UKC

Anyone know what the Aig Moine glacier is like at the moment? Do you think we could get away with one axe each only? Only one of us with crampons then belay second?

Trying to save weight for the approach, not staying in hut so lots of Vivi gear, food etc in packs.

Headed for Moine south face ascent and down in a day.

Thank you!

In reply to BobHoliday:

Not sure how helpful this is, but we did it three weeks ago and was fine with a single axe. The worst part was the decent back onto the glacier - we did a 30m abseil from some tat on the large platform at the start of the gully and it got us to just above the bergschrund, so was a bit dodgy trying to get onto the glacier from there...

We started from a Bivi by the hut at about 0600 and made it back to Montenvers about 17:45 - slightly underestimated how long it would take us to get back down!

In reply to hairy51:

I'm surprised the glacier is still there. Can't be much more than a snow patch now... I always used to take an axe and crampons then leave them and my boots on the platform you refer to, then do the S ridge (short version) in (comfy) rockboots.

In reply to BobHoliday:

One axe each And crampons each would be fine. Save weight by stashing your bivy gear and extra food etc.

In reply to goatee:

we did it last week and 1 axe is fine. There's a little difficulty crossing the schrund gap but the easiest place gets you to the infamous ledge. Definitely recommend stashing as much unnecessary gear there as possible before climbing.

We also underestimated the descent time to Montenvers and suffered a walk of shame back down to the valley, knackering ourselves for the next 2 days.

In reply to BobHoliday:
This won't be very helpful, and I don't recommend this to anyone, but when we did the same itinerary around 20 years ago, we didn't take axes at all. We figured (at this time of year) the Mer de Glace didn't need axes as it was bare, and the Moine neither as it was about 5 minutes plod up buckets, and mush on the descent, with a good runout.

Crampons are needed if you're going up the Mer de Glace in the morning, but I've never used them for evening descents, but I would always take them.

In reply to BobHoliday:

Thanks all. We summited and descended without a problem. There was a pretty decent sized snow slope and schrund as advised. We had one axe each and were glad of the crampons as the snow slope was quite steep near the top. In the AM it was pretty firm so without crampons would have been hard. In the PM on the way down it was pretty sugary so crampons were useful then also.