A quick ski past the week before, another a few days later followed by some pixelated zooming in on dodgy photos, was enough for Mike and I to go and see if there was in fact dribbles of ice all the way up there in the North facing coombe above the Requin refuge.
It seemed like a life time ago since we had set off into the high mountains to climb anything hard. We hadn’t decided on a route in particular, we went to go and climb the ice/line that looked best. With three similar options in the area it was an old but familiar feeling of excitement and adventure that percolated pleasantly on our descent to the refuge, and ascent to the base of the routes.
The weight of the alpinism bag was a shock to the system after skipping around powder fields for the last two months- did it always used to be that heavy? Must be getting weaker. Must start training again. Manyana manyana.
The glacier is pretty broken directly under the routes so we skinned over the bergshrund from the (lookers) left, and began a long deep powder snow boot pack from left to right, climbing a spur and traversing into the base of the ice falls. We thought we were on ‘New Horizons’ but it was in fact ‘Ice is Nice’. They all look the same. The first few squeaky swings of my axes said it all. It was in(!) absolutely great condition. Each 50-60m pitch progressed steeply up the direct weakness between quality fins of granite. I got the crux pitch, which for the second time swinging axes this year went really well thanks to the forgiving conditions and practice lifting pints. By far the most sustained steep ice I’ve climbed in the mountains and such a great line to get early season.
Mike climbed a superb long M4 pitch afterwards, and seeing the rampy finish thick with more snow we (sadly) turned back from there. The diagonal down climb back to the skis was painfully slow and insecure so clipping in and skiing silky powder under the enormous blood moon that had risen felt all the more glorious.
A 13 hour round trip from midi gate to Chamonix qualified it as a classic ‘full day out’!
See a little video here.
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