Alps Trip Summer 2013

Post date: Oct 6, 2013 10:35:09 AM

For the fourth summer in a row Swindon Mountaineering Club set off for the Alps. This year we went to Ailefroide in the Ecrin National Park in France. The journey was uneventful really, with the exception of a storm that blew up when we stopped at a campsite on the way, blew hard enough to break one of our tent poles, then quit when we had got the tents up. After this all 3 cars and 10 people arrived safely and found a space in the huge campsite. There are acres of it spread out through the trees and bits of field, so it feels fine, and there are plenty of facilities blocks and a pizza van on site. Ailefroide is a campsite really. There’s not much else there! The best thing is the small supermarket with a café and a rotisserie churning out roast chickens. I ate a lot of chicken.

We started with the walk up to the Glacier Blanc hut, and took everyone up a facile, Pic du Glacier Arsine, which was a good introduction for the beginners. Next day 5 of us did the PD Monetier traverse, up Dormillouse and Pointe des Arcas and down via Lac Eychauda to a different valley where we'd left a car. We had good weather and the snow conditions were good for these.

After a day off we went up to the Pelvoux hut. It’s a long steep walk, which some of the party made even harder by missing a signpost! We had hoped to try the AD Mettrier couloir (which I had done years ago when I was a student) but there was very little snow in it so we went for the Coulidge couloir (PD). The snow was soft and a serac fall came down the start of the route before we set off. One of the group felt ill on the first bit of glacier, so I turned my rope back with him and left the other 3 to do the route. They found the snow soft and rather slow going, which we expected as the freezing level had been about 4500m for a few days. The group completed their ascent of Mont Pelvoux successfully, in spite of the soft snow and some rock and serac falls.

The weather forecast was warm and stormy for the second week. I picked what looked like the best weather window and we went up to the Ecrin Hut with the intention of climbing the Barre des Ecrin, the highest mountain in the region. The forecast storms arrived early though, and we woke to the thunder storms that had been forecast for lunchtime. We came down, which was the right choice as the storms lasted a couple of days. After that we had a couple of days rock climbing and a via ferrata.

The campsite was busy, and there were quite a lot of crag climbers playing on the bolts. We didn't see many alpine climbers though, and we had no trouble booking huts, none were full and there were very few people on the routes. Which suits me just fine!

No records broken, but we introduced some newcomers to the Alps, had a good time and came back alive with some great additions to the photo album.