Gran Paradiso North Face (18.08.2014)  

Summer in Norway has been superb and I never intended to travel abroad to indulge in mountain trips at all this year. It was only after some more recent climbing and scrambling-style trips that I suddenly realised how much I missed alpine-style trips and ended up dreaming of heading to some higher mountains again. Since I was feeling a bit rusty on climbing and ropework in general and was lacking friends to go to the Alps on a semi-spontaneous trip with, the obvious solution seemed to be to join a guided course. I was not entirely convinced it would be worth it since I had only heard talk about the weather being awful in the Alps all summer, but in the end I decided to take the chance anyway, I couldn’t imagine it would be worse than being out during a mild winter spell in Scotland could it…? So on a rainy saturday afternoon I decided booked my flight to Geneva and started counting down the 12 days to go.

We met with the guides,Terry and Rocio for the climbing week organised by ISM (International School of Mountaineering) at the Grand Chalet hotel in Leysin on the saturday evening. I was surprised and glad to see Rocio again since I had been on a trip in Nepal with her in 2008 and also on a winter climbing course in 2010. I didn’t realise she was working for ISM this summer, so that was already an ace start to the week. There were two other guys who were on the course this week, Pete and Ernie, and fortunately for me they were not acclimatised either yet, so it was a relief to know we were going to be equally slow at altitude at the start of the week ;-) There were no ’set’ peaks for the week, the main objective was to get some fine climbing routes done at grades around AD-AD+. It was decided that we would make the most of what appeared to be a weather window at the start of the week by going for a route up the north face (known also as the north-west flank) of the Gran Paradiso. A lot of the alpine rock ridges were apparently not in condition because of new snowfall, and none of us fancied rock climbing with cold bare fingers, hence the choice of a winter route (where we'd have gloves or mitts on anyway). Sunday morning dawned and we left Leysin at around 9am for the long-ish drive into Italy over the St. Bernards Pass.

We had one or two stops along the way and arrived at Pont at around midday where we took a quick drink before getting kit ready and pulling on big boots for the walk up to the Chabod hut. It was really warm. Putting on a pair of heavy double boots (I used my Boreal G1s which I’ve only used for summit days in the Himalaya up until now) while at the same time wearing shorts and sports bra seemed like a weird combination, but it was going to have to do. I wasn’t going to bother wearing lighter boots and carrying the heavy ones up.

We finally got going at some time around 1pm. The pace was steady and relatively slow, which proved to be wise since were all acclimatising and there wasn’t much need to wear ourselves out before the climbing day.. The path up the mountain was superb – and impossible to miss - in contrast to what I have become used to and it made the walk up quite easy. Since we’d not yet eaten lunch we stopped after about 1 hour and sat on some benches in the trees to eat our baguettes. I didn’t get much of mine eaten since the typically crusty french bread was proving a challenge to eat with a sore gum (note: don’t get a wisdom tooth extracted only a few days before a trip to the Alps) but I was more thirsty than hungry anyway and concentrated on drinking instead.

The rest of the walk up was pretty straightforward, and once we left the forest behind the north face of the mountain started to come into view. It still seemed far away, but it was good to see snow again! :) Even though the walk wasn’t that strenuous I was fairly glad to arrive at the hut and finally get the weight of the rucksack off my shoulders. Being one of the ’north face’ groups we got assigned the dormitory at the bottom of the hut which didn’t prove to be the greatest place to get any sleep. Anyway, the rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing both inside and outside the hut and drinking as much as possible. Dinner was a bit of a crowded affair since the dining room was completely packed full of climbers and hikers but the food was good. Some of us hadn’t realised that spaghetti bolognese was being offered as a starter and not the main course, so we were already pretty stuffed by the time the main course was served! Most of us got into bed around 9pm, but noise from the dining room above and people going in and out of the dormitory meant that I didn’t fall asleep until much later.

Summit day
For the groups who were doing the north face route, breakfast had been arranged for 3.30am. I had managed to sleep fairly OK once everyone had settled down and there was no more noise or lights being switched on. In fact I woke up 1 minute before my alarm went off at 3.15am so I think that was rather good timing. Breakfast felt a little rushed and my coffee took an eternity to cool down to a drinkable temperature so by the time I’d finished the last few sips of that it was a matter of putting on the boots again and getting straight our of the hut. I think I was the last one in our group to be ready at around 4am, a little shameful!

The temperature outside wasn’t nearly as cold as I’d expected, so I felt rather overdressed with ski trousers on for the walk-in to the glacier. The rucksack was still fairly heavy as well so I warmed up very quickly and didn’t need to have more than a thin jacket over my base layer top. I hadn’t expected there to be an actual path going over the moraine and up to the glacier, but there was actually a very well worn path with cairns along the way, so it was easy to see even in the dark with a small headtorch. I had expected to be struggling amongst loose rocks for most of the walk in but it was in fact very easy, which was a relief since I was not very awake anyway and was more than happy to dawdle along half-asleep.

Once we reached the dry part of the glacier there was a good deal more ice and a few small crevasses around so we put on crampons here and roped up. The guys roped up as a team of three while I roped up with Rocio. There was still no sun yet but it was starting to be a little lighter and it was possible to make out the north face in front of us. We walked a little bit across south/southwestwards?) the glacier before taking height and making our way upwards. It didn’t look so steep anymore…..It was a nice sunrise too with Mont Blanc visible in the background. When we started to approach the bergschrund I noticed I was feeling pretty worn out already and needed to stop for a breather. Maybe the lack of acclimatisation was starting to have an effect now.

Fortunately no other typical altitude-related symptoms showed up during the day. We had a quick stop just below the bergschrund and waited for the guys to catch up. From the bergschrund we now had 400 vertical metres of climbing on 55° snow/ice. Technically there were no difficulties, it was just a matter of front-pointing on the crampons up the whole face. In principle, straightforward. In practice, very tiring for us who were not acclimatised! The first 100-150 metres went OK, and Rocio and I climbed together on a short rope at a fairly steady pace and made good progress. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to keep it up and needed to pause more frequently to takr a quick breather and give the calf muscles a break since the snow had become more icy and the climbing was starting to feel more strenuous.

At this point we decided to switch from short-roping to pitching the route, which I was quite grateful for because it meant that I got to take a break while belaying Rocio! Other groups began to catch us up and continued past us while short-roping up the face. We climbed two full rope lengths before moving together again (by this time I was pretty cold so I was relived to be moving continuously again) and placing some ice screws along the way. It seemed to take forever to make our way up the route, especially now I was freezing and couldn’t wait to top out on the ridge and get into the sunshine!

Well, after the eternity had passed we finally did reach the ridge leading up to the summit – and an elegant ridge it was…. but the wind was so chilly that the sunshine seemed to have little effect in warming us up. After some fighting against the wind I managed to pull on a primaloft jacket over my waterproof jacket and we moved together on a short rope again the rest of the way up to the summit. This must be said: the highest point on the Gran Paradiso is relatively boring and there is nothing there except from snow and we passed over it to continue along to the Madonnna summit a little further south of the main summit. It was impressive to look across the ridge to the Madonna summit, especially as it was a proper pinnacle-type shape.

And the views surrounding it were fantastic. It’s maybe easy to understand why the majority of people go up to this summit. To get to the Madonna summit we had to downclimb a few metres on the left hand side of the ridge from the summit and then walk across the ridge below the pinnacle. We climbed back up onto the ’normal route’ and used some bolts as running protection to reach the top. There weren’t really any technical moves there, but it is fairy exposed and I guess scrambling in crampons doesn’t feel quite as easy and secure as scrambling only boots.

Well, we finally got the opportunity to have a proper photo session here and take summit pictures. There was a fairly long queue of other walkers coming up the notmal route towards the Madonna summit, so we didn’t actually linger so long there before making the descent back down towards the glacier. It was a litte tricky to pass other climbers at times, so some patience was needed but we got past after some time and once we were down on the snow it was a matter of plodding all the way back towards the Chabod hut.

High up on the glacier there were no obvious crevasses but after descending som 500 metres from the summit, the crevasses did begin to appear and we had to take some care with route choice. It was perhaps fortunate that the weather had been relatively cold this summer and the snow bridges seemed stronger than they would have been under normal summer conditions. Anyway, it took some time before we reached the moraine again where we took off all the climbing gear. And have a decent rest to eat half-frozen sandwiches and drink ice cold water. Yum.

We waited for the guys who had stopped a little longer at a col to eat lunch, they showed up some 10 or 15 minutes after us and once they’d taken off and packed up their gear we left together for the walk back to the hut. I guess it was around 30 minutes from where we left the glacier to getting back to the hut, although we were back around 1.30pm. It was good to be back! I couldn’t stop thinking about how much water I wanted to drink while we were on the way down, so at last I finally got the chance to quench my thirst :)

After eating some more lunch at the hut, several people decided to take an afternoon nap. It was a looooooong afternoon before dinnertime at 7pm, but somehow I managed to stay awake. So that was it. A terrific but cold climb up the north face of the Gran Paradiso. I’ve always wanted to be able to say I’ve climbed the north face of an alpine peak, so now I actually can!