8/1/14 - Papillons Ridge

After waking up at 0400 to summit Mont Blanc, Bucky and I decided to sleep in yesterday.  The weather was nice so we went up to the Plan de l'Aiguille to try to conquer a shorter route called the Papillons Ridge (II+, 6a, 250m).  The ridge is mostly 4a to 4c climbing with just a few short sections of 5c and 6a.  In light of that we did a little bit of simul-climbing, but we mostly pitched everything out.  The guide book said that the route should take 5.5 hours, so by getting started at 12:20 I felt very confident that we weren't going to make the last tram and were going to have to walk down.  Bucky was cautiously optimistic that we would make it.  The climb starts with a lot of third and fourth class scrambling through a boulder field until you get to a 5c chimney crack.  From there we roped up and started pitching it out.  We were both very surprised to find that there was one team not far in front of us, and even another that was starting just a little behind us as well.  As late a start as we were getting, I expected us to be all alone!  Bucky and I switched leads for about 3/4's of the climb until we got to the one pitch of 6a that I don't feel comfortable leading on trad just yet.  Bucky even struggled a little with what he called a few "muscly" moves, but made it through clean.
If we were keeping up with the guide book's estimate we should have gotten to the top of the climb at about 0435.  In actuality we got to the top at 0600!  I don't know what the author was thinking in the guide book, but we outpaced all the other parties on the route easily and we were still about an hour and a half slower than his estimate!  Since the last tram down is at about 0630 we knew we were going to have to walk.  After two short rappels and some down climbing we ended up glissading down a nice long snow field with a flat runout.  Back at the tram station at 0720 the route that was supposed to take 5.5 hours took us seven!  After about two hours of a steep, quad crushing walk down to town we were excited to check out some of the acts of the jazz festival that is currently going on.  After picking a couple venues off the map we headed into the center of town and found nothing.  Of the three bars in the area that were supposed to have live acts, two had DJ's and one was closed!  I don't know what is going on with this jazz festival, but we were certainly disappointed!  On a last note Bucky wore a GoPro on his helmet for this climb, I edited it down to about seven minutes and you can check it out here:  Papillons Ridge Youtube