UKC

South Ridge (D+ 5c)

Afternoon everyone, I was hoping to grab some info from anyone who has done the South Ridge Classic on the Aiguille du Moine, that is the shorter version that starts 30m up the Voie Normal, not the integral.

A friend and I are hoping to do a fast-and-light from town to the top of the Moine, we've both tried it a few times between us but have been turned around by weather, routefinding, or a partner's sudden sickness. Obviously the Voie Normal on the south face is the quickest and easiest route to the summit, and both of us are happy to bring a bare-bones rock rack, a 25m rope and a tag line for that, but I was wondering how little we could get away with on the South Ridge Classic instead. What's the minimum gear you'd be happy bringing, would 2x25m half ropes be enough, or would you want a bit more string available for some of the 5 pitches? We are happy moving together on 3s and 4s, are any of the pitches of 5 longer than our scrappy little ropes would allow?

A lot of people in the logbook seem to lean towards saying it's on the harder side than the guidebooks claim, I just don't want us to get bitten on something with a fast-and-light rack when there's a relatively easy route just a hundred meters to the right instead.

Thanks for any advice and opinions, team!

People who say it's hard for the grade probably mean hard for AD-, that it was given. With generous upgrade to D+ it is no longer hard for the grade, I imagine. As for what to bring only you can know based on your own experience and ability. I would bring longer rope, personally.

In my 1967 guidebook it was given AD 'with three short pitches of IV'. In my logbook I see there's no disagreement with the grade, except the last short pitch we did I said was 'V sup, v.short'. Apart from that, I remember it being a very easy, friendly route. Logbook says we took 4 hours, soloed first 1,500 ft. 'v tedious descent, 3 1/2 hrs (South face)'.

If you've got a good nose for spotting lines in descent you don't really need to abseil(unless the shrund is exceptional)  at all, it feels like grade 3 scramble/mod in descent if you find the easy lines. I'd just take a single rope 50 or 60m if going as a competent pair and a modest rack, but that depends if you will placing gear because you feel you need it and not just going through the motions every 10m or so. 

Smashing, we are leaning towards taking a single 60 now and taking it turns to carry on the way up from town. A little annoying to have the extra weight for 2400m of up, but I suppose it's better to have it and not need it than the other way around.

I've already seen somewhere between the lower third or half of the descent/voie normal, we aren't too sure where we got lost and bailed instead. We had to rap a couple of times then. Hoping to downclimb, but again, nice to have the option for longer raps if you need it.

Descent is not a straight line, you'll need to head out left (as you look down) to find the easy ground. But also not miss the traverse back across and down a few short shelves to where most people kit dump crampons. It is normal to just ab off the insitu as far as the rope will take you down onto the soft snow. 

Ps. I'd get the train up and bivi near the hut. An altogether more enjoyable style, looking at the jorasses as the sun sets etc.. 

Did that (the bikini and lamp spotting on Jorasse) in ‘82 then failed at the chimney/groove pitch. One of my first alpine routes, lessons learnt. 

Hi Pete. It's been a while since I did the South Ridge, but we did the whole thing and the descent on a 50m half without issue. As I recall there's one short tricky chimney on the face and a sharp boulder problem style 6m step on the ridge above a big platform. Don't remember any big pitches or abseils.

Props if you manage it in a day. I think we spent about that long lost in the moraine below the ladders!

Hope you have a great time

Tom

There's a few vids on youtube with detailed clips of the route. The gear could be evident on one of these, but that might be too much Beta? Shows what to expect though!

Train and bivvy just past the hut is indeed a great way to get to the area, and when I did that a few years ago the cluster of lean-to boulders with their nearby sandy beach and shallow freshwater stream remains one of the finest bivvy palaces I've ever slept in. Five star.

Thanks all for the information and opinions, all incredibly useful. Cheers.

BTW, I think I should warn you: it's not a particularly great route. It's OK, or perhaps a little more than OK. The summit's quite good, but it's embarrassingly dwarfed by the Aiguille Verte.

I can imagine! The original idea was a Whymper town-to-top, as a few people have been doing here recently, but we've decided that we can't be arsed with the extra 700m of uphill. We'll just have to make do with the Moine.

I remember when I got to the top of the Moine, looking up at the Verte, gasping at its grandeur, and thinking, Wow, Whymper did that too in 1865! The terrain looks very 'modern', the sort of stuff you'd piss up now in ideal conditions with front-point crampons ... but then ..! Awesome.

This is pretty much how I remember the view of the Verte from the summit of the Moine:

http://www.guides-morzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/aiguille_verte.jpg

May be worth considering the Contamine-Labrunie; it's TD/6a+, you don't need a big rack and it's a great route. We basically ran down the normal route to descend.

Well I certainly remember the big 3m high smooth block from the large horizontal ledge about half way up.  That required some most unethical tactics to overcome!

I really like the Aiguille du Moine as a viewpoint.  However I have always just missed the last train down when getting to the summit with arrival back in Chamonix around 9pm...

Ha, just re-read that the 80s were different but not that weird. Thank you auto correct for turning bivi into bikini. Could have added some spice.

There is a super good bivi under  a rock near the hut. So Maybe crash there and save yourself an epic?

Edit:

Sorry I have seen you have bivi'd in that area before. Notheless it is a reasonable size day out. Having the ability and kit to do that might not be a bad thing though. I once went up there with a group that moved too slowly and it was a real pain. 

Thanks all for the continued advice, with one of us weighing a 60 in one hand and a 30 in the other, and the second of us holding three nuts in one hand and the extra bits of metal we'd have to bring for the south ridge in the other, we wimped out and decided to do the south face instead. Setting off at midnight, it took just over fifteen hours from Montenvers car park to the summit of the Moine and back down to the car park. My map-and-string technique doesn't quite tally with my friend's GPS watch claim of 42km, but it certainly felt as though we'd covered that kind of distance. Of course fifteen hours isn't that good a finishing time for a marathon, but very few marathons have the Aiguille du Moine as their halfway point.

We are most glad that we didn't try for the original original plan of the Whymper on the Verte, as from the summit of the Moine it looked like the lower half of the couloir was getting horrifically dry, and indeed when we passed back over the terrace of the Couvercle hut later in the morning, we met two teams of two who had both bailed on it after complaining of a lack of snow.
 

Smashing day out anyway, and my last trip up into the hills for a while now, as I'm having ACL surgery in five days.

I much prefer the autocorrect version, and with the temperatures we've had here in Cham for the last few days (and weeks, and months...), it would be most appropriate.

Excellent. You reached the summit and got off safely, that's success in the alps, regardless of route choice.

In lean conditions, better to do moine ridge and come down whymper on the verte (plus move fast, lots of loose rock up there). 

There was another team of two who we sighted near the summit when we saw the Verte through lingering cloud at some point in the morning, and given the shitty state of the Whymper and how noisy it would have been when they came to descend, we can only assume that they were hoping to go down the Moine ridge. Unfortunately, it looked like it was in that ephemeral transition between winter and summer, with just enough snow to make an awful lot of the easy downclimbing on it considerably less-so.

Good for you Pete, must have been a great trip and I hope you enjoyed the well-deserved beer afterwards!