Hi all, well I've had a brilliant October and did 3 more routes (in the Mont Blanc massif) with Jeff Ingman who came over at the end of the month.
We took the cable car up to the Aig de Midi and stayed up at the Abri Simond for 2 nights, doing 3 days of climbing.
Our first route was the Pellissier couloir, a fantastic gully on the Pointe de Lachenal. It was mostly ice with a bit of mixed and then a full-on rock pitch (crampons off) to finish. Brilliant climbing - photo of the 2nd to last pitch above.
The next day we attempted the Cascades de Cosmiques, which appeared to be formed enough. However, after a couple of interesting pitches (with some technical rock and thin ice smears) we found the crux ice pitch to be way too thin to trust and backed off. We then spent the rest of the day chilling out in glorious sunshine at the Abri Simond and enjoying the cloud inversion in the valley!
On our last day we set off to do the Midi Plan traverse (as a return trip due to the state of the glacier d'Envers du Plan). Unfortunately Jeff was feeling ill and it wasn't wise for him to continue. I teamed up with 2 French climbers, Francois and Maud, to do the route. As expected it was a fantastic outing, but quite an effort to reclimb the Rognon de Plan...it was interesting to note several parties turning back at the Rognon and the fact that we were the only party to do (and have recently tracked) the extra bit from the Rognon to the Aiguille de Plan.
I've added all the recent photos to my alpine web-album - link to this by clicking the title above.
Thanks to everyone I've climbed with this year - Olivier, Neil, Warren, Barry, Colin, Jeff, Francois, Maud - for making it a great one for alpinism!
Regards, Nick
