The North couloir of the Capucin off the Col du Tacul is one of the many classic moderate couloirs around the Mont Blanc massif.Easily accessed off the Midi by a quick ski down the Vallee Blanche to the bottom of the Geant Icefall and then a 900m skin up the Glacier des Periades.A final boot up a couloir leads to the Col du Tacul and a view down the line to the Leschaux Glacier 1000m below.
Guy skinning up towards the Col du Tacul (centre of picture)
The final boot pack up to the Col, Mont Blanc in the background
Three 30m abseils from the col gets you over the rocky ground to the remaining 250m of the 48o couloir.It was the first time on anything relatively steep for me this season so rather than getting straight into the turns it was a bit more like skis on, stand there, stand there some more, side slip a couple of meters and eventually put the first turn in...
Guy contemplating his first turn
Once over the bergshrund and onto the lower angled Capucin Glacier we'd hoped for nice powder and big fast turns.Unfortunately like everywhere else in the Mont Blanc massif at the moment the slopes had been hammered by the strong winds over the last few weeks so hard wind blown snow lead down to an exit onto the Leschaux Glacier.
Also dont forget to check out Stephen's current lecture tour "In the foot steps of Shackleton" coming to a town near you. See www.speakersfromtheedge.comfor ticket and location information.
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photo - Venables Collection - Stephen after a night out alone in an open air bivouac at 8600m on Everest, after becoming the first Briton to summit without bottled oxygen - 1988
Sat back in the flat, cup of tea in hand, after a nice afternoon run down the Petite Envers it seemed a bit early to be calling it a day on my last day off for the week.A few quick phone calls resulted in a sprint in ski boots back to the Midi to catch the 4'oclock and last cable car of the day with team Benson.
It was 5 o’clock by the time we were rapping into the Cosmiques Couloir for a quick lap in the evening sun.The snow was good, not amazing but facing west the light was stunning by this time. Amazing powder on the slopes below the north face of the Aiguille du Midi in the setting sun brought us out at the Mont Blanc tunnel entrance to a waiting taxi courtesy of Mrs B.
Andy rapping into the Cosmiques Couloir
Looking west from the couloir
The Bensons enjoying creamy powder below the Aiguille du Midi
I am just back home after a very enjoyable weekend in Llanberis with the Mountain Equipment 'team'. The reason to get together was of course LLAMFF, the Llanberis Mountain Film Festival - a wonderful event that we are now proud to presenting sponsors of.
Dave MacLeod's sold-out lecture contained fascinating new images and tales fresh from the amazing recent flurry of activity in Scotland and Stephen Venables entertained a full house with his new lecture "In the Steps of Shackleton" on the Saturday night. Stephen is now touring with this lecture until May, I highly recommend you get along to a show if you can.
Other ME Pro Partners also featured heavily in the weekend socialising including Stu McAleese, Andy Turner and Brian Hall along with Andy Parkin who came over specially from Chamonix to share stories, curries and beers with us all.
Andy is fresh back from yet another foray into the high mountains of Nepal where he battered his 20-something year old windsuit into submission and we enjoyed looking at the after effects and downloading his latest thoughts on equipment design for high altitude mountaineering.
Brian Hall, Keith Partidge and myself also took the opportunity to corner Andy for an interview as well as Stephen, Dave and several others for a film project we are currently working on.
As usual with these things it's a shame it is all over so quickly, but it's great to be left wanting more... Huge thanks and congratulations to all those who put the festival together, a gargantuan effort for an entirely volunteer team. Bring on LLAMFF 2011.
I’ve just been back in Scotland for the final of the three induction days for entry to the British Mountain Guides followed by two days of winter skills training. All seven of us met up in Aviemore on Friday night not looking forward to the prospect of a long walk from Glenmoore Lodge up into the Corries to spend the day ‘digging’ our way up a route. I think the MWIS forecast on Thursday summed up the situation pretty well ‘by dawn there will be enormous quantities of snow’!
In the end it was decided to cancel the induction day for Saturday as with even more snow than forecast, even if we’d made it into the Corries snow conditions would have been very dangerous and climbing painstakingly slow. But not wanting to miss an opportunity for a day’s climbing and with much less snow in the North West five of us had an early morning start and drove over to the North West and walked into Beinn Bhan.
Ross and I headed round to climb most of The Cooler which was in great condition, proper continental water ice. It was a pretty busy day, with a team already on the main line soon to be followed by some visiting Italian climbers we decided to take a line up the right of the ice fall. After 3 pitches there was only one possible line up the last ice fall and with a team already about to start up the final pitch and not wanting to miss our 3 o’clock ride home we traversed right below the top pitch to find another exit. A fun turfy grove with a steep pull at the bottom lead up to the final terraces and a blustery top out.
Second pitch on The Cooler (photo - Ross Hewitt)
Ross climbing the 3rd pitch
The final easy slopes to the top
With the ski road still closed on Sunday morning we walked up into the hills behind Glenmoore Lodge for our first day of winter training. We spent the day looking at teaching methods for basic winter skills like cramponing, ice axe arrest and snow anchors as well as brief introduction to short roping.
The induction day had been rescheduled for Monday and an early start had us driving back over to Beinn Bhan and walking into Coire na Feola with Jonathan Preston, a local guide who was running our induction. The idea of the induction days is for the trainers to see that you are climbing comfortably at the required level, for mixed climbing this is Scottish grade V. Route choice was pretty limited but Bounty Hunter, IV 5, looked as white as anything so we headed up to gear up below the buttress. Not a grade V but by the time we’d finished we’d climbed 5 good pitches and with a few direct variations to the original route we’d made it around, V 5, and Jonathan was happy with it.
The winter induction was the final box to be ticked before we were official accepted onto the scheme to become trainee guides. Next up is the summer training which takes place in May, 3 days in the Lakes and 4 days in North Wales to get us ready for the assessment at the end of the summer.
