UKC

After watching David Linnett's latest gem, You Tube recommended several things, as it is wont to do.
A video about tanks (eh?)
A Mitchell and Webb sketch (check)
And this - youtube.com/watch?v=AY12w1FhIVs&
A completely insane traverse of Mt Blanc from the Montenvers station (the bottom one), up the Mer de Glace (and no sissy paths around Montenvers, either), the Trois Monts and down the Gouter.
No mechanical transport (well, they used a car to get to the start and I think the train down from Nid de l'Aigle), no huts and no epics
Pretty impressive.

W don't see this route discussed much....

In reply to pneame:

Wow, certainly a different approach. On the go for a week - the very opposite of fast and light, but every bit as impressive as any speed ascent, in its own way!

In reply to pneame:

Thanks for that Pete, enjoyed looking at it from a different perspective.

In reply to pneame:

Pure suffer fest! Looks great

In reply to deepstar:

I was waxing lyrical about how completely insane this was and how no-one in their right mind would do this, etc etc to Mrs pneame. Her comment "Oh come on. If someone suggested this when you were 22 you'd have been right on it"

I'd like to imagine I was more sensible, but perhaps she's right

I think the comment about waking up to the view down the Mer de Glace sums it up... fantastic.

In reply to pneame:


Of course you weren't. I've seen the pictures!

In reply to jon:

Oh dear.

In reply to pneame:

Well, they did seem quite clueless. And very lucky. I thought up to the Midi it was all good fun, Boys Own adventure and all that. I couldn't make out whether they'd gone up past the Requin or if they'd just marched into the middle of the Géant icefall? Clearly their first crevasse on the Envers du Plan glacier spooked them, what with crawling over the snow bridge. Thank goodness they'd roped up!

After that... well it sort of changed gear. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have continued over the 3 Monts after a fatal avalanche that day on Tacul killing four, my girlfriend begging me not to go and my partner backing out...!

I don't think he did get the train down from Nid d'Aigle.

In reply to jon:
I'd agree. A bit clueless. One of them seemed to have a bit of experience and he was the one that carried on. The other bailed at the midi.
Yes they were lucky! They went up next to the icefall I think, bivvying just above the requin.

In reply to jon:

It seemed a bit strange to me to be spooked by a serac falling when they'd already been in the mountains several days with all the objective danger that entails. Avoiding serac territory should be pretty simple, shouldn't it? I haven't been to an area with seracs so I've only read about it.

They also seemed to walk on the lower part of the first glacier unroped without ice axes. I don't know how that particular glacier looks but I wouldn't do that, especially not in a part of it that seemed very crevassed.

In reply to TheFasting:



Without looking I guess you mean lower bit of MdG.. perfectly safe dry glacier, all crevasses visible etc.. often if there is enough dirt in the ice or rough ice, then no crampons needed either. You can do an hour or two up it no problems at all.

In reply to pneame:


I meant whether they'd got off the glacier, up the ladders and up the grassy slopes to regain the glacier above. I thought just getting from the ice to the ladders when I last went up there was quite tricksome when I was last there. The icefall from there onwards definitely looked like death on a stick - and by that time I don't think they'd even got their rope out (of its plastic bag)!

In reply to TheFasting:


In general, one can usually work out a way to avoid serac danger. As with all thing sin the mountains, though, there are times they can't be avoided. Then other mitigation strategies come into play - time of day, possibly unroping, minising time exposed to danger etc etc. Being under a serac can be a fairly bum-tightening experience!

In reply to summo:

I've been on dry parts of glaciers before, but even if you can see the crevasses if you start sliding you're on bare ice and won't be able to stop. Assuming "dry glacier" is the same as what we in Norway call the "blue ice", meaning the part without much snow on it. Maybe some people do that part unroped to move faster, but that seems like a big risk to me.

In reply to TheFasting:

I suspect we have grittier glaciers in the alps than in Scandinavia? it's very common practice to walk across a dry glacier in boots.

There is often some horrible terrain at the edges as glacial retreat continues apace but fortunately the councils are keen to help the tourists by extending the ladders every year.

In reply to alasdair19:

That will be interesting to see when I get there. They do look dirtier, at least, but that's not surprising considering there's a city with a lot of people in it close by to the glacier.

In reply to TheFasting:

its rocks & gravel, not dirt

In reply to Doug:

What is dirt?

In reply to TheFasting:


I think it was more the fact that said serac had just killed four people.

In reply to jon:

Maybe I'm weird but if they needed that to get scared then maybe they didn't know much about objective dangers on mountains like that? I wouldn't get more scared because of that, considering seracs falling it mostly random (except for factors like time of day, temperature), it's part of the roulette you play every time you're up there. But cancelling the climb out of respect for the dead would be different. Just strange to me to get scared at that point. Maybe I'm missing something.

In reply to jon:


I liked the plastic bag touch as well. Since when did ropes start getting packed in plastic bags?

I suspect that they took the easiest route given that they had humongous loads.

In reply to pneame:


When they come out of the shop!


I know they were quite precise about the weights of their packs - 29kg and 38kg - but have you ever tried putting a 38kg pack on your back, let alone walking up the the Aiguille du Midi with it?

In reply to TheFasting:


I think seracs falling is almost entirely a random thing, as it's (mostly) a product of ice flow dynamics rather than temperature. Of course the ice flow dynamics is a result of temperature but over a much longer time base (weeks/months). What is less random is the fact that that once a serac has fallen, it frees up ice behind it to then become unstable, so resulting in additional collapses. So I'd be a bit reluctant to go cruising across really fresh serac debris.

But this is, of course, being typed from the relative comfort of a house. And not from the point of view of a glaciologist either. I'm just a typical UKC "expert"!

In reply to jon:


Not in my day - although the memory may be a bit shaky here. My ropes are over 15 years old.


Second trip to the alps (by train) the sacs on my back and front weighed about 40 kg (per my dads bathroom scales). Dropping those to the ground on Snells field was a wonderful moment and I'd only walked from Les Praz station. I can't imagine slogging up to Montenvers with that. I'm sincerely impressed with their doing that.