Cogne ice, Christmas, sleepers and accessible alpine climbing (Alpine climbing)

Saturday 29 December 2007 09:26PM

Been very busy the last two weeks. In between skiing I had a day at Cogne with Jonny Baird. I was mostly useless at climbing that day (and at Skiing the day after), since I’d foolishly joined my flat mate Nick for a circuit training session. Nick is an ex Prison PT officer, so I thought I was doing pretty well after an hour of just about managing most of the exercises. Even afterwards I felt it hadn’t been that hard. But the next day I could hardly get out of bed, and had to second Jonny up all the ice since I was struggling to lift my arms above shoulder height!

I then went to Brussels for a weekend with my girlfriend, before we both travelled back to Derbyshire for Christmas with our families. Lots of merriment was had, mince pies eaten and I got to spend some time with my lovely nephew Peter, who has learnt to call me “Uncle Esmond”!

For coming back to Chamonix, I was getting the train, which I’ve been doing for a few years now. It’s always OK, but you always know it would be easier and cheaper to fly and that you’re being a bit of an idiot to make some kind of moral statement. This time though I tried out the Sleeper service from Paris to St Gervais les Bains (20 min from Chamonix with a connecting service). All was super smooth, better than flying I’d say (leave London at 6pm, arrive Chamonix at 10.15am the next day, having had a decent nights sleep), and not too pricey either (88 euros return from Paris if you book in advance, and about the same again London to Paris). See Rail Europe or SNCF for tickets. Highly recommended.

While I was away of course, the conditions were great in the mountains and the weather less savagely cold than before I left. Notably people were doing great things on the Droites north face (Nick did the Colton Brooks very quickly with Andy Houseman), so I was keen to get in on the action. Unfortunately, the long range forecast wasn’t great, so Nick and I headed for a day route instead, the very popular Frendo-Ravanel which which climbs to the col between the Aiguille Carree and Pointe Farrar. The climbing was excellent, perfect neve and great settings, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the weekend! We raced about half a dozen teams in to the base of the route (about five minutes ski from the top station at Grands Montets), and remarkably (given my skiing), we were first on it! Still, it’s a shame to be racing other teams, and we were slowed massively on the way down getting tangled in other peoples ropes, so we had to ski down in the dark despite having topped out before 2pm!

Nick put some photos on his blog too.