Aiguiilles Rouges

My first real trip up into the Alps.

As some of you have heard, a few weeks back I took a hike up one of the Alps with Fredrik, my colleague and office mate. The range in question is in the Chamonix region of France where some of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen live. Dominating the landscape is the Mont Blanc. This is the highest peak in all of Europe (unless you count one way over in Eurasian Russia). Even from CERN, which is an hour drive away from Chamonix, Mont Blanc makes for quite a horizon. On clear days when you can really see it, you almost can't look away. In fact it is a selling point on many apartments "has great view of Mont Blanc".

So anyways, Fredrik is an Alpine climber, or Alpinist, or as our advisor calls him 'crazy'. Basically hiking up a 'real' Alp means that there are no trails to follow. You will probably have to do some rock climbing of some degree of difficulty. Ropes are a plus. There may be snow, glaciers, narrow traverses over rocky ridges, 1000ft drops nearby, avalanche danger, falling rocks..... Note I said MAY (it really isn't that dangerous on anything I'm climbing, Mother), the "iggy rue" are considered to be among some of the easiest of the alps to climb. Precisely the reason that Fredrik took me up this particular mountain as a first trip.

When we first arrived in the town of Chamonix we drove up to a big lift which took us to ~1700m. Now one doesn't have to take the lift up the first part of the mountain, but doing so means you can skip all of the easy hike, and skip right to the fun part. The lift is there mainly for the winter skiing season, and it looks like a great place to go skiing. However in August there was very little snow at this altitude. The hike up to 2300m was very pleasant. Actually this part of the trip has real paths and quite a few people. At 2300m there is a very pretty blue lake, called lac blanc. This of course translates to 'white lake'. Apparently, the region has warmed up significantly, but in previous times, the lake was frozen almost year round and 'white'.

The trails ended at the lake and the last 500 meters of vertical climb were the real Alpine part of the trip. We started by just climbing up a ridge that went up to the peak we were trying to climb, Crochues. There was a bit of bouldering and scrambling up rocks and even a few patches of hard snow to climb across. Nothing too difficult.

Then came the real snow. This was just below the glacier and a rather large field of snow that we had to climb up. It is rather interesting to climb up a steep slope in hard snow. You have to concentrate to be sure that you don't slip and fall and slide a few feet back down. In addition, you have to probe to be sure that the snow is actually solid where you are about to walk. You don't want to step where the snow has melted underneath. On this peak this wasn't a big issue, you would only end up with some wet pants/boots. On a more challenging climb it could be, well bad. This level of 'engagement' is one more thing that makes a alpine hike unique.

Finally we made it up above the glacier and to the next rocky ridge. Here things got much steeper again. We had to put away the ski polls and use both hands to scale up the rocks. It was still easy enough climbing that no ropes were needed though. Finally we made it to the top of the peak and had a brief lunch. The view from here was absolutely stunning!! Much more so than the pictures can show. It was very 'airy' as all sides just dropped steeply away from you.

After lunch Fredrik pulled out the ropes and we tied ourselves to each other. We then proceeded to traverse the ridge to the next peak. This part of the range has three peaks all in a line, closely together with a narrow ridge between them. Our goal was to traverse all the way across and back.

Now you might be asking yourself, what good is tyeing the two of us together? If one falls, then what? Well actually the idea is that in between the two of us, there were spots we attached the rope to the rocks. This can be accomplished several ways. First a sling can be used which loops over a outcropping and is then clipped into the rope. Second, one can just weave the rope back and forth between rocks as you climb. Then if you happened to fall, there is enough friction that you can't pull someone else down. Lastly, really lastly, on a ridge as we were climbing, you can fall on both sides. The simple solution is, if I fall right, Fredrik jumps left. We used the first two methods but had no problems at all. However before we made it up the third peak, the weather started to look a bit threatening so we turned around a bit early and headed down the mountain.

Down the mountain was basically the reverse of up the mountain with one notable exception. The snow. Fredrik, if you recall is crazy. Well not really, but he is an avid skier and has very good balance on the snow as such. So while I slowly and methodically trudged down the snow covered mountain face, he was sliding down it, one foot in front of the other, skiing. Then running back up and doing it again. Finally I thought, enough of that, I'm going to give it a try. I slid about 5 feet before toppling over, and then slid about another 200 feet probably. It was a bit terrifying, but nothing really bad happened. Afterworlds Fredrik showed me how to stop if I happened to fall on the snow.... After shaking off the adrenaline rush, I practiced that again. Skiing still didn't work, but at least I could stop when I fell.

The rest of the trip home was relatively uneventful, but relaxing. There really is nothing like coming off of a mountain and just falling into a car seat and relaxing on the way home, endorphines slowly dissolving away. I want to go again!