ALPINE CLASSICS
R Valentine Fabre on Gran Paradiso in winter.
reveal an aggressive sheet of steep glacial ice. Moreover, despite a forecast of calm winds, there was a plume of spindrift wheeling off the ridge, and a gale was raging higher up. I thought climbing the normal route would provide sufficient interest given the conditions, so we continued under the Chabod refuge to reach the glacier. When Cowell and his team ascended the West Flank for the first
time, they found their chosen route to be surprisingly amenable. However, as they crossed the rimaye, Tiarraz slipped “and went down the slope headlong.” Thankfully, they reacted quickly and “Dundas arrested Tairraz’s rapid descent with the rope.” Just two weeks earlier, Jean’s brother Victor Tiarraz had been dragged to his death when one of his clients had slipped. On the Paradiso Jean had expressed his doubts of the benefits of being roped together on a steep slope, a debatable practice at that time when guides were only beginning to devise methods to protect themselves from their hapless clients. Cowell reflected that “had Tairraz not been tied, the issue would have been very different. He was shooting down head foremost, quite unable to stop himself with his alpenstock on so hard a surface. We were so miserably cold that we could not stop to talk, in fact I do not think a word was said. Payot resumed his work, and in a few minutes we stood on the top of the arête in a little gap, to the north of which rose the summit. Here we met the full force of the north- east wind, and the cold became so intense that we felt that we could not endure it much longer. So with fifty more steps we mounted the last and steepest arête of ice, and reached the crest of the highest ridge, when we at once took refuge behind a little turret of rock, being in a state of thorough wretchedness, and thinking about nothing but how to descend at once.” The following day Payot and Cowell re- climbed the entire route, and the rocky summit was reached for the first time. As Valentine and I roped up and skied across the glacier, we watched a similar biting wind harass the ridges and buttresses above us. Once higher, we found that the glacier, like the face, had been formidably stripped of snow by the cold winter winds. On reaching ridge between the Laveciäu and Gran Paradiso glaciers, the wind was deafening. Above us lay the route to the summit. Normally an easy plod on snow, it now bore vast areas of bare- blue glacial ice. Having been to the summit over ten times, neither of us had further incentive to force a way up in such adverse conditions. We made a few gestures of communication, for the wind stripped us of our voices, and turned to head down. As we were descending I thought about the ways other people justified this bizarre attraction
58 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
WHEN: Situated east of Mont Blanc, the Gran Paradiso is protected from the prevailing westerly weather and often receives less precipitation than other nearby areas. The North West Face is ideally climbed on transformed snow or névé. This is most likely to be found in April-July or September-November.
we have to mountains. The great mountaineer and writer Leslie Stephen was torn between the different ideologies. He had a religious upbringing, a rational education and then later developed beliefs that were almost animistic in character. He wrote of the Alps in winter: “If I were to invent a new idolatry, I should prostrate myself, not before beast, or ocean, or sun, but before one of those gigantic masses to which, in spite of all reason, it is impossible not to attribute some shadowy personality. Their voice is mystic and has found discordant interpreters; but to me at least it speaks in tones at once more tender and more awe-inspiring than that of any mortal teacher. I had often fancied that in the winter, when the whole region becomes part of dreamland, the voice would be more audible and more continuous.” Was this suggestive personification a cautious way of evoking how Stephen felt about the mountain? Was it he who was spellbound, dreaming and hearing strange spirit voices? During the brief time that Valentine and I had been on the Gran Paradiso, I had been listening to its mystic voice. With its tender tones, I had transcended some of my fears. Although we hadn’t gained the summit, the journey had done its work. When we returned to the car park, we met a friend
GEAR: Two technical axes, crampons, 8-10 screws, 50m rope/s, glacier gear.
APPROACH: Follow the path E then SE to reach Glacier Laveciäu at c.3,100m. Follow this to the base of the NW face.
ROUTE: Climb the face directly. Exit onto the North Ridge of Gran Paradiso and follow this south towards the summit. This is reached after a short, steep step. The buttress to the south-east with the Virgin Madonna is often treated as the summit but is three metres lower.
DESCENT: Continue east and down-climb/rappel a 5m step on the north side. Traverse under the Virgin on the south-west side and descend the rock crest beyond to the snowy saddle. Descend onto the glacier. Follow this south for 400m to a steepening then head west to a col/plateau. Follow a blunt ridge running north-west between the Gran Paradiso and Laveciau glaciers. To return to the Chabod refuge, descend the Laveciäu glacier and regain the path.
who said with a broad grin, “Isn’t the face dry? Did you look at the webcam”? I sighed and then chuckled to myself. I had forgotten the refuge had a webcam pointing at the mountain. However, if I’d known in advance that the mountain was barely climbable, then perhaps we would not have come. The journey I needed was, of course, through memories and ideas as much as it was over snow and mountains.
Ben Tibbets works as an adventure photographer, artist and IFMGA mountain guide, specialising in remote and cold environments. Having studied Fine Art to a postgraduate level, he is obsessed with image making in wild places. He is currently working on a large- format photographic guidebook on the finest routes on the 4,000m peaks of the Alps.
ESSENTIAL INFO
NEXT ISSUE: MONT BLANC.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62
