringing tears to my eyes.  Leaving the shade for the last time, I tried my best to accelerate up the slope but the sun was unbearably hot and I felt as though my clothes were smouldering.  A few more steps and I was on top of the ridge.  The panorama opened in front of my disbelieving eyes - Mont Blanc, the Tacul, the Dent du Geant and the Grandes Jorasses brooding in profile to the east.   We sat down in the snow, drank water and slowly repacked our rucksacks taking in the scenery which two days before had been with us on the south face of the Midi, but after the long shadowy climb up the north face, now seemed all the more splendid, and well-earned.  Level with us on the plateau, some way to the left, a group of paragliders were preparing to launch themselves down the route we had just climbed.  Among all these perfect peaks, where memory, drama and ambition converged in the rarified air, it seemed a fitting place to be learning to fly.

Above: Clouds boil over the Italian side of the Grandes Jorasses and the line of the Walker Spur appears in profile, just as we reach the top of the Frendo.  Coincidence?   

***

Postscript

Following their success on the Frendo, both Rob and John continued to climb during an outstanding spell of stable early autumn weather.  Rob quickly went on to climb Mt Blanc via the Pilier d'Angle and the Peuterey Ridge, even reportedly pausing for sandwiches half way up while not on belay.  Subsequently, in October, he climbed the Eiger via the 1938 North Face route in a time of less than 12 hours and in lightweight style consisting of chocolate crepes, some hardwear and the unconsumed bean feast which had been carried 1,200m up the Frendo (for which several pegs were sacrificed from the bare essentials kit list).  So the feast made its second ascent of a classic north face, achieving 3,000m of combined vertical progress before being tragically consumed (rumour has it) somewhere below the summit of the Eiger in an unforced bivouac.  Climbing bar gossip later rumoured that extreme Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck, known for his fast and light approach and regular soloing of the Eiger north face, was disconcerted to come across a lone five pence piece at the Traverse of the Gods.  It is not known whether he pocketed it, but if so perhaps he will eventually learn who to return it to.  Meanwhile, John worked hard to raise his rock climbing to new levels, emboldened by his Frendo experiences which made 5c feel like 7a.  He was last seen on the Sphinx in Leysin leading the famous Harlin-Robbins Direct (6b+), although unconfirmed reports have it that he was in fact forced to rappel the initial 50m pitch when his partner flatly refused to follow the hideously smooth crack to the first rusting belay.  No doubt he will be back when time and the fates permit.