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The Full Story (cont.) Part 4.
A trip to the Albert 1er hut.

 

A little known fact.

 

 

(Click for photo page and short account.)

 

 

 

 

Source of the Arve

 

 

 

 

A short cut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chattering Italians

 

 

 

 

"Bees this high up ?"

 

 

 

 

The legendary Forbes Arête

 

Some more views (1975 from Chardonnet) :
- L'Argentière, arête NW
- Le Triolet, face N.
- La Verte, face N.

 

 

Once more up to the Aiguilles

 

 

 

"Viagra,  anyone?"

 

Abuse of artificial means

 

 

A pricey ride

 

Where have all the butterflies gone?

 

 

 

Graham in fine form

 

 

 

Looking back up

 

Back to the Biolay

 

We'll meet again.....

In reality, it was probably just a few days before the forecast promised fine weather for the next day or two and we all decided to take the tranny (Was is der Tranny?) to the top village of the valley, Le Tour. This is the starting point for another of the larger French huts, the Refuge Albert 1er, named, funnily enough, after King Albert 1er, "Roi des Belges" from 1909 to 1934, and not an aristocrat from Savoy itself. He was apparently a keen visitor to Chamonix but met his death in a rock climbing accident in Belgium, of all places. It happened on a cliff next to the River Meuse, which is only about 100 metres high, and in the photos, looks a bit like the Avon gorge, a strange destiny.

This end of the valley is quite different, being considerably higher than Chamonix. Le Tour itself is at 1,450 m. From the car park to the hut the path is entirely through open ground, there are no friendly pine trees to provide the shade we had grown accustomed to on the various paths up behind the Biolay. We had soon formed a long straggly file, zigzagging up the wide track over what must be good ski slopes in winter. There is a ski lift which can be used to reduce the effort, but, as you will have realized by now, we had a quasi-religious aversion to such soft options that went beyond our financial situation, wartime puritanism was still hard at work within us.

A steep track heads up towards the Col de Balme, the Swiss border, and the source of the River Arve which we had followed on the drive up, from Geneva where it joins the Rhône, then Bonneville, St Gervais and Chamonix. Before the col, you turn sharply right to traverse back across towards the glacier and then up an easier path along the hillside until, after a few zigzags, the hut can be seen, just above the icefall, on the same level as the upper plateau of the glacier. There is a harder path, straight up the lateral moraine (on the left in photo) from the hut to the valley, which is used mostly for descent. Some years after, I left the hut a bit late and we were caught by nightfall on this broken ridge of glacier grit. The state of the path, and with no light, as our batteries were completely flat, made us prefer to spend a very cold, dusty night sleeping on the spot, without sleeping bags, rather than carry on down in the dark. This gives you an idea of just how broken it is.

Again the hut was crowded, and sleeping difficult, but the weather was fine and the next morning we set off across the easy angled glacier to the Aiguille Purtscheller, which we climbed by the South Ridge, a pleasant AD rock route on good sound granite. There are several similar rock peaks in the area, all elegant pyramids, which stand out well from a vast expanse of snow covered glacier plateau. We climbed another, the Aiguille du Tour, the next day.

The area seems to be much frequented by large groups of Italians from just across the border. They can be heard miles off as they chatter and joke in characteristic fashion. Graham, one of the gruffer of the gruff Northerners, tried to communicate to them his desire for a bit of quiet, but apparently they did not understand his sourly remarks as they just waved and smiled and carried on with their gay banter.

As we came down to the snow from the Aiguille Purtscheller, the weather clouded over and we soon found ourselves surrounded by an eerily still, cottony mist. There was not a breath of wind and in spite of the cloud, there was an odd brightness. The sounds were strangely muffled in an unusual, but not unpleasant semi white-out. We were not unduly worried as the tracks in the snow showed the way back to the refuge, which, in any case was not far off. We noticed a buzzing noise, and found it strange that there should be bees this high up. Suddenly one of us realised that it wasn’t insects at all but static electricity discharging on the spikes of our ice axes, which were strapped, point up, on our rucksacks. A swift retreat seemed prudent and we all scurried back to the Albert 1er.

The prime peak in the area is the Aiguille de Chardonnet, just opposite the refuge. Some of our party did the Forbes Arête, which although rated PD is quite long and serious for the grade. The route was familiar in the club’s folklore, as one of the members had lost some toes by frostbite when forced to bivouac in a crevasse on the descent from this climb a previous year. This story had been told and retold on numerous Tuesday bar nights and had marked us, especially as it was difficult not to notice the hand made Lawrie’s boot on his slightly shorter foot. The other obvious, but harder route, is the North buttress, which faces the hut and gives a grade D ice climb. I did this route with my brother Harry and Colin Brown a few years later and some of the photos included here were taken on this second visit. Curiously I have none from the 69 trip. Have they been lost, leant or perhaps, at the time, it didn’t seem important to take any, I have no idea.

It was getting to the end of our month but we managed to fit in one more climb, on the Chamonix Aiguilles once more. As time was short, Graham, Rich and I decided to break our rule and make use of modern amenities to do a climb on the Aiguille de Peigne (the first peak on the rock ridge left of the Aiguille du Midi), leaving the valley early in the morning by the first cabin car on the Aiguille du Midi téléphérique, and finishing the climb and return to the Biolay the same day. For us, this seemed quite special but for French climbers, and most others these days, it is common practice.

Anyone who has read as far as this (anyone there?) will, no doubt, have categorised me as a hopeless conservative, with masochistic tendencies, but I will aggravate my case further by saying that I still maintain that the facility provided by these artificial means for climbers who have not reached a reasonable level of physical fitness to gain access rapidly to high mountains, is one of the reasons for the ever increasing number of mortal accidents in the Alps. That fit climbers use them to save time seems altogether reasonable, but it is just the long, hard hut slog that enables visiting flabbies like us to get fit enough and, equally important, acclimatized enough, to render many climbs possible in reasonable conditions of safety.

So having justified our cop-out, back to the story. Needless to say, we missed the first departure but got onto the second and were whisked in minutes up a slope that would have taken a couple of hours on foot. From the Plan de l’Aiguille station we warmed up quickly walking to the foot of the Papillons Arrête, (bottom right in photo) wondering why the hell we hadn’t used these cable cars before. It was a beautiful clear morning and the cameras were clicking away merrily, the Aiguille du Midi, seen looking up the Frendo Spur, received particular attention. The result is that I have numerous slides of this mountain and none at all of others, I regret not having forced myself to respect a more balanced use of film. Another lesson then; avoid the temptation of only taking the most obvious views, the Petit Dru from Montenvers, for example, later on the more banal ones are often invaluable for jogging a fading memory. Of course, at twenty, this kind of consideration didn’t even cross my mind.

This is a very popular grade D rock route, which follows the ridge on clean granite, not very sustained but the views make up for this. It doesn’t lead to the summit and there is a choice of routes to finish on. We picked the classic Chamonix Face, also grade D. Graham led the famous Lépiney crack, the crux of the climb, admiring the two foot long piton that the guides must have put there, and we were on the summit by midday. It is strange to be half in the mountains and half in the town. The air is so clear, especially at this time of day, that all the streets, houses and cars are clearly visible, the traffic noise can also be heard but this is not really intrusive. It all seems so domesticated, and yet in a matter of hour, the weather can change, and the spot where we were sitting, a natural lightning conductor, become one of the most dangerous places in the massif.

We soon set off down, onto the screes, past the lake at Plan de l’Aiguille and then, for the last time that year, back through the grassy meadows and pine woods that lead directly down to the Biolay. 

The holiday was over, and it had certainly been a good one, but it was just the first of many visits. The walk back from town, in front of the SNCF station , across the foot bridge over the railway, past the Montenvers station, the sandy car park and up that rutted track to the Biolay are as familiar in my mind, sounds, odours and all, as walking from my front door to the letter boxes at the end of the street a few minutes ago.... I know which walk I prefer.

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