Shit I dropped the camera!

After our lightweight brekkie of ginger cake we set off at 6am hoping most of the climbers would be ahead of us and we could travel fast and overtake where we needed to. We were going really well until the steeper sections of rope ladders and chains that meant a build up of traffic. I had a Scottish hot aches experience waiting for pitches to come free.
We summitted at 10:30 and took tonnes of great photos before I decided to drop the camera down the face while trying to clip it back onto my harness. Nightmare!!! Up the Matterhorn with amazing scenery all around and my beloved pictures on the glacier below.
The descent of the Hornli was horrific, easier to overtake thank god but the crampon and rope skills high up were not good, many parties very unsafe. So we skirted around them as best we could to get out of there before accidents started to happen. The Hornli hutte seemed so far away and it took us a lot of hard work and rock scrambling to get down and back out to the ski lift.
After a quick beer in Zermatt we returned to find a FULL campsite but still managed to blag a space. What a day! Amazing mountain, shame everyone else thinks so too!!

Salzbretzels und ski lifts

We arrived in Tasch from Chamonix ready to go into Zermatt and begin our training – nearly three bottles of wine later we felt hydrated enough to begin our ascent of the Matterhorn (il Cervino) the next day. First we had 3 hours of ski lift and piste walking action up Matterhorn Paradise and down into Italy and Plan Maison.
The salz bretzels and chilling on the ski lifts allowing us to recover ready for our 1600m ascent to the Carell Hut on the Italian side of the Matterhorn. After a sweaty nights sleep in the rafters of the hut we awoke at 5am ready for our climb.

More bouldering

and yet more skin loss...

Back on a mission

After a day’s rest I was ready (or so I thought) to tackle another big route on my wish list – Aiguilette Lauzet. It is an amazing buttress that stands out from the road. However, after leading the first pitch at hard 6a/b I wasn’t feeling super strong. So we opted to take an easier line to have a more relaxed experience. All was going so well until 2 pitches from the top when the bolts ran out...after some scary climbing clipping old bent pegs and chockstones in a large crack I came to a stop when I couldn’t see any more pegs. So I lowered off one of the bent rusty old pegs hoping it would hold me, knowing it had probably been around longer than me so it was probably ok.

After some debate and guidebook consultation we found another line of bolts, that again ran out!! We finally found ‘a few’ bolts up another line but again lowered off as they were run out and we didn’t know what was above. So we scooted off left to join the Via Ferrata that led to the summit. Quite an adventure in the end but still an amazing day out.

Still not feeling much like a climber...will the climbing mojo return??

Bouldering in Ailefroide

It was a pleasure to chill out the following day and boulder a little bit, lost most of my finger skin early on and the thumb that I burnt lighting the oven for a pizza the week before finally cracked into a nasty open wound. Perfect excuse to laze around and enjoy the atmosphere!

The day after Big Tower is Watching You

On reflection not as scarred as first believed. It was a hard day following a hard nights bivy on the glacier. We hadn’t really taken into account it was a North Face route so would inevitably have a fair share of loose rock and be in the shade most of the day. Luckily I had my down jacket on me for comfort belaying but poor Adam was climbing in shorts all day – freezing!!

The route was so long we couldn’t stop climbing even for a few minutes and turned around the belays super fast just stopping long enough to swap gear. The climbing itself was fairly unremarkable and scary with the amount of

choss rock around. Our cut off point was 3pm which we believed gave us plenty of daylight to abseil off the route so we decided that wherever we were we would start to head down at that time. We topped out at 3:09 – perfect and thought we might even make a beer at the refuge before it shut. However we still had 19 abseils and 3 traversing pitches between us and the glacier floor.

Well as expected on the way up, there was plenty of rock spikes to get the rope stuck on the way down. The tails were constantly getting jammed and stuck. We had to climb up no less than 5 times to retrieve rope tails. About 3 abseils from the ground I was losing the will to live – well not to live but certainly ever climb routes like this again with horrific abseils! When the rope got stuck this time right near the belay at the top of the pitch I quickly led up again to free the rope greatful for a chance to do anything but abseil and because I thought I was going to cry with sheer frustration. Some 6 hours later, yes 6 hours hanging in our harnesses, abseiling and pulling through ropes we reached the bottom of the route just before 9pm. Only just enough daylight to get over the worst of the galcier and back on the good path down. Finally we made it back to the van at 11pm and chilled out with some nice food and wine, mission complete.

The next day we awoke like zombies and I knew I was broken when I couldn’t even face sorting out ropes and gear, didn’t want to think about climbing!! It was a pleasure to sit in the van all day taking Adam back to the airport. Anything but climbing – truly broken.

Scarred for life!

Both emotionally and physically. 1 super cold bivvy on the glacier, 22 pitches of climbing on loose chossy rock followed by 19 abseils and some extra pitches to free stuck rope tails!!! And a huge walk out in the dark. We survived, just. More about this another time...

3rd time lucky for La Demande

We drove down to the canyon bottom to wild camp at the start of Sentier Martel, starting early on the wine so we would sleep early too. That plan was scuppered by Adam who wanted to walk down to the bottom after dinner for a quick look – and who should we find but our crazy Dutch friends packing all their aid gear and leopard print spandex (yes spandex) for their big route. The route was only a half day route but they were going to do it in style, hauling tonnes and tonnes of gear and starting out super late so they had to spend a night on the wall in the porta ledge. I like their style!! So we had more wine with our pals as they showed us all the gear they had begged, borrowed and stolen. The spandex was superb and we were offered some to borrow for our route the following day but declined – isn’t spandex sweaty? Perfect hydration and an early night before our big route then!! At least I fell into bed and passed out right away rather than fretting about the route all night.

So here I was gearing up at the base of La Demande again, 3rd time lucky. Well we made it although pitch 5 was a low point for me, after leading a tricky pitch and then finding the top out to the belay near impossible. My legs were shaking, arms totally pumped and felt like I was going to vomit. Had I been holding my breath? Was it exertion? Or the wine from the night before? Anyway green spell didn’t last long and two pitches later we were over half way.
The climbing felt tough and physical all the way up, definitely an old skool route. The bolting was sparse in places, bit more like a trad route really with the odd bolt in it. The last 2 6a pitches were totally amazing, proper 3D climbing. Adam back and footed his way up some huge chimney and I went for bridging like a spider. It was super cool (if a little scary on the lead) but by this time we were feeling the effects of so many physical pitches. We topped out about 5ish, so pleased to finally have completed it. Only had to hitch back down to the van some 15ks away...

Abseiling over the bat cave

We rigged the van with a rope to scramble down to the start of the abseils and then started down over the huge caves. There was a 50m free hanging abseil to get to the bottom and I gulped hard as I set out over the lip of the overhang. Lovely, relatively easy, climbing on good quality rock above the lake. As we got nearer the top I could see lots of tourists peering over the side wondering what we were up to. We topped out to dozens of tourists taking our pictures and clapping... we gladly obliged and revelled in our new found fame. We followed that with a proper wash and swim in the lake and then joined the tourist path ourselves to go in search of giant mugs for the van and kitchen tiles for Adam in Moustiers. No luck with tiles but we did find some ‘life enriching’ mugs for the van.

Don’t mix beer and route choices

After some lovely climbing (7 pitches of 6a type stuff at Dent D’aire) we headed down to the campsite for a stolen shower and some washing up. However, we were busted and had to pay to stay the night. So we went into town for a beer instead. There was a huge storm so we had to take refuge in the pub for quite a while. Several buckets, yes buckets of Hoeegarden later – we met some crazy Dutch climbers from Amsterdam. Well they recommended us a good route for the following day - L’Eperon Sublime. It had an aid pitch and neither of us had done that before so we thought that it would be an adventure!!
And it certainly was, we managed 2 pitches of climbing before another storm raged in, we had to take cover in a cave some 200m above the canyon floor. After 90 minutes or so in cave the rain stopped so we ventured out to find the way down. Only to miss it entirely and have to retreat back into the cave before another soaking. After a nap in the cave, we woke up cold and hungry so went for the exit again. We eventually managed to abseil to the safety of Gorge and walked to the road to hitch back up to the van. What an adventure – 12 abseils for 2 pitches of climbing on polished limestone! And the moral of that story is best adventures come after too much beer!