Winter in Chamonix and the French Alps

Spending a whole season in a place as dynamic as Chamonix in the heart of the French Alps is an interesting experience. Observing the conditions & season change through the months, and adapting to the most practical way to experience the mountains is a great learning process. From skiing, ice climbing, mountaineering, or rock climbing, all is possible in the Mont Blanc massif and surrounds, and is all a matter of patience. Here I will recall the various trips made over the course of the winter by the NZAT contingent of Daniel Joll, Lionel Clay, Kim Ladiges and myself.

If you are thinking of spending a winter season in Chamonix, this article should give you plenty of good ideas for climbing objectives in the area.

North Face of Aiguille du Jardin

It was 31st December 2018, Daniel Joll and I were heading into the Argentiere Basin for a different sort of Chamonix New Years Party. A rather cold one, seeing as at 8PM I discovered that a misunderstanding on my part had left me without a sleeping bag. Fortunately we did have a tent, and the night was not as arctic as one might imagine, nor a long one, as at 3AM we set off to the base of the 1000m high north face of Aiguille du Jardin, due east of the well-known Aiguille Verte. A route finding error at day-break in the middle of the 6 pitches of ice & mixed put us onto virgin terrain where we unknowingly scratched up a "new route". We call it getting lost in the dark. Above this technical section, a long snow & ice slog led to the summit, and being quite un-acclimatised, the altitude really hit hard for me. We reached the summit late in the day, exhausted, and commenced a gruelling 7 hour abseil descent back down the face by v-thread and downclimbing. A quick Jetboil of coffee at the camp was a sweet revival before the 2000m ski descent back to the valley, arriving back home at midnight. I was sick for a week.

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Alastair on the summit ridge of Aiguille du Jardin

Creator: 

D. Joll

Ice & Mixed Climbing - Argentiere, Mauvoisin, Cogne, Haute Maurienne

January in the Alps brought cold temps and plenty of deep powder snow. Great for skiing, but not so good for alpine climbing. Ice climbing around the Alps is quite different to Canada and requires a fair bit of "local knowledge", but the persistent ice hunter can still be rewarded. Chamonix's best ice cragging can be found in the Argentiere Basin, and in the early season Daniel Joll & Lionel Clay managed several good laps.

Cogne is a famous ice climbing area near the Aosta Valley in Northern Italy. On our visit to this classic area there was almost no snow - just clean ice streaks against the rock. Over 3 days we climbed several classic routes, but many were also not yet in condition. 

Mauvoisin in nearby Switzerland holds some mythical looking 100m+ WI6 routes, but with difficult access and avalanche danger - as is the case for many ice climbing spots. We only scratched the surface here, and the area would be worth another good look in future.

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Lionel ice climbing in Mauvoisin, Switzerland

Creator: 

D. Joll

Some of the best ice climbing of the season we found was in Haute Maurienene, 2.5hrs SW of Chamonix. "Sarret c'tun Jeu" is an incredible 120m ice formation glued to the canyon walls near Bramans. Further up the atmospheric canyon was the monstrous ice pillar of "Glacenost", a much revered ice route of the region. It was steep and chandeliered, but surprisingly a lot easier to climb than it looked! Always a pleasant surprise.

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Glacenost ice climb in the Haute Maurienne

Creator: 

J. Tuck

Failed Attempt on Scotch on the Rocks

Lionel Clay had come to Chamonix for 3 months to achieve his alpine climbing dreams and re-discover his old haunts of 20 years ago. However, his season did not start off well, with several failed attempts due to conditions and sickness.

First, Lionel and I decided to try "Scotch on the Rocks", a 300m mixed route on the east face of Mont Blanc du Tacul, on one of the coldest spells of the winter. As we camped on the glacier at 3500m below the route, the mercury dropped close to -30C. Who's idea was this? Even with double boots and thick gloves the following day we struggled to ward off re-occuring screaming barfies, and fought fruitlessly against sugar snow covered granite slabs. Our progress was so poor that we bailed by 11am and headed home.

North Face of the Petit Dru, Pierre-Allain

During the same February fine spell, Tom Seccombe & I were heading towards the North Face of the Dru. Thanks to the main cablecar that goes up to 3200m burning down the previous Autumn, we actually had to skin uphill on the approach (!), and didn't reach the base of the Pierre-Allain route til 2PM. The 850m mixed climb has one one good bivouac spot on the route, above the niche, about halfway up. Armed with headtorches and a full moon, we eventually reached the halfway bivouac at 11:30PM and brewed up into the early hours.

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The North Face of the Dru

Creator: 

A. McDowell

We finished the top half the following day, continuous interesting dry tooling in the M4-5 range, and plenty of grunty sections. Quality climbing. We abseiled all night reaching the base by 3:30AM, and proceeded to sleepily climb back up the 500m of snow to the top of Grands Montets, reaching our skis at first light. Skiing blurry-eyed down the empty skifield before first opening was surreal. Some of the best groomed pistes we had ever experienced.

Unfortunately Tom took a wrong turn in his sleep deprived haze, ending up in an area of the skifield which did not descend to the valley, and the lifts did not open for another hour. He painfully skinned back up the pistes while I starved outside his locked van in the carpark.

Modica-Noury, Mont Blanc du Tacul

Late February was the season for alpine ice routes. "Modica-Noury" is the type of route that gives Chamonix its good name. First lift up the Aiguille du Midi. 15-minute ski downhill, 15-minute skin uphill, and you're at the base of a brilliant 450m snow, ice & mixed couloir with a pitch of up to WI5 ice. Abseil the route on fixed anchors, ski down the Vallee Blanche, and back for dinner. There's few places in the world where such is possible in such a short day.

Alongside the Modica-Noury is the alternative of the Gabarou-Albinoni couloir, at a slightly easier grade, which Dan used as a good acclimatisation outing, rope-soloing the technical pitches.

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Dan Joll on Modica Noury

Creator: 

R. Smith

Pellisier Couloir / M6 Solar, Point Lachenal

Other superb ice & mixed routes we enjoyed into March were the "Pellisier Couloir" and "M6 Solar" on Pointes Lachenal. These were in the same vein as the Modica-Noury, and were great for quick day trips to gain good alpine climbing mileage without overly taxing the body. 4 or so good pitches of mixed climbing followed by 2-3 hours of off-piste skiing down the white valley. We realise that putting in plenty of time on moderate terrain is just as important as climbing hard routes, as on big alpine climbs, the key to success is more often a case of moving efficiently and comfortably on easy run-out terrain, than being able to pull M10 at the crags.

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Alastair on the Pellisier Couloir

Creator: 

D. Joll

Colton-MacIntyre, Grandes Jorasses

I set off up the Colton-MacIntyre with Lionel at the same time as Dan & Kim were attacking the Walker. It was a great feeling to have our two teams simultaneously climbing up this magnificent face - one on 1000m of rock, the other on 1000m of ice. We made good progress initially up the first ice field, 300m of bullet hard blue ice. Usually this is a 50 degree neve romp, but today it was to set the scene of the whole climb - an all-time calf-burner! This winter has been so dry that almost no one had ventured up the CM. Fortunately, the first ice step was in perfect conditions, and the second "Alexis" ice step was an exhilarating and tenuous pitch on a very thin streak of steep ice. Lionel led both of these technical crux sections and was on perfect form, finally seeking redemption from his now distant failures of the early season.

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Lionel climbing the first ice step on the Colton MacIntyre

Creator: 

A. McDowell

I took over the reigns on the top half as we neared the upper rock section. Late in the day, we were both feeling the strain from altitude and the relentless calf burn from all the 50 degree blue ice. Darkness fell just as we had reached a difficult section and we were no longer sure which way to go. Hours passed as we each tried dead-end streets with no success.

With seemingly nowhere to bivouac on this sheer face, we fixed the ropes to a few ice screws to see if we could find a ledge lower down. To our good fortune, we found a huge snow lump attached to the rock and we were able to hack out a small platform in the snow just big enough to both sit on, legs hanging over the edge, we brewed up hot drinks late into the night and stared out to distant lights, 800m up the face.

Rejuvenated from a somewhat restful night, we reached the summit at midday the next day. The descent was baking in hot afternoon sun, so we enjoyed a luxurious 4 hours of sleep on the summit, warmed by the hot sun and not a breath of wind.

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Lionel achieving his dream of climbing the Grandes Jorasses North Face

Creator: 

A. McDowell

The sun dipped below the crests of Mont Blanc as we began the long descent to Italy, following Dan & Kim's footsteps. Crucially, these footsteps ran out just before the difficult-to-find ladders, and we were totally stumped. Another night sleeping out on the glacier, so close to the end, this time without dinner.

We found the ladders early the next morning, and were enjoying fresh patisseries goods, re-united with Dan & Kim, in Chamonix by 9AM. Lionel had achieved his long-time dream. He had climbed ice & mixed to the top of the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses.

North Face Aiguille du Midi

Talking about accessible alpine terrain... A quick lift to 2300m and an hours walk will bring you to the base of the North Face of Aiguille du Midi, a 1000m face of rock and snow offering many moderate mountaineering lines that somehow weave through a steep looking face at quite an amenable angle. Daniel & Lionel climbed the classic Mallory-Porter early in the season in deep snow and hard ice.

I climbed it a few times later in the spring when it was coated in sticky snow and bucket steps - as convenient and satisfying as cardio training gets - with the best descent in the Alps, via cablecar back to the valley, back in time for lunch.

On my first lap, unsure of what the "crux" rock step entailed, I took a 35m half rope and tested out some rope soloing techniques to safely negotiate a little bit of scratchy scrambling, and finished at the top of the face at the Aiguille du Midi station 2 hours 45 minutes after starting up from the mid station. I felt that without all that extra gear I could go a lot faster, so two weeks later I headed back up one morning and completed the lap in 2 hours 25 minutes. It was so refreshing to climb a face of intimidating stature and height in such a short amount of time. This feeling of movement through inspiring terrain was such a treat after the earlier painfully slow and enduring North Face climbs.

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Lionel climbing the Mallory-Porter route on Aiguille du Midi North Face

Creator: 

D. Joll

More high-altitude granite

Into April the temperatures became ideal for more granite climbing off the Aiguille du Midi. Alastair & James Monypenny climbed Dame du Lac on the South Face of the Midi, and managed half of the Grand Capucin before running out of time in order to catch the last Montenvers train. A few weeks later, the Contamine route on Pointes Lachenal offered 8 pitches of amazing splitter climbing, the word classic gets overused but barely does it justice here.

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Alastair on the finger crack splitter on the Contamine Route

Creator: 

J. Gupta

Mont Blanc in a Day

It hit us all at once. We each doubled over in a foggy exhaustion, collapsing dizzily onto the glacier. Three thousand metres of vertical gain since midnight had brought us here. Memories rushed back of a failed attempt to climb the 4400-metre Mt Rainier, USA, in a day from sea-level. Surely I would have learned to respect the power of altitude on an un-acclimatised body? Fatigue, dehydration, sleep deprivation and now high altitude blended into a potent concoction. I slipped 100-mg of pure caffeine onto my tongue and stood up again as the pseudo-energy surged through my system. The crispy summit ridge of Mont Blanc was just within sight.

Johnie Briggs eyeing off the summit from the Dome de Gouter

The normal way to climb Mont Blanc via the Gouter route sets out a far more sensible itinerary. Take a train up to the Eagle's Nest, skipping the first 1500 vertical metres of trails through the steep foothills. Hike a few hours up to the Tete-Rousse glacier, and scramble up to Gouter Hut for a night's rest and acclimatisation. Summit day, back to the hut for a hot cooked dinner. Day three, walk a few hours down to the train for a quick descent to the valley.

Anna Wells slogging above Gouter Hut

But this is France. One night in the plush Gouter mansion cashes in at 84 euros. We could not stomach the expense, but more than this was our desire to climb light, fast, and when possible, all in a single day. My partners for the mission, Anna Wells from Inverness, and Johnie Briggs from Yorkshire, shared the same mentality and were psyched on the objective. MBIAD.

We set off from the Church at Les Houches (a short ways down valley from Chamonix) a stroke after midnight. We packed a minimal yet conservative amount of equipment - we didn't know exactly how cold the upper mountain would be, nor how gaping the glacier would be in the late season. Warm gloves, waterproof and down jackets, helmet, aluminium crampons, 20-metres of thin rope for the glacier, 120-cm dyneema sling and one locking carabiner as a harness. Food for twelve hours. Everything fit into my 9-litre running pack.

Our light sacs rested easily on our shoulders, and compared to the loads on a normal technical alpine climb, they felt weightless. We floated up the initial thousand metres by headlight. Above the bushline, the night's chill froze dew on the boulders and we skated across the slate boulders.

From the bare and cracked Tete-Rousse Glacier, we could see the rock scrambling route up to the Gouter hut traced out by a myriad of headlamps. Now it started to become exciting. Unhindered by excess gear, we started picking off teams up the occasionally steep rock face, one by one. As expected for Mont Blanc's most popular route, the buttress was lined with steel cables, every hand hold polished and no loose rock to be found - if a rock even wobbled, we were probably off route.

The vista back to the Chamonix Valley

Crowds of French mountaineers licked at our heels emerging from the Refuge hut as we started to ascend to the snowfield to Dome de Gouter in the dawning light. We were struggling with the altitude, and our pace slowed to a halt. This invisible force dragged us to the ground, Anna collapsed onto the snow in a haze. I soon joined her. Johnie remained stoic but he too was not immune. The well-rested and acclimated French teams cramponned slickly past our ragged crew, we felt weak like peasants. The surge of caffeine into my system fought off the dreariness of a sleepless night and we rose to our feet to finish the job.

The challenge of a 3800-metre elevation gain into the thin French air now made itself known. The final snow crest, L'arête de Bosses, felt like a Himalayan struggle. I could never stop for too long to rest, the chill seeped through my thin approach shoes numbing my toes. I forced my core to overheat to pump warm blood to the extremities.

The Bosses Ridge

But the final narrow and exposed ridgeline was spectacular, and it was an emotional arrival onto the roof of Europe. Despite the route itself being very easy technically, our shared experience of the altitude struggle and holding to a pure & lightweight style floor made the whole climb fully memorable. We arrived back in Chamonix just as Autumn's first storm swept the valley with rain and snow, and the Turkish Kebab shop opened for dinner.

Full of stoke on the summit

Traverse of Les Drus & Aiguille Verte, Chamonix

The Integral ridge spanning the Flames De Pierre to Aiguille Verte should be one of the iconic Chamonix alpine climbs. Over the course of five days in late summer, Daniel Joll, Chris Warner and I traversed the granite skyline ridge connecting Les Flammes de Pierre, Les Drus, Aiguille Sans Nom and Aiguille Verte, descending via the Moine Ridge to Couvercle Refuge. The 3 days of climbing involved traversing 3 kilometres of complex ridgeline, bagging 4 summits, ascending over 2000 metres of technical terrain, with 2 bivouacs just below the summits of Petit Dru (3700m) and Aiguille Sans Nom (3950m).
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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.

Scrambling the lower section of the Flammes de Pierre (Flames of Stone).
Photo: Dan Joll

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.

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.

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

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.

Grand Jorasses at dawn. One of the most famous North Faces in the Alps.
Photo: Dan Joll

Instead of rushing over the summit of Grand Dru, we used the morning sunshine to dry our wettened sleeping bag and brew up hot drinks for about an hour. It can seem counter-intuitive to spend such time resting but we realised keeping hydrated on a long route was key.

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.

Chris belaying on Aiguille Sans Nom as the mist rolls in.
Photo: Dan Joll

Delicate slab climbing in boots.
Photo: Dan Joll

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our route across the integral ridge connecting Les Drus and Aiguille Verte.
Photo: Dan Joll
Topo: Chris Warner