ALPINE GEMS T THE CLIMB
In early July, as my partner, Valentine, embarked on a guides course in far eastern Switzerland, I found myself struggling to find friends to go into the mountains. Most of my other climbing buddies were also guides, occupied with the busy summer season. I figured Hillary, as a professional mountain runner, would also be deep into her summer cycle of train-rest-race-rest, but gave her a call on the off-chance. Two weeks earlier she had set the female speed record for climbing from Chamonix to Mont Blanc and back in 7h25. Happily, she was keen for a slower paced adventure. Her husband, Brad, had a previous encounter with the Petites Jorasses, getting caught in a snowstorm on the south ridge and having to rappel off. As a couple, they were ticking off the classic list of Gaston Rebuffat’s ‘100 Finest Routes’ in the Mont Blanc Massif, in which this ridge appears, so it was an opportune moment for Hillary to complete the route. We started walking up Val Ferret in the early afternoon under a baking azure sky. Unsurprisingly, Hillary set a challenging pace right from the start. Due both to the weight of my camera equipment and the five weeks of inertia I had just endured sitting out storms in Alaska, I struggled to keep up. The path ascended rapidly beside the frigid Torrent de Frébouze, crossing it once, climbing a patch of snow, then a fresh landslide and then crossing back again. We spotted a few climbers ahead of us, high on the trail. They were too far away for us to catch up, so we could only hope there would be space in the bivouac hut. The path slams to a halt at a rock buttress where fixed lines lead up via a stepped ramp-line. My heart raced as I tried to keep up with Hillary, but I was desperate for her not
24 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
he Petites Jorasses, on the French side, forms a massive, high quality rock wall at the head of the Glacier de Leschaux above the Mer de Glace. On Italian side, it presents a large, winged buttress, also of impeccable rock, that protrudes SE from the frontier ridge. In his Mont Blanc ‘100 Finest Routes’, Gaston Rebuffat has the audacity to demand “Are these truly a summit, or just a jolt in the crest going from the Aiguille de Leschaux to the Grandes Jorasses?” His rhetorical whimsy continues, asserting that “the Petites Jorasses are just a bulky and lethargic
shoulder” on the frontier ridge. To anyone who has been to this summit, or seen it from the Italian side, this will seem quite absurd. Despite his contrarian attitude, Rebuffat did include two separate routes to this summit in his book!
This south ridge is in a remote and stunning location, and given
the aspect, it comes into condition very quickly after the winter, or following a snowstorm. As Rebuffat wrote, more accurately this time, the south ridge “rises, boldly and unerringly, without deviation from the Frébouze Glacier, and narrows as it goes upwards to the sky”. The rock climb is not long, but the approach, the bivouac hut, the route and the descent make for an incredibly diverse and complete mountain outing. The route has snow climbing on the access, excellent pitches of steep, athletic climbing on the main rock buttress, then a sinuous snow crest to gain the rocky summit. The summit graces you with a majestic view into the Mer du Glace basin and onto the north face of the Grandes Jorasses. Moreover, the climb starts from the curious looking but comfortable space module that is the Bivacco Gervasutti. The descent is via a steep snow slope split by two rock bands and requires good, confident crampon work. Due to the descent’s east facing orientation, the climb merits a very early start and rapid ascent to avoid facing dangerously soft snow conditions in the middle of the day.
to realise quite how unfit I was. At the top of the rocks we paused as we encountered a couple who told us that the hut was already occupied by more climbers than the available beds. I could see our climbing plans unravelling before they even started. The first hut in this basin was the tiny half cylinder ‘pig sty’ of the
Bivacco di Fréboudze, set up in 1925 and situated 600m lower than the current location. This was superceded by the Bivacco Gervasutti, built in 1948, at tin-plated, square built wooden hut, perched on a rock buttress in the Ghiacciaio di Fréboudze / Glacier de Frébouze at 2,835m. The Gervasutti, named after the renowned Italian alpinist, was renovated in 1961, but finally replaced entirely in 2011-12. This new bivouac has a strange, futuristic design, and perhaps causes the most polarising opinions of all mountain huts. The Italian designers, LEAP Factory, took their design cues from lunar space modules. Or to some, it just looks like a chunk of aircraft fuselage has crashed into the mountain. I had previously passed by the bivouac while climbing the Hirondelles ridge of the Jorasses but had never entered. The building is a large cantilevered tube, punctuated by round portholes, hovering over the rocky precipice. The front is a huge glass window that offers a stunning view, and inside there is a separate dining room and sleeping chamber. Upon reaching the hut, we encountered a team of four from the
French guides course, led by the renowned alpinist Rémi Thivel, along with three trainees. They, along with another team of three climbers from Corsica, were all heading for the Hirondelles route. I chuckled as they shared their plans since I hadn't had the most pleasant experience on that route six years previously. On that occasion, we had misjudged the route’s character, and climbed it late in the season when there was no longer any snow and ice to hold the upper sections of rubble together.
“ THIS NEW BIVOUAC HAS A STRANGE, FUTURISTIC DESIGN, AND PERHAPS CAUSES THE MOST POLARISING OPINIONS OF ALL MOUNTAIN HUTS”
Shortly after we arrived, a delightful Spanish couple also returned.
They had just completed the Contamine route on the southeast face of the Petites Jorasses, and were planning another climb the following day. The hut, now cluttered with gear from 11 climbers, had seen better days. Although it must have been extremely chic when new, with an electric hob and a built-in computer module to access weather forecasts, the computer had been broken for years and occupied unnecessary space. Everyone went to bed early, and despite being cramped into one
of the top bunks, I managed to sleep well. The Hirondelles teams left in the middle of the night without disturbing us too much. Hillary and I woke at 4:30am, enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and captured photographs as the light emerged on the horizon. We left at six, roped up, and Hillary slowly dragged me up the glacier to the base of the route. Already in early July, huge crevasses were emerging, but conditions were still good. I led the final snow slope and found a comfortable ledge on the rock, where we could remove our crampons.
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