Despite France being hit by a heatwave this week, we climbed an excellent variety of alpine classics around the Mont Blanc range for our first Chamonix Alpine Climbing Week of this season.
After a warm up day in the Aiguilles Rouges, we headed up to the Torino Hut for a night, in order to hit a couple of days of classic alpine ridge terrain on the Aiguilles Marbrees and Entreves. This proved the right level for Miikka and Tom, who have fairly similar alpine experience but different climbing backgrounds, being based in the Uk and Canada respectively.
After this first hut trip we headed back down to the valley for a night, before walking up the the Lac Blanc Hut via the spectacular Aiguillette D’Argentiere – this was the first time I’d stayed at this hut since I was an aspirant many years ago and it’s definitely the season to make a visit – as the Flegere lift is being re built this summer, so this normally very popular area was totally deserted and the following day we had the mountains all to ourselves.
On the final day we then headed up to the Midi to finish off with the Cosmiques Arete, as: a. it’s great and b. the guys hadn’t done it before – so all in all an excellent finish to a really fun weeks climbing on classic routes around the range.
