UKC

Has anyone got decent photos while doing a Brenva Face route in the past twenty years?  This is to do with the effects of global warming on routes in the Alps.  Having myself done three of the routes in the period 1965-1975, via interest sparked by Graham Brown's book 'Brenva', I wondered whether it would be worth comparing photos in the book with mine and some of the period leading to the present day.  This would provide a span of about 90 years when changes due to serac collapses and rock falls could perhaps be documented.  Summer time photos would make the best comparisons since snow cover would be reduced and compare best with Brown's original black and whites.

Can't offer recent action shots, but there's a 2011 telephoto of the key part of the face in my gallery.

Thanks for your response.  I probably have adequate distant photos (ie from Dent du Geant and Tour Ronde) having been there a few times 1965-1995, but am now too far gone (late middle age at 79) to get there on foot.  Obviously the rock falls and serac collapses in the last twenty years render the lower region of the face to be avoided.  I don't think that is risk aversion, but common sense.  There are plenty of other places to go - just a pity for traditionalists who wish to go to this remote place.  I also thought I might give my pics to the National Library of Scotland, where Graham Brown's material resides, to prevent them being thrown out with my ashes.

One in my picture gallery taken in 1995. Hasn't there been more snow and ice high upon Mt Blanc in recent years due to increased precipitation - but increased melting lower down? In which case changes on the Brenva face may not be so marked??

https://cdn.ukc2.com/i/159310.jpg

I think we decided that there hadn't been a lot of change high up and that most of the changes had been lower - i.e below about 3700 m. 

https://www.summitpost.org/avalanche-on-the-brenva-face-of-the-mont-blanc-a...

and 

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-rock-ice-avalanche-from-the-Brenva-...

and, of course, luca signorelli

https://www.summitpost.org/brenva-face/334466/c-872695

There's also the fabulous picture that H took, Jon, that I use as my desktop picture. 

Brown gave every detail of the location of each photo. Could someone just nip up and take repeats, please, so we can all compare? 

Is that paper your work?Really interesting. 

Off topic but very sad - our friend Arnis Strapcans disappeared in 1980, soloing, reputedly on the Brenva Face. What happened is still a mystery* - he just never came back. I was not in the Alps at the time. Still miss him

*though AMac posted about him in 2010:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/rocktalk/the_late_arnie_strapcans-423688

No, not at all! Somewhere, I think at about the age of 13, I made a mis-step and became a biochemist rather than a geologist. 

That is tragic. I'm a little surprised that those sorts of events were not more common, given the fairly cavalier attitudes of the time. I never met him (that I can recall) but I certainly knew of him. A star. 

Oh well 

Thanks for your contribution. He was a star, burned brightly, I still miss him as I said, I knew him well, gone 38 years ago, still hurts

So sorry to be late with reply.  I'm not used to viewing this UKclimbing site and potential for rapid responses.  Very grateful for your prompt to view your Sept 2011 shot of the Brenva face from a distance.  It looks bare.  It shows well the area of the rockfall/land slip of 1997 (or thereabouts) to the side of the start of the Old Brenva route, just above Col Moore.  And the Sentinel rock shows up well.  Both the Sentinel route and Route Major show more rock than when I was there in period 1965-75.

Thanks a million for responding.

Did you do all three of Brown's routes?

Hello Pneame - interesting pseudonym, sorry if I seem ignorant of these communication routes -  I'm a newcomer to the Ukclimbing site in terms of comments/replies.  I was certainly very impressed by the avalanche pic on the right (true left side of) of the B spur -you were truly on the ball to catch that one on film/camera.  I was also very pleased to see your comparative shots (1991 vs 2008), pre and post collapse of the south side of the area just above Col Moore.  Quite a change of profile, and new climbing requirement for a new section of the route (Old Brenva).  Also would cause some anxiety for parties continuing to Sentinel and Major, and even Ekpfeiler/Col de Peuterey for Freney.

To have a photographic record like that would surely be valuable to archivists documenting the effects of climate change on mountaineering routes?  Or would it have happened simply in the normal course of erosion, with nothing to do with climate change?  Discuss.

Hello PofD  Arnis Strapcans was a name in the firmament of hard climbers when I was at my best on rock  (HVS/E1) in the 1970s.  Sorry to hear you lost a good friend.

If he went soloing on the Brenva Face, and was lost there, sadly many years will pass before he surfaces

No - not my work! - it's a paper by Noetzli, Huggel, Hoelzle and Haeberli in Computational Geosciences in 2006.  Not at all my area of expertise, but as you say, some cool data and pics. 

It's hard to say whether it would "normally happen". The alps have been collapsing for millions of years, so yes, I think it would be normal. But certainly not helped by the warming trend over the last 80 years or so. Interestingly, there was a cold period from the the 16th century to the late 19th century, as I recall (not my direct memories!) - the end of this coincided with the "golden age of mountaineering". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

My impression is that the snow/ice cover higher up in Luca Signorelli's 2007 photo and my 2011 photo is much the same as in the late 60s/70s when I did the Brenva, Sentinelle and Major. The seracs also look just as big. By "higher up" I mean from about where the Major splits from the Sentinelle. Below this in the central couloir there's much more exposed rock in the recent photos than used to be the case (in 1969 it was snow/ice all the way to the safety of the Major ridge). There's also far more exposed rock on the lower part of the Brenva (below the snow arete) in the recent photos, but that's probably partly due to the rockfall.    

I assume the shrinkage of snow cover below ~4000m is a consequence of climate warming. Elsewhere in the Alps many of the north faces I did back in the day are no longer possible as summer snow/ice climbs. 

By the way, if anyone is interested in academic papers on the rockfall let me know and I'll do a search and see if I can obtain pdf copies.

Rob F   

I am no good at making links, but if you look at my gallery you will see several shots of the Brenva face ca 1965. 

Thanks a lot for your reply, it's much appreciated

Thanks for your response.  I'm very much a beginner at UKClimbing stuff, am really just a hap-hazard viewer - then I put up this enquiry about the Brenva Face, and lo! hundreds of viewers.  

Your Sept 2011 pic of the Brenva face, head-on (from where? Noire?) really shows the rock fall, the Sentinelle rock and Major.  Bare.  In crossing to the Sentinelle route in 1966 we found much more snow, with icy couloirs, to the Sentinelle rock then a steepish rise to a point where we had to cross the subsidiary couloir to reach the Twisting Rib, which here show more rock than we experienced.  See Tony Smythe's compendium (I mean Ken Wilson's Baton Wicks) of Frank Smythe, my pics at the back pp 896-897.

Shrinkage of glaciers and collapsing seracs and rock falls are part of what happens in mountains, regardless of possible climate change.  I just thought it could be interesting to compare pics of routes done before my time (ie the Graham Brown pics in Brenva), with my pics, followed by pics in the last twenty or so years, and perhaps document them for the interest in seeing how mountain (ie with snow/ice) routes can and have changed over almost a century.

Thanks - no I did Old Brenva, Major, Sentinel and Frontier ridge of Mont Maudit.  Wonderful.

Wonderful indeed! I wonder how many folk have done the Pear...?

The late Ray Colledge with desperate Dan Boone after they had done the Eiger North Face and Walker Spur, in 1969 or thereabouts?

Amazing to think when the photo was taken there were only about 8 completed routes in the frame.

Probably nearer 80 or 800 now.

Re the wide angle view photo of part of the Brenva face etc from the 'Times' newspaper in 1929,  I will soon be visiting the National Library of Scotland to access some of Graham Brown's huge bequest of written and photographic material.  The two prints of this photograph that I know about are in good condition, one being signed by Frank Smythe.

I thought that intro to 'Brenva' where, having survived WW1, he's lying in a meadow on the far side of the Val Veny, spying out his imagined lines on the Brenva face (that have kept him sane throughout the horrors of the war) was just about the most beautiful piece of mountain writing I've ever read. I've read it over and over. However, further on in the book his attention to detail is just staggering, almost obsessive with all the footnotes referring back to his photos and which shows probably a truer side to his character. It was therefore of no surprise when leafing through pages of old hut logbooks at Fluhalp up above Zermatt that I came across an entry by Brown (before climbing the Rimpfischhorn, I'd guess). All other entries were in black ink, in the most superb flowing script. Not Brown's though. Neatly printed in pencil as you would on a technical drawing!

Absolutely brilliant! Like coming across some biblical manuscript....

Wonderful.