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Rod's Euro 2010 - Trip Report 11-Jul-2010 At 6:35:46 AM rod

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L'Envers des Aiguilles 1/3

8am rendezvous and we headed off over the passes into Chamonix in Steve's fully loaded Fiat Panda. Organised all the gear in the carpark and got on a train to Montenvers.

Nice views up the valley lulled us into a false impression of the approach: something like 3 hours and lots of climbing down ladders before walking onto the glacier, walking along it, before falling off it inelegantly before climbing lots of ladders then traversing up to the still unseen cabane. It was kinda hot...arriving around 1PM we sat recovering for about 10 minutes before pulling out the guidebooks and settling on a couple of routes above the cabane: Le Piege was for Regis and I at 200m of trad granite it seemed like a nice way to spend the rest of the afternoon.

The 6b+ first pitch was killer, I ended up aiding it for lack of enough power and C4 #3 and #4's - Regis felt heavily reliant on rope stretch as I belayed him up on second which was good for my morale at least. From pitch 2 it became more reasonable both angle and gear wise: 6a+ well protectable; 5c well protectable; 6a or 6b well protectable with an interesting fin formation...pull on the fin and the "solid" nuts fall out...and a small roof that was pretty demanding before the chains; 5c nicely protectable and then a 5b finish. Easy rap off and then we spent a full 4 minutes on the walk back to the cabane for a feed and the usual crappy night's sleep.

Rolled out of bed at Axel's urging and we decided on a bit of a traverse across the glacier field for 30 minutes or so to tackle a 300m trad route in the 6a/6a+ range: Amazonia (RH side wall in the pic below)