UKC

Will Sim writes about the history of major rockfalls on the Petit Dru in the Mont Blanc Massif, and climbing new routes on its iconic grey streak...

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Interesting but wasn't the west face first climbed by Guido magnone & colleagues in 1952, repeated in a much faster time by Joe Brown & Don Whillans a couple of years later & maybe before Bonatti climbed his pillar

I'm fairly sure Bonatti would take offense at the claim that he used "hundreds of steel pegs and wooden bongs." I don't have Mountains of My Life to hand, but I remember that he explicitly criticises a similar suggestion and states that he used a far more modest number of pegs (around 30).

Page 116, he set off with 79 pitons and 6 wooden wedges and certainly had quite a few left at the summit. So not hundreds.

Thanks for the correction!

By the time it fell down there were hundreds of pegs in the pillar.

Not at all I was supporting your viewpoint.

Something Bonatti writes about, as undermining the experience of mountaineering in various ways.