Tackling the Aiguelle d'Entreves

Awoke again at 7am for breakfast and then set off with Andy and Richard at 8.30am into another blue sky day! This time however we drove through the Mont Blanc tunnel and into Italy. It took around 30 minutes to get through the tunnel (12km long!) but was a strange feeling to finally emerge in another country to go climbing. We took the SkyWay Monte Bianco gondola to the top. From there it was a 90 minute walk to the base of the Aiguelle d'Entreves through the snow - by no means a difficult route but certainly a bit of a plod, especially as the sun came up and made the journey increasingly uncomfortable.

We put our harnesses on and removed our crampons to tackle the ridge. It was again a scramble but VERY exposed with knife-edge drops either side and small footholes at times with which to traverse over. Pretty disconcerting in our mountain boots and with nothing to clip onto! Andy led for most of the way, with me leading on the downward sections (tricky to see the route in places and I just had to grit my teeth and go for it!). Two very difficult sections come to mind - the first being a climb up onto a ledge which I had to straddle onto two sheer rocks either side to edge my way up, and the second was a slab with a crack and a couple of footholds. Try as I might I couldn't get up it and it was terrifying when I finally fell backwards - the rope was slack between myself and Richard so I fell a little way and luckily landed on a ledge below rather than dangle off the side of the arete. I was shaken but managed to pick myself up again and with the help of a Spanish guide who was fortunately just behind me, managed to get up onto the next rock and join the others. Andy didn't look particularly impressed at this point however, and later mentioned he wanted to test my upper body strength with a multi-pitch rock climb tomorrow. Uh oh!

The rest of the route was quite straightforward, with some snowy patches here and there to test our crampon skills. I got to lead most of the way down which was great practice in route finding. We reached the end around 2pm and had a bit of lunch (baguettes and cheese stolen from breakfast!) and slowly walk back to the gondola. It felt very long indeed, especially in the baking sun and we were sweaty and exhausted when we finally reached it at 3.30pm. If you ever go I'm sure you'll agree its a beautiful lift however and we spent some time there admiring the architecture and taking photos from the panoramic balcony. Drove back to Chamonix around 5.30pm and later met some friends in town for some beers and dinner back at their chalet - a wonderful end to a tough day!

#italy