Aiguille de la Tsa via vestryggen på Dent de Tsalion (19.08.2016)

Final climb of the week with Andy and Tom. We’d talked over various alternatives, the south ridge of the Lagginhorn being one of them – or the west ridge of the Dent de Tsalion combined with an ascent of the Aiguille de la Tsa, a beautiful rock spire which more or less dominates the skyline above Arolla. I think I’d actually noticed the peak on the way up to Col des Ignes the previous week, but hadn’t actually realised it was the Tsa. Anyway, we ended up choosing the latter since it was close by to Evolene. We had a rather laid-back start to the thursday and started the walk up to Cabane de la Tsa from Arolla at around midday. It was pretty sunny and warm when we started but the forecasted rain came quite soon after when we had got about halfway up to the hut. Fortunately it was only light rain and none of us got too wet. Since we’d arrived fairly early and had nothing else to do, we spent the rest of the afternoon going over shortroping techniques and crevasse rescue outside the hut. Turned out we were the only group staying at the hut that night so it was really quiet in the dormitory and there was plenty of food at dinnertime!

Next morning we were aiming to leave the hut by 5am, so we set the alarm for around 4.15 and ate breakfast at 4.30am. It was still rather foggy when I woke up and locating the toilets outside the hut proved to be a challenge even with my headtorch on, so I was a bit concerned about whether the visibility would improve before we left. Fortunately it turned out to be a bit of passing fog and it came and went a few times after we’d left the hut but by the time we’d walked up to the start of the climb up the west ridge the fog had more or less disappeared for good and we got to see a really great sunrise over Mont Blanc de Cheilon and Pigne d’Arolla on the other side of the valley. Part of the walk up to the base of the ridge was fairly obvious with some cairns along the way although there wasn’t really a ’proper’ path from the hut.

We scrambled much of the first half of the ridge on the right hand side or on the crest, doing short pitches or moving together. It was fairly straightforward scrambling but I wasn’t overly impressed by the rock at that point since it was mostly bouldery and loose in places, but some parts offered pleasant scrambling. There was pretty frequent rockfall activity from under the Tsa though. I was surprised about how much rock fell during the few hours we spent ascending the Dent de Tsalion. Glad we weren’t climbing the Tsa from the other side! Fortunately the west ridge of the Tsalion became more interesting after a while and the upper half was climbed on the crest with more solid rock with some crux moves proving just about do-able in big boots. The handholds were a bit small for my liking here so I was glad I wasn’t leading the climbing pitches….. Otherwise the rest of the ridge was mostly scrambling again. After what seemed like a long time we finally came out into some sunshine and finished off the ridge in some warmth and topped out with some stunning views across the glacier toward the Dent Blanche, Matterhorn and Dent d’Herens.

We’d already spent a fairly long time ascending the west ridge so we took a quick break to eat/drink/put on suncream before continuing across the ridge towards the Aiguille de la Tsa. We ascended on some fairly friendly snow (without crampons) up to the start of the climbing and then left rucksacks behind to climb a bit more efficiently. Altogether there were 4 (?) pitches, the first two went more or less straight up, the third traversed out onto the skyline ridge and then steeply up to the final belay. The last pitch started off with fairly easy climbing but the last crack up to the summit was steep and quite strenuous, but it was good to have got up at last! We spent a couple of minutes on the top before starting the abseil down the other side. We had a 50m rope between us (i.e. 25m abseils) so in total I think we made 5 abseils more or less directly down from the top to get back to where we’d left the rucksacks. From there we put on crampons and descended down the glacier towards the Col de Bertol. It was warm! After a bit of downclimbing from the col, the gradient flattened out a bit and the descent went fairly efficiently. Had to dodge a few crevasses here and there but otherwise it was quite straightforward and we kept on the snow for as long as possible. We ended up moraine after a while and from there it was a easy walk on a good path for another 700m-ish down towards Arolla. Good views towards Mont Collon too!

I do enjoy a good walk out but it has to be said that it was nice to reach the car and change into shorts and trainers. And know that a bottle of drink wasn’t too far away now…… And it was even more satisfying to drive back down from Arolla and glance up towards the fine west ridge of the Dent de Tsalion and the even more impressive Aiguille de la Tsa and know that we’d actually climbed it!