Es en France (Alpine climbing)

Saturday 01 December 2007 10:19AM

Just moved to a pad near the centre of Chamonix for the winter. Pretty exciting, got here on Monday with Tom Spreyer, who’s here to climb for two weeks, then went straight up into the hills. The Grandes Jorasses have been in superb condition all autumn, with folk racing up hard routes right left and centre, so we thought we try and get in on the action straight off. We got the last train up to Montenvers on Tuesday evening, then walked in to the base of the classic Colton Macintyre route on the north face. This should have been a pretty casual 5 hour approach, but the recent snows turned it into 10 hours of wading with a sleepless bivi on the glacier (I never sleep well when first at altitude). By the time we reached the base the next morning it was late and we were exhausted. After a bit of deliberation we decided we were too knackered to get on such a big route with a storm forecast for two days time, so descended back to the Leshaux hut. The next day, five more hours of wading won us a consolation route – the west gully of the col des Petites Jorasses, a nice, 350m route of sustained Scottish V-ish. Interesting descent abseiling down the route then walking back to the hut with only one working head torch! Nice to be back climbing ice again, it’s been a while…