French Alps : Summer 2006

9 UBESters went for three weeks to the Alps. We travelled in three cars from Bristol, finding most of France really boring and flat. We camped in the Chamonix valley for the most of the trip at the Glace d'Argentiere campsite in Argentiere. Our site became known as the 'student slum' to fellow campers as we did have a tendency to not wash up and leave our washing out.

For a warm up our first hill we climbed was Mont Buet, the walking was fairly gentle and the snow was great for recapping crampon and ice axe skills. We stayed in a hut halfway up the hill which was really cosy. As someone who had never been to such high hills I was so taken aback by the scale and height of the mountains, swearing they were actually paintings. The best bit, except for the stunning views, was sliding back down at great speed, glissading.

In the first week we went up to the Glace de Mer for a day to learn how to walk on glaciers and crevasse rescue. We got two instructors for this bit. The French one was pretty mad and ended up dropping someone's b-lay device down a crevasse, to which he thought the right thing should be for him to solo down it to find the missing device. Never the less we learnt many contrasting methods off the French and British guide, so ended up knowing quite a few useful techniques for glacier navigation. Now all we had to do was use them.

We regularly used cable cars to get up to the snow and start the route from there, this saved loads of time, but did cost. One of the routes we tackled was an extremely alpine route, the Petit Aiguille Verte. We placed loads of gear and ice screws to clamber up the peak, at times the technique required was of ice climbing. The time it took us to cover the glacier and rocky arête surprised us, but we were being extra safe as the exposure was great.

Whenever we had a rest day, or the weather was bad we went sport climbing for as much of the day as possible. In the end we  climbed for a little under half of the time we were there, so got pretty good, especially at large multi-pitches. Dave 6 and Doug did one huge multi-pitch which required 12 abseils to get back down, crazy.

When it rained we headed into Chamonix to look at gear shops or museums. Also the world cup was on, so we watched a lot of games, of course it was pretty special being in France at the time as they were in the final. Though looking back we should have nipped across the border to Italy were the mood after the final wasn't so sour.

We attempted Mont Blanc du Tacul, but unfortunately at 4000m the altitude got to some of us, so the hard, but only safe option was to admit defeat. One of the problems is that we hadn't gone up high for a quite a few days due to rain, so a lot of the acclimatisation had worn off. However this only adds to the list of reasons why we should come back to the alps to finish off the job.

The last expedition was to the Swiss border up the Glace de Amethyst. We stayed in a mountain hut just off the Glace de Argentiere on the way up. This was pretty cool as we did some marmot watching, saw an amazing sunset and watched helicopters deliver people and food to hut through out the afternoon. In the morning we headed off (again) at alpine o'clock, around 4-5am, and walked up this pristine and remote glacier we had all to ourselves. The view from the col of the Swiss Alps was amazing. Getting back down was a little more hairy as we decided to take the direct path down having to jump over numerous crevasses. On the wet part Adam fell through the snow down one crevasse, but only up to his waist. Of course we were roped up, so a rescue wouldn't have been a problem.

The last two days we went to the valley of Sixt fer Cheval, for a bit of a change we went white water rafting and enjoyed their Bastille day celebrations. This was pretty odd was we weren't French, but we got involved with fire sticks and went 'ooh, ahh' at the fireworks. Lots of thanks to Kate for all the organisation she put in, Adam for his good mountain advice, all the car drivers and my CD writer for churning out some pretty cool CDs.