Lagarde Direct, Les Droites, Argentiere
1000m TD ***
Jules Barrett
Ian and I arrived in Chamonix on a Monday evening to sunshine and high
pressure. Conditions were apparently good on the big routes and a stable
weather system meant that we had a bit of time on our side. Tuesday was
spent with the usual visit to the OHM, shopping and studying guidebooks.
There were a couple of reports in the OHM that the Lagarde Direct on Les
Droites had been done. The first half of the route follows a steep line of
gullys and ice streaks on the north east face of Les Droites to the left
of the classic Tournier Spur. There's a healthy amount of Scottish 4/5 and
we expected this to be time consuming. At half height the angle relents
and there's a few hundred metres of sixty degree snow slope before the
final mixed climbing which leads to a short summit ridge. Ideally we would
have liked to spend the evening before the route in the Argentiere hut but
it was booked up with Haute-routers; this being the French holidays. We
decided that we'd get ourselves up there on the Wednesday morning with
bivi kit and have a look. If things looked good we might set off up the
route that day, otherwise we might decide to bivi on the glacier and climb
the route the next day.
We caught the Grands Montets telepherique up to the Argentiere glacier
on the Wednesday morning and walked over to the base of the route with our
bivi kit. Standing underneath the route we could see that it was in
excellent condition. By now it was almost midday and there was no way that
we were going to be able to reach the summit of Les Droites today if we
started climbing. We thought that we could get above the main difficulties
but were going to need a bivi spot somewhere around the start of the sixty
degree couloir and this is where the gambling began. Unfortunately we were
playing somewhat blind as we didn't have binoculars and couldn't see the
sixty degree ice slope anyway! It only takes five minutes of trying to
exist on a rubbish bivi ledge to realise that the longer you spend hanging
around, dropping essential kit and generally failing to sleep on a bivi
ledge, the harder you're going to find the climbing the following day. In
the end a decision had to be made. To be honest it was more a decision not
to spend the afternoon, evening and night sitting on a glacier whilst
waiting for dawn.
So we set off up the snow slopes to the base of the route and started
climbing. The normal start was covered in loose powdery snow but a team
had obviously gone up further left so we followed them. Ian led a tricky
pitch over loose powdery stuff and then I had a long, insecure feeling
traverse back right to re-join the route in a big couloir. Ian led the
first vertical ice pitch and then a few seventy degree ice pitches led up
on generally excellent ice. We were making good progress, the climbing was
actually quite enjoyable and the weather remained superb. A couple of
steeper ice pitches led up and by about Seven O'clock we guessed we were
above the main steepness and about 500m up the route. Neither of us were
acclimatized so we were finding the climbing tougher than normal but with
an hour of useable light remaining we were confident that the back of the
route was broken. The search began for a bivi spot. After a number of
false alarms, just as the light started to really fade Ian traversed to
the true right side of the main couloir and over to a small crack system.
Climbing after him I heard the ringing of pegs and I arrived to a decent
belay. We spent some time kicking and digging a ledge and that was us for
the night. The bivi spot was good being out of the line of anything that
might come down the main couloir and reasonably sheltered. It wasn't
exactly spacious but at least we could lie down.
As dawn broke we were packed up and moving together up the wide sixty
degree couloir. There were plenty of big steps already cut in here which
made progress quick and relatively effortless. Finally we reached the top
mixed section and really felt that the summit couldn't be far away. There
was some tricky mixed climbing at altitude and just where we thought that
we were very close to the top, we were hit with a few route-finding
issues. The area of mixed ground that makes up the last two hundred
vertical metres proved to be quite complex and in some parts technically
tricky on rock and ice. It was about 5 O'clock in the evening by the time
we stood on the summit of Les Droites and started to think about getting
off. This proved to be easy as there's a well-equipped series of abseils
down the Talefre side of Les Droites which lead you down to the Glacier de
Talefre. We zipped down those and stepped onto the glacier just as
darkness fell. We hoped that we could reach a hut that night but the
glacier was in a terrible state. The top layer of snow was soft, sloppy
stuff that wouldn't support our weight so every step was hard work and we
fell over a lot. After a few hours of stumbling around and still no sign
of the hut we stopped, dug ourselves a couple of snow graves on the
glacier and went to sleep. The morning dawned bright and we just needed to
walk out down remainder of the Talefre glacier, a short section on the
Leschaux glacier and then down the Vallee Blanche to Montenvers. Given
that this was our third day out on the hill we were slow but finally made
Montenvers and civilisation at mid-morning.
As dawn broke we were packed up and moving together up the wide sixty
degree couloir. There were plenty of big steps already cut in here which
made progress quick and relatively effortless. Finally we reached the top
mixed section and really felt that the summit couldn't be far away. There
was some tricky mixed climbing at altitude and just where we thought that
we were very close to the top, we were hit with a few route-finding
issues. The area of mixed ground that makes up the last two hundred
vertical metres proved to be quite complex and in some parts technically
tricky on rock and ice. It was about 5 O'clock in the evening by the time
we stood on the summit of Les Droites and started to think about getting
off. This proved to be easy as there's a well-equipped series of abseils
down the Talefre side of Les Droites which lead you down to the Glacier de
Talefre. We zipped down those and stepped onto the glacier just as
darkness fell. We hoped that we could reach a hut that night but the
glacier was in a terrible state. The top layer of snow was soft, sloppy
stuff that wouldn't support our weight so every step was hard work and we
fell over a lot. After a few hours of stumbling around and still no sign
of the hut we stopped, dug ourselves a couple of snow graves on the
glacier and went to sleep. The morning dawned bright and we just needed to
walk out down remainder of the Talefre glacier, a short section on the
Leschaux glacier and then down the Vallee Blanche to Montenvers. Given
that this was our third day out on the hill we were slow but finally made
Montenvers and civilisation at mid-morning.
The route doesn't come into condition very often and when it does, it's
likely that word will get around in Chamonix. The climbing is excellent
and a well-acclimatized team can do the route much quicker than we did. An
alternative to abseiling to the Talefre basin is to visit the summit of
Les Courtes and then descend the Col des Cristaux to finish back in the
Argentiere basin.
Click [here]
for a few photos.
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