Walk of Cham!

My first trip to Chamonix was in 2012 for my sisters wedding. Chamonix is the Narnia for the outdoors, a fantasy world where people take trams into the sky to scale massive granite peaks, ski steep technical powder lines, or use human powered flight to explore the world from the vertical realm. During my first visit I was handcuffed with responsibilities and the lack of a partner, so I was eager to do some alpine climbing and explore the mountains on this trip.

Recent snowfall in the high mountains gave us a few days to get adjusted and then we settled on attempting the Arete de Papillon as our first climb. Everyone we spoke to had this as one of their favorite climbs in the area. Our warm-up session at the Gailland crag helped to build confidence for the 5c/ 6a grade, as the 5c's gave us little trouble.

The night before our much anticipated attempt at a Chamonix classic, we went back and forth about the gear to bring - Crampons? Axe? Second Rope ( this wasn't a tag line, but a full on 60m cragging rope)? well sure enough we came to the obviously conclusion of bringing the whole kitchen sink - ensuring maximum difficulty on an already difficult and long climb.

6:45 am we were waiting in line for first trams. Only 1 party was ahead of us on route and way out ahead. The approach was only clocked at 45 minutes. We tried to follow the path of least resistance and the hike turned into a scramble turned into a climb. The booked called this French grade II-III so I had it anchored that it was some 3rd-4th class scrambling, nearly 2 hrs later We started to short rope with what we believed was the start of the route in sight. Between us and the start lay a near vertical section with parallel and smooth offwidths.

Still in the mountaineering boots, we decided to pitch this out - it was only scrambling right? Well after grunting through the offwidth I traversed a short knife ridge with limited feet and checked out the topo. Sure enough that was P1 and went at 4b and French Grade II-III is actually up to 5.3. - Marcy followed but the exposure of the ensuing traverse messed up her psyche for the remainder of the day. The following pitch started at 4c and then had a 5c move up higher, time for our magic vibram-soled slippers.

At this point some groups were starting to loiter behind us. These climbing parties turned into one big french freeing human centipede. I mean they were all in mountaineering boots, it can't be that hard right? - Wrong!! Most everyone spent little time with the grace and beauty of climbing and looked for the closest gear, sling, or piton to yard themselves up as their feet slipped wildly. What really got my attention was watching a leader yank on an old piton that is wiggling and risking a 30' factor 2 on a slung horn, relying solely on that piton. ( see image below)

Needless to say, we slowed down a bit and Marcy, being pulled backwards by the 20lbs of rope on her back found the harder sections to be demoralizing as they were all both exposed and technically challenging requiring trust your feet friction climbing.

What followed was some easier, but much more stressful climbing. The centipede was attempting to multiply and eat itself. It was splitting in different directions by taking different variations on the easier terrain - the problem being that everything constricted back together for the crux moves. Sure enough we got exhumed by all the parties since we lacked the necessary French aggression. we were forced to wait hours to get on the key sections. Needless to say, the extra stress caused by the great feast didn't help to ease Marcy's already ramped up nerves. So we just hung back and tried to do things at our pace My main take-aways were 1) use the short rope technique of small pitches if you want to pass people or not get so passed ( not sure it made the climbing any faster). 2) climbing free in France is not the norm 3) don't climb a popular climb on a w/e

So the Arete de Papillons is an amazing route with continued exposure on a superbly impressive Aiguille; however, the route itself ends at an anti-climatic col before rapping into a couloir only a fraction of the way up the peak. This helped to understand the scale of just how big these mountain and climbing potential truly is here. At this point it was closing in on 8pm and our dreams of catching the last tram at 6pm had long passed. We safely made it down the descent, passing the empty tram station and mindlessly slogging 4hours to the valley floor at 30 minutes 'til midnight, in what we have coined the Walk of Cham! Since we managed to make it within the same day it can't be considered a true epic, but an epicini might be appropriate.

This experience left us bruised, but luckily for us our memory is quite short and 2 days later we were on the 6:30 Tram all the way to the Aguille Du Midi to climb the Pyramid du Tacul. We wanted revenge so we chose a shorter route with more of an alpine setting and easier climbing.

The hike to the base was un-eventful. But once we reached the base we received a very sobering reminder of the objective dangers. The route description describes the possibility of serac fall during the final few hundred meters of the approach and I had even commented on the heat that radiated from that section of the approach - sometimes its important to use that spidey sense. Well Marcy and I heard a large cracking sound and ensuing rumble. We then had time to look at each other inquisitively. A few minutes later, a large avalanche started to flow past the base of the route and continued for nearly 20 minutes, as a major chunk of the serac calved off.

We figured we were safe on the rock so continued on route. The route was really fun with amazing views of the surrounding peaks and glaciers. We did an alternate crack which was phenomenal and then the rest of the route only had a few moderate cruxes on beautiful granite.

The real challenge was on the descent when our rope got caught 3 times requiring me to re-climb one of the pitches over and over again. This delayed us a bit and we were back at the base having to deal with the serac slope at 4:15 with the final tram at 6pm -a typical 2.5 hr return. We decided to bee-line it across the slope and then descend a more safer slope to minimize the objective danger. The re-pproach was 2.5 miles and 2000' of uphill travel back to the tram so the race was on. We put a blistering pace for the first 2 miles, but with a short bit to go I started to bonk. At 6pm we were at the base of the last ridge to the tram. At 6:15 we were back at the tram, but saw hundreds of people still at the station. Apparently it isn't easy to offload all the tourists so there is a couple hour buffer. At this point we vowed to avoid the unnecessary stress and pressure that the time-limit of catching a tram involves for the remainder of the trip.

Another weather system came through the following days so we escaped to Italy. We ended up in Finale Ligure to mountain bike, but also heard that it was a world class climbing destination. It was pretty hot and humid, but the appeal of climbing out of the Mediterranean see was to much to pass up. So on the last day there we rapped into a few routes- the climbs were fun though a bit sandy and the thrill of rappelling to the base of a route and then pulling the rope always gets the heart pounding.

On our last full day in Cham we decided on one last climb in hopes of beating another weather system that was supposed to role in on the evening. This was the Perroux route on Aiguille de L'index This one was was on the Aiguille Rouge range which is across the Chamonix Valley from where we climbed early. The main appeal was that it only had a 5 minute approach from the lift and was fully bolted. The tram was full of climbers so we feared long lines and chose the more challenging, but less classic route. This route meandered a bit but had quality rock and some really fun climbing throughout - never terribly challenging until the final move. On the last couple moves the route merges with the popular arete route so we chose the technical finish. This route was such a great way to finish off our climbing in Europe as we had amazing views of the whole Mont Blanc range. Right as we got to the tram the rain started so it was even more satisfying to know how well we timed this route.