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When life was good, before we got lost,
and before it started to rain |
We just can't just can't get enough of the Aiguille do Peigne. It shut us down the first time we tried to summit on the normal route do to miserable route finding on our part. We went back today to try the Contamine Vaucher route (6a, 400m) and totally redeem ourselves. Unfortunately that did not happen. We were going great, having a blast, the sun was out, and the route finding was easy. Then we got to the tenth pitch. I was leading and it looked from the topos that the route went up to the left. As soon as I got up about half way, however, I could tell we had gone off course. I found an emergency rappel set-up that someone else had used and lowered back down to Bucky. Then I went up to the right on the second try and got to a wicked hard overhang with no where to place pro, so I down climbed to yet another emergency style rappel set-up and Bucky lowered me back again. At this point we had been at the same belay for an hour! There was one more route up the middle that Bucky thought looked promising, so we switched places and he took the lead. He climbed up to the left, following the route I first took, but then went one crack system to the right from where I tried. He went further than I did on my first attempt, but still got to a very tricky section that made him feel like it was the wrong way. I lowered him down to a ledge up high and he gave it another try one more crack system to the right. This new crack system only led him exactly to the place he had just been. We thought that maybe this was not the correct route, but Bucky thought we could climb it and maybe things would clear up once we got over the next hump. This time I took the lead and boy, was that pitch a doozy. We could see a purple sling hanging off the rock up above us so we decided to make for it. After some foot smearing on very slabby rock with virtually no hand holds I came to an overhang with a nice crack. I managed to get a piece of pro in the crack which made me feel much more confident about the move, and, tricky as it was, I managed to get over without any hiccups. From there the pitch only got harder. After some more slabs I got to another very challenging overhang. The purple sling was right at the top of this overhang. Once again, it was very slabby for the feet with a crack for the hands. This crack was not very nice. It was wet and slimy and very difficult to get any purchase with the hands. There was a jammed hex that I managed to clip while basically doing the splits between two opposing faces. Next I moved slowly up to a jammed cam. From there it was trying to smear the feet with my left hand jammed in the slimy crack while I reached with my right up to a nice big jug! As difficult as the move was, it was well protected with the fixed cam so it wasn't too dangerous. When I got to the purple sling I hadn't yet used even half of the rope so I decided to try and climb up the next little section. This one was sheer slab with a very wide crack in a dihedral. We brought along a #3 cam which I started using as aid! I would basically set the cam, move my feet up the slab, hope I was secure, then slide the cam up again. I did this for about eight feet when the crack I was using disappeared and I said, "Screw this, I'm done!" I am not one who is easily frightened by the idea of taking a fall, but I was scared. I basically reversed the process back down until I was hanging off the purple sling where I set up a belay and had Bucky come up. While completing the overhang right below the purple sling Bucky said, "Dang dude, this is scary! That is an impressive lead!" So at least it wasn't just me. He wanted to climb up and take a look around the corner at the section I had bailed on, and after a few seconds we agreed that it was time to bail on our dreams of summiting. We started rappelling down and everything went smoothly for the first few legs. As we were pulling the rope through before our fourth rappel I noticed the tail of the rope had managed to somehow get a knot in it. Try as we might, with all 350 lbs of force between the two of us, we could not pull that knot through the rappel ring. The rappel route was different than the climbing route so in order to get it free we would have to climb up two pitches on the blue rope, to where the climb and rappel routes met, and then rappel one pitch down to where the red rope was stuck. I was all for climbing back up and actually climbed the first pitch. After that, though, Bucky said he would rather come back tomorrow, try again, and get the red rope then. I was concerned that all the rappels might not be 30m, like the first few we had done, but I succumbed and lowered back down.
The very first rappel we did ended up being about 31 meters. Bucky made it to the ends of the rope and could not reach the rap station. He yelled up to me to tie a prusik knot on one side of the rope and clip it to my harness. He lowered himself off the end of one rope while I held on to the other so he could reach the rap station. In order for me to reach the station I extended my belay device with a double sling and then clipped another double sling onto my belay loop. When I reached the ends of the rope I lowered one of the double slings to Bucky so he could clip me in to the rap station. Then I slowly lowered myself off the end of the rope without the knot, while Bucky pulled on the double sling and brought me safely in to the station without too big of a fall! After this sketchy scenario we decided to just try and find any rap station (the mountain side is literally littered with them) so we could make it to the bottom. Some of these rappels were only ten meters long! Soon enough, to add insult to injury, it started to downpour. It didn't take long until we were both soaking wet. Slowly zig zagging our way down the huge face from random rap station to random rap station while little cascades flowed past our feet! By using this method we were able to rappel all the way down to the glacier without any more incidents. By this point it was about 6:05, or five minutes until the last tram left the mid-station. I was certain we were going to walk down, but Bucky said, "screw it, let's get down this glacier as fast as we can and just run. Who knows? We caught a tram once at 6:40, maybe it will happen again!" So we pulled out our ice axes and glissaded very quickly down the glacier. I was a nincompoop and forgot to bring gloves so my hands got pretty shredded by the snow. As soon as we were on (relatively) flat and dry ground we ran! We looked up and saw that a tram was coming down from the Aiguille du Midi, it was 6:30, the absolute latest we have ever seen the last tram was 6:30, and we were still about 15 minutes away from the mid station. Bucky wanted to start walking, but my body was soaked and cold and the running was really warming me up so I just kept going. I looked back and said, "You never know! By the Grace of God there could be one more tram!" At about 6:45, low and behold, another tram started coming down from the Midi! This time we knew, as long as we kept running, we could make it to the mid-station before that tram did. We rolled into the mid-station soaking wet and out of breath, but we made it! Some people already there and waiting just looked at us, smiled, and said, "Oh! You guys are lucky too!" Apparently there were some mechanical issues with the tram earlier on in the day, so they were running extra trams late to try and get everyone down off the mountain! I don't know if we were the last one or not, but it sure felt good not to have to walk the 2 hours and 20 minutes all the way down to Chamonix! I guess we are going back tomorrow, weather permitting, to retrieve the rope.
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