Aug/060
A real climb : Aiguillette d’Argentiere
So there's only so much you can do climbing indoors or on small training crags like servoz or gaylands. Yesterday I finally did a proper climbing route. It's called the Aiguillette d'Argentiere, a needle of rock at around 1900m overhanging the Valley floor. There's a drop of around a thousand meters or so down to the village of Argentiere below. This isn't a picture I took, because like a twonk I'd run the battery down on my camera the day before, but the weather in this picture is remarkably similar to yesterday's weather.
My friend Steph had invited me to join her and her 2 university mates for the day. A bit embarrassing for me, though as the hike up showed up how unfit I am compared to the sporty girls I was with, trailing up behind them at the back needing to stop for a few rests that they didn't. Very humbling.
To do it means first driving up the valley and parking the car, before hiking up-hill for a further hour or so carring all your ropes, harnesses etc in rucksacks before reaching the base of the Aiguillette. From here there is a slab on the mountain side with some bolted climbs to get warmed up. Handy, because it was a little cold at the 1900m in the wind I've only ever climbed outside in beautiful warm sunshine on easy stuff.So we set up our gear, and did a couple of climbs. Then onto the Aiguillette itself.
There are lots of bolted routes on the stack, and we picked two which suited. Steph led a route up the smaller stack which requires a scary leap of faith at the top to move across to the larger stack. Hannah and I found an easier route on the main stack, and I led that. It's not always possible to see where all the bolts are when you're climbing out in places like this, so as I began I could only see my first point of protection about 10m above me. That's a long way to fall if you mess it up. Too long. You might not die, but you'd almost certainly need a helicopter to get you home. But the climb wasn't difficult, and I didn't balls it up, so 10 mins later I was sitting on the top of the needle looking 1000m down into the valley below. Quite chuffed with myself I was too.
At the top of a climb there is an anchor (a ring of metal sunk into the rock) which you feed your rope through. Then your partner lowers you down, and then they can second the route with a top-rope which is a much safer way to climb. But in order to feed your rope through the hoop, you have to untie yourself from your harness. You have another separate rope called a sling to tie yourself on safely whilst you're doing that, so it's not dangerous. But if you did something silly liked dropped your main rope, you'd have no way of getting down. So you tie on with your sling, shout down to your partner that you're safe, or vache in French (as in... I'm tied up like a cow), feed the rope through, enjoy the view. Have a little chat if there's anyone else at the top with you and then once you're ready..... abseil down the rope you've just come up and it's your partner's turn.
We were done after a few hours and the weather was closing in, so it was time to hike back down. It was a very cool day. I've been wanting to try something like this for a while and I'm really grateful to Steph for inviting me along.
