Col Du Grand St Bernard 2012
At the end of the season in 2010 we headed up to the monastery in the col between Italy and Switzerland. We had such a fantastic time we vowed to return but with the snow not being so good last season the conditions were never quite right to head up.
The Col is one of, if not the oldest route through the Western Alps with evidence of use as far back as the Bronze ages. The pass is appears in history around 390BC and is well documented by the time of Julius Ceaser around 60BC. Napolean also famously crossed the pass in May 1800 with 6000 men and there’s a staue at the top to commemorate the feat.
This season a rare gap at the end of January allowed us to take our 4 staff, Danny, Carla, Liv and Chris all over to Switzerland and trek up to stay the night.
The guys at All Mountain Rental very kindly lent me an Atomic Poacher split board to test out which also meant I could take Kates board as she was 3 months pregnant!
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, if you ever get the chance to visit the refuge, even if it’s just in the summer when you can drive up it’s well worth the detour.
Atomic Poacher Split Board
Weather conditions settled down and we had brilliant blue skies the whole way up. First time hiking for Liv and Chris and the first ever time off piste for Danny and Carla!
Pack Horse and Kate!
General Faffing and Taking Photos
Glorious Randonee Weather
The Crew at The Top
Danny Man of The Mountain!
Via Ferratta in St Jean D’Aulps
The new routes are open in St Jean D’Aulps just 10 mins drive from the centre of Morzine. I’ve posted climbing pics on our blog before but this was the first outing for the new via routes.
There are two new routes, the Elephants Head and the Elephants Eye Graded French ED and D+
Details of both routes on on the Topo guide available from the tourist office in the village.
The walk in from the road in to Bas Thex is easy to miss with a tiny sign on the right of the road about 50m from the car park at the Abbey Cemetery. It’s about a 15min walk in through the woods and the two routes depart from the same spot.
There are two points apart from the start and finish where you can swap between the two routes if one is proving too hard or too easy.
There not the longest of routes but combined with the amount of climbing available on the face lower down the rock it’s definitely worth checking out.
Once we’ve conquered the harder Elephants eye I’ll get some more pictures up, hopefully with the sun shinning as well!
Topo guides for the sport climbing are available from the Tabac in the village opposite Bar Le National
Mountain Spaces
Catered and Self Catered Chalets and Apartments
Le Tour de France 2010 comes past our door
With the scorching weather we’ve been having over here the riders can’t have been looking forward to climbing the Col de Ramaz before dropping into Morzine past our front door and then having to climb up to Avoriaz!
At the start line on Tuesday Morning
Morzine absolutely rammed with Tour supporters
More team cars than you can shake a stick at
The Tour comes past our front door!
The Peleton
Pointe De La Vorlaz
Pepsi Max run from the top of the Pointe De La Vorlaz 2346m. Superb off-piste run but the climb is not for the faint hearted!
Started out with a couple of runs through the trees of to the side of the Stash before heading up Le Choucas lift and playing around on the SnowCross for a bit to warm up.
The SnowCross is basically an area that is not pisted but is patrolled, monitored and avalanche controlled, basically off piste but with more of the risks removed.
All limbered up and ready to go we headed to the top of the Cubore ‘up and over’ lift to start the traverse round the South face of the peak from about 2200m.
At the end of the traverse on the South side getting packed away ready for the climb up the face. Was pretty bare as the wind had removed a lot of the snow leaving ice and really hard clumps of grass, excellent climbing conditions!
Once you come off the face at a small col by the satellite station you turn left up onto the ridge for the last couple of hundred metres.
About halfway it gets pretty narrow and exposed although the footholds are better than on the face.
The last section of the ridge leading up to the summit.
The top! And no it’s not trick photography and I’m not a midget, Craig is huge. The descent is all down a North face back towards the Lindaret bowl. No pictures as I was far to busy enjoying all the fantastic snow.
Rochers De La Chaux
10 Mins outside of Morzine is the Rochers De La Chaux in Bas Thex. We’ve not had a chnace to climb there yet with the summer lifts being open it’s all been biking and walking so far so we headed up to reccy the crag for the inter season when the lifts are shut.
The ‘Elephant’s Nose’ as it’s know locally, the site of the Rochers De La Chaux
Routes through the trees, difficult to see the bolts on these photos but all the routes are incredibly well protected with bolts every 3-4m. Our adventure weeks next summer will definately be including several days climbing here. There are over 90 routes, most of them grade 4-5 with multi-pitch routes and some via-feratta. This makes it well within any intermediate climber to have an excellent 3-4 days climbing on a wide variety of routes.
All the routes are clearly marked and really well protected. It’s hard to get over just how many different routes there are.
Scoping out the start of the 90m multi pitch route
