Home  In Touch Chamonix Dec 06 |
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QM-Mar-07 - Chamonix Dec 06 |
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Chamonix, December 2006
Peter Flegg
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| Nobody enjoyed the 4am start driving from Newcastle to reach Leeds
airport for a 7am flight to Bergamo. Meeting up at the airport were
Bryn (‘the organizer’), Lewis, Graham, Howard, Clare Morely who drove
over from Borrowdale and myself, also friends Kenny, from Inverness,
and Reng, from Derby. Jorge, who had lived in Newcastle nine years ago,
and his friend Tony drove over from Madrid arriving in Chamonix on the
evening of New Years Day just as the snow started. |
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The first two days were very cold and four of the group sensibly (as
the weather turned out) opted to go ice climbing. The others spent
large parts of the day searching for snow.
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On the first day the four climbers took the short walk into Argentière and climbed the three pitch Moby Dick at La Crémerie in two teams. We had perfect ice conditions but the last pitch proved a bit tricky with a 50m rope restricting movement. Lewis also discovered just before the top that one of the bolts holding his pick in place had fallen out—the bolt was amazingly was discovered on the abseil 1.5 pitches down.
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Pete in Argentiere
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On New Years Eve the same group of four headed to Trient across the border in Switzerland. The walk into Secteur Odeyi was longer and steeper than yesterday’s walk and once again due to being restricted by other climbers our two teams of two followed the same route Label Bleu. The temperature had gone up and there was more water flowing. The lower pitches were easy but the final 5m on the top pitch was just off vertical and I found pretty testing.
New Years Eve saw us gather in the main square just before midnight with beer and a whiskey bottle (and about 50,000 other revellers). Later that same night, and now back at the hotel, the members of the party who were still standing danced the night away, not getting to bed until 5.30am.
Coming home from the restaurant on New Years day evening the snow
started and by next morning it was already about 15cm deep on the
valley floor. Everyone opted for skiing and after an aborted attempt to
get to the northern end of the valley (chaos on the roads) everyone
ended up skiing at Les Houches.
On the third of January Bryn, Graham and
myself hired snow-shoes and took the train up to Montenvers. We spent
about three hours walking back down to Chamonix (see cover photo), most
of the way through virgin, knee-deep snow.
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 Graham's made up in the white stuff
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| Most of the
group spent the last three days skiing until their knees could take no
more. This included a trip through the Mont Blanc tunnel to ski in
Italy.
Graham and I went out to Argentière again. We found the frozen
waterfalls were covered with 10cm of soggy ice/snow so we just
bouldered with axes and crampons at the base of the climbs and
practiced placing abolokovs.◄
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