UKC

Hi,
hoping to do this next month. A few quick questions for those that have been there:
1. if we walk off the back, are we likely to be able a hitch out, or are we best just fighting down the decent route?
2. how long are the pitches, i.e. can it be rapped on 50m ropes if needs be?
3. is the weather normally ok in Sept?
4. if you climb >HVS, is there any real need to take cams etc. for the top section?
Thanks

In reply to David Coley:

The descent route isn't that bad, but guidebook time is fast. We ran some of it and still took 30mins longer. That was after doing the route in 7hrs.

Don't know about rapping. We did it in late September. I think we took a few nuts and a couple of cams and were glad of them

In reply to David Coley:

Sussing out the approach so you can do it in the dark is worthwhile. It's quite complex.

In reply to David Coley:

Walking off the back leads to a forest clearing at the end of a dirt road, which is a few miles long. You might blag a lift if there was someone there - it is where the walking route starts, but if there was no one there you would be screwed,


Chris

In reply to David Coley:

1. Unlikely. Several miles off road leads to a road in the wrong valley
2. If you mean a pair of 50s then I'm sure it would be fine. Just one 50 and you'd have a lot of trouble.
3. Best month of the year for it weather wise
4. The climbing gets easier but still not trivial. The fixed gear almost completely disappears. Are you happy soloing Severe after a very long day?

In reply

Thanks everyone!

In reply to David Coley:

Yeah wouldn't bank on a lift. We tried this and there was almost no traffic late in the day. We were lucky enough to be offered a lift by the owner of a German run hotel when we enquired about a taxi there. Otherwise we would have been walking back to our car through the night. Our kind b&b owner had offered to pick us up prior but we had initially declined and by the time we took up his offer he had already had a couple of glasses of wine. If you are lucky enough to be able to team up with others then you can leave one of the cars in the car park for the easier descent.

In reply to David Coley:

As I recall (tempered by a few years of rose-tinted memory...?) the descent route is not fundamentally that bad, but routefinding in the forest would be significantly more challenging in the dark, avoiding potential drop-offs.

You might say our approach was over-engineering, but it's a possible solution if you don't have anybody to help out with a ride. On a previous day we did a climb on the east face, approaching from the poele de frire on the back of the mountain; I descended the forest with a GPS watch to record a "safe" route, and my climbing partner drove round to pick me up. That gave us a gps track to follow when descending from Les Enfants in case we needed it. In the end we descended in daylight and did not really need it, but it was nice to know it was there as a backup.

[Don't forget headtorches, as we subsequently learned another party behind us did that day...!]

Did this at the weekend. Great route. There seems to be a load of new bolts on the ridge line, and hence the confident probably don't need a small rack for this section any more.