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I was on the bus, arriving in Chamonix on the final leg of my long journey from New Zealand, admiring the glistening summits four thousand metres above the valley. Dan Joll sent me a message, a 5 day weather window was rolling in, and he was packing for a big mission. A ridge traverse of Les Drus, a linkup he had been dreaming of for several years. I was keen, it seemed like a great way to acclimatise to the great mountains of the Mont Blanc region, living on a ridge line for several days, living and breathing French air. I mentally treated this as a tramping trip instead of a trail run: although the extra weight would slow us down making steep climbing harder, I remembered how refreshing it is to be relaxed at the end of the day as darkness approaches, setting up a bivouac on the summit, instead of stressing about the long descent.
This would be my first climbing experience in Chamonix, and as soon as we began the approach beyond Montevers train station, I would find all the rumors of The Alps to be true. Industrial scale ladders bolted to the cliffs, Hundreds of trekkers and guided clients swarming across the glacier ice, checkered table cloths spread across boulders laden with baguettes & wine. But after scaling ladders towards Chapeau Refuge, we would have the mountains to ourselves.
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| Scrambling the lower section of the Flammes de Pierre (Flames of Stone). Photo: Dan Joll |
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| Chris and I scrambling the lower section of the ridge. The exposure builds. Photo: Dan Joll |
At daybreak we left our grassy bivouac at the base of Flammes de Pierre to begin the mile-long ridge traverse towards Petit Dru. Climbing was rapid, mostly easy scrambling but with complicated route finding. Un-acclimatised and still mildly jet lagged, above 3000m I started to suffer a strange brand of fatigue, gasping for breath after pulling each of the strenuous rock steps with the heavy pack. Daniel and Chris traded long simul blocks, stretching the single rack 100-150m per pitch.
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| Simul-climbing higher on the ridge. Long stretches of easy but complex terrain were the norm with tricky route-finding between the many gendarmes. Photo: Dan Joll |
Just after sunset we reached a plush bivouac spot 50m below Petit Dru and dropped our loads with relief, a 15 hour day. I lead off in search of snow to melt, fortunate to find a cave full of ice smears to pain stakingly chip away. Despite our altitude of 3700m, our lightweight bivvy setup kept us comfortably warm. It consisted of a 650 gram quilt sleeping bag and a 2 person bivvy bag with openings at each end to allow 3 people to fit. The foam from our packs and lightweight air matts kept us lofted from the rocky base.
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| Brewing up a hearty dinner at our bivouac near the top of Petit Dru. The wiped facial expression captures the exhaustion of the day. Photo: Dan Joll |
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| Early morning vista from the summit of Petit Dru, my first Chamonix peak. Photo: Dan Joll |
Early the next morning after a spectacular daybreak, I discovered another Euro cliché on the summit of Petit Dru, a statue of the Virgin Mary gazing out to the valley where Chamonix was just waking up. Traversing to Grand Dru involved a single abseil and two pitches to our second summit via a thrutchy chimney made easier by a fixed rope, and made harder by a large backpack. By now every crux section would not leave me in such fits of deep breathing - the time sleeping up high was helping my acclimatisation.
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| Grand Jorasses at dawn. One of the most famous North Faces in the Alps. Photo: Dan Joll |
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| Traversing the notch to the Grand Dru. How to attack this next peak? It looks steep! A deceptively easy route wound up the left hand side of the pinnacle. Photo: Dan Joll |
Traversing between the Grand Dru and the Arete de Sans Nom was one of the chossiest stretches of the route. Six raps from the summit brought us below the Pic Sans Nom, where a loose diagonal traverse through unknown and rarely travelled ground landed us in a stripped back gulley of rotten snow raining with stone-fall, and gritty granite slabs. Two heady pitches eventually freed us from this dangerous section, which in June or July would be an easy snow plod. Mist & fog now encircled us as we quested upwards to Aiguille Sans Nom, Daniel relying on his memory of the face to guide me up the correct line of rock ribs and snow couloirs.
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| Chris belaying on Aiguille Sans Nom as the mist rolls in. Photo: Dan Joll |
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| Delicate slab climbing in boots. Photo: Dan Joll |
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| Graunchy crack climbing in boots & gloves. A wide crack fit a knee on the left, while a thinner crack allowed perfect hand jams on the right. Still a strenuous piece of work. Photo: Dan Joll |
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| Chris pulling over the steep pitch with the sweeping striped glacier, Mer de Glace below. Photo: Dan Joll |
With my one Petzl Quark I climbed gritty mixed terrain and grunty sections of crack climbing in boots & gloves to reach the summit ridge of Aiguille Sans Nom. No ideal bivvy spot was to be found as our perfect forecast deteriorated into light snow and darkness closed in. As a result, Aiguille Sans Nom is now equipped with a brand new bivvy platform just below the snow crest.
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| Rising at the Aiguille Sans Nom bivouac. Photo: Chris Warner |
Running-shoe style boots seem to be very popular for less technical routes in the Alps, however the snow crest connecting upwards to Aiguille Sans Verte is renowned for having hard blue ice on the long traversing sections. We did not regret our heavier full-shank boots here, which was still precarious on some downclimbing sections with just the one axe. Flexible footwear and aluminium crampons would not have been a good time. Cresting Aiguille Verte's dome-shaped summit via the crisp snow arete was textbook mountaineering joy, and the outlook of all the Alps from this position in the morning sun was superb.
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| On the summit of Aiguille Verte. Photo: Chris Warner |
Here our plans to continue to Les Droites, another day's climbing, were foiled; the descent slopes were completely bare in the late season. The Whymper Couloir notorious for rock-fall was also bare. Instead we used the longer yet safer Moine Ridge for descent, following many cairns and 10 abseils just below the crest. Moine Ridge is rich in valuable quartz crystals and the evidence of crystal hunters mining efforts were spread across the ridge. Crossing the broken bergschrund was a relief, after 6 hours of very loose down-scrambling.
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| On the descent of the Moine Ridge. Photo: Dan Joll |
The Mont Blanc region is full of swaths of immaculate granite, but as we found on many sections of this traverse, that perfect granite is often broken into much smaller pieces. Even so this traverse covered some incredible and complex ground, multiple summits, high & comfortable bivvies, quality climbing at moderate grades, with great vantages of Grand Jorasses & Mont Blanc, and deserves to be a Chamonix classic. We realised that despite the current push towards light & fast alpinism, occasionally going slower & heavier gives you more time to relax and enjoy the mountains, rather than simply rushing through them. Don't come and go. Come and stay.
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| Our route across the integral ridge connecting Les Drus and Aiguille Verte. Photo: Dan Joll Topo: Chris Warner |
