The alarm on the slightly beer bottle damaged Nokia slowly vibrates its way across the desk. I drag myself out of bed. One look at the screen properly wakes me... 4am? Why the hell did I think that I would want to be up at 4am two and a half hours ago? ...God this room gets cold at night, think I'll go back to bed. As I turn around to do just that I trip over my rucksack, all becomes clear, its time to wake up...
Half an hour later I'm walking in the direction of the nearest M50 exit, carrying two heavy bags of winter climbing gear. Leaving the house was a bit of a challenge, walking down a flight of creaky wooden stairs in a pair of fully rigid mountaineering boots cannot be done quietly! The roads are quiet; the only things up at this hour are angry cats, confused foxes and a guy who gives me a funny look as he drives past in his white transit van.
I'm meeting Rory's dad for a lift to the airport. Needless to say I'm still half asleep, but very psyched! I'm the only one of our group of four who had been climbing in the alps before, three weeks in Cham last summer was a steep learning curve to say the least! Ever since I arrived back to Dublin last summer I had been very psyched to get back out.
We're off to a small town called L'Argentiere la bessee, near Briancon in France, to go ice climbing with Calvin and Clare, and also to take part in the ICE (Ice Climbing Ecrins) ice climbing meet. Calvin invited us to come over to France and climb with him months ago, but due to other climbing and the general pressure as the college term progressed, our planning was a bit haphazard to say the least!
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| Very early in the morning... |
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| Not Tallaght... |
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| The out-of-condition artificial icefall |
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| The worlds largest piolet (Ice axe for those like me with only the bare essentials of french) My french totals about 10 words ranging from Bonjour (hello) to Fromage (cheese)... |
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| L'Argentiere la bessee |
Day 3: Calvin and Clare pick us up in the town and drive south towards Celliac. The last few kilometers were interesting, up loads of short switch-back turns to the high valley where there was ice! We climb a route called Le Y, about 5 pitches in total, each about 20m, with snow plods in between each. The grade was about 3+, with the last pitch a steep and narrow, maybe a 4. It was a very good route, nice to be climbing ice at last!
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| Celliac |
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| Ice, with lots of powder... |
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| Callum climbing |
Day 4: Very tired when alarm goes off. Its snowing. Looks like its been snowing all night, there a good foot more than yesterday. Still very much asleep, sure there's probably a high risk of avalanches up in the valley with the crazy ice where Rory and Sam were in yesterday, back to bed so... Later on involves shopping. Buying food for the next few days, cheap (but good) wine and a selection of cheese... Going back to the gite and eating a large amount of the food, wine and cheese! We manage to sign up for the ice climbing meet, and get seats on the free bus up to Celliac again in the morning. We were also able to borrow gear from some of the commercial stands at the meet, we must have taken maybe €2000 worth of high end ice axes and crampons to play with! Thanks Petzl, Black Diamond and all the other people who gave us free posters and stickers! Later on we get up to a bit of night time via ferrata, using some slings (which were all very much static... no falling off so...).
Day 5: Another early start. Walk to the ice meet hall. Find our bus. Go! No Wait! Just before we leave a guy opens the door of the bus and speaks to us in rapid french, we all have no clue what he's said, a Belgian sitting in front of us realises by out blank stares and explains what happening. Basically the guy has stuck his head in the door to tell us that Celliac is very dangerous today, there's a very high risk of avalanches, and were very likely to get hit by one if were not careful. This news, along with the avalanche transceiver wakes me up, avalanches guaranteed, yay!
Go go go! The journey to Celliac was interesting this time to say the least. With way more snow on the roads, the short switchbacks up to the higher valley were slightly unnerving. Very hard to tell if the bus/van-with-seats was skidding, or if the french guy driving was just giving it socks! Either way those wee crash barriers weren't gonna be doing much. After what seemed like miles of dodgy driving, and with the wheels spinning, it was time for some snow chains! (Which quickly fell off again, but found a few hundred meters down the road and secured properly).
On arrival, we were sent off in groups to the ice pitches, as a large event it was necessary to stagger the pairs setting off. Me and Callum were together again. We tried the right-hand variation of Le Y, while Rory and Sam tried the left. Good fun again, but way more crawling through powder snow. Can see why they made us all wear there avalanche transceivers... Finished the route early (only three main pitches this time), so tried some harder ice routes on a top rope the guides had set up. Grade 5 goes! Well have fun leading that route next year!
On the way back to the village, our van driver decided road conditions were good enough to not bother using snow chains (even though the other van in front of us was), oh god... switchbacks of doom!
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| Celliac, with snow... |
Day 6: Todays avalanche warning was at a level of 4+ on a scale of 5. Yesterdays warning had been high too but then we had been going to climb in Celliac, where you are relatively protected, except when crossing gullies on descent. There wasn't much hope of climbing ice as all the buses were full, so we decided to give drytooling a go. There had been a short period of time that morning when we considered going with a guide to a more remote icefall, but through the mix of english and french with which he addressed the onlooking group, it seems that to go with him involved crossing at least 10 areas of high risk of avalanches and probably ending up in hospital with broken limbs after running out of luck in one of these! We decided not to take him up on his offer!
Climbing the chossy slabs on top rope was relatively easy, but a soon as the rock began to overhang slightly on the harder routes, the climbing became an exercise in one arm lock-offs and how long your stamina would last! Good fun, but try it on Irish rock and you'll be cut, drawn and quartered by an angry mob! There was an drytooling competition going on beside us, watched the pro's climbing for a bit, will probably have to train a bit for next year!
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| Climbing choss |
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| Drytooling competition, serious one arm pull-up madness! |
Day 7: More time spent on trains. A night in Geneva before our flight home on Sunday morning. Leaving the grey skies of Geneva for the warm sunshine of Dublin, now that's unusual! The psyche for another visit to Cham in the summer is higher than ever! Who's in!?!
All in all, everything worked out pretty good. Conditions were the worst anyone has seen n years, we didn't notice! The ice we climbed was amazing, way better than the slivers we sometimes find in Wicklow! We were most likely saved from a very large epic and possible disaster by the research done by Sam and Alex, thanks guys! Thanks also to Calvin and Clare for inviting us and showing us the way!
They've made a wee video of the ICE meet, here it is: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1a1gtm_ice-climbing-ecrins-2014_sport
- Paul Collins
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