8/5/14 - Aiguille du Peigne

The weather forecasts have recently gone from bad to mediocre.  I think this has led Bucky to be extra aggressive in the climbs he wants to pursue.  When Bucky and I climbed with our guide Adam a little while ago, we talked about the Matterhorn and whether or not we could still do it with the hut closed.  Adam thought about it a little and said, "Yes, if you can do the Aiguille du Peigne by the normal route in 8 hours, I think you could do the Matterhorn."  So, with a mediocre weather forecast Bucky was all pumped up to make an attempt.  I don't know what the deal is, but I think we are cursed.  Every time we have gotten up extra early to catch the 6:30 tram for a big day, it's not open.  Every.  Time.  Yesterday was no different.  We got up early, got to the tram station at 6:45, and found a long line of people and no trams running.  They opened the tram at 7:20 and we ended up at the mid-station to start the route at 8:00, instead of the hoped for 7:00.  As soon as this happened I told Bucky there was no way we weren't walking down.  Call me a pessimist, but I figured if Adam mentioned 8 hrs with a smirk, I automatically assumed it was going to take us 12 hrs the first time we tried.  The weather was mostly cloudy when we started, but we had no reason to think anything of it.  The normal route starts by going up the descent route of the Papillons ridge, which we were familiar with from before, so we quickly made the ascent to the top in about two hours.  One of our many guide books says that from this point to the top of the Aiguille du Peigne takes two to three hours.  As a result I started to think we had a hope of finishing the route in the allotted eight hours, and even more importantly, make the last tram down at the end of the day!  From the top of the Papillons Ridge to the Aiguille is a third class, man-made looking, ramp.  We ascended this in a hurry and then all our problems began.  Once at the bottom of the North face of the Aiguille we noticed that the topo of the route we had planned on (originally not the normal route) looked nothing like what was presented to us.  We got to the bottom of a crack that we thought looked closest to what was on the topo, and found it dripping wet and mossy.  If you have tried to do any steep crack climbing before, you know that these conditions make it nearly impossible.  So after climbing up a little ways, Bucky came back down and we headed up a sandy, chossy, train wreck of a chute to try and find the normal route.  According to the topo, the normal route looked like it was around a small corner at the top of a "breach" below the Col du Peigne (a col is like a pass, but more like the top of a couloir, at a low point on a ridge.  I don't know if we have an equivalent word in English).  We saw what we thought was the top of the Col du Peigne, and something that we thought could have been the "breach" as we turned the corner from the North face to the North-West face, so we thought we were on the right track.  The guide book described the normal route as rated around 4/4+ (or 5.6-7) and the author also says much of it is down climbed on the descent.  So we were looking for a relatively easy and simple route to the top.

This was the only picture I took, not much to look at when
you are inside a cloud all day!

Around this same time the skies went from mostly cloudy to us inside of a cloud.  So we don't really know where we are, and then we can't see any further up the face than 50' or so to tell if we are on the right track or not.  Under these circumstances Bucky tried heading up another promising route, but quickly determined that it was also not correct.  I thought a route to the left of where I was standing looked promising, but after another quick try at that we determined, once again, that this was not the normal route.  The only place to go from there was to, what we thought, was the top of the Col du Peigne.  We scrambled over and the cloud cleared for long enough that we were able to fairly certainly ascertain that we were indeed standing on the "breach", the Col du Peigne was off in the distance, and the normal route was just to our left!  After wasting probably two hours trying to find the route we were finally (almost) positive that we were in the right spot.  All of my hopes of making the last tram down, however, were dashed to pieces.  Rather than climb the normal route, we thought the South East arete looked like more fun so we stayed on the corner instead of heading diagonally up the face.  Bucky led the first pitch, then switched to me for the second, and so on until the fourth pitch, at which we were at a crossroads of sorts.  The route looked like it could go right or left.  With no apt description in the guide book, and all faith in the topo dashed, I decided to go to the right.  After a fun pitch with a couple of tricky moves, I came to a fixed belay point at the base of a huge overhang, with no easy way around.  I lingered there for awhile, trying to see if there was another way around, but ultimately just set up the belay and brought Bucky up to me.  While all of this was going on the cloud we were in just got thicker and thicker, the wind started to pick up, and little ice crystals started spitting around.  Even with a long sleeve, shell, and pants on I was pretty cold.  Bucky had a fleece, shell, and shorts, so when he got to the belay station, and I floated the idea of turning around and heading down, he did not resist.  I was so discouraged with all the route finding mishaps that one more and, combined with the weather and the time (we had been out for about six hours at this point), I was certainly ready to leave the summit as unfinished business for another day.  We rappelled down into the relative unknown with the idea that the normal route was not far below us.  The cloud would lighten a little now and again so that we could see what looked like it could be the normal route about 40 meters below.  Whether or not we were ever on the normal route, I don't think we could fairly determine.  There were slings and pitons and jammed cams and nuts strewn about all over the place!  From the landing zone of our fist rappel we were able to down climb a little bit until we got to another fixed belay with a rappel ring.  After this belay we found ourselves about 20 meters below the breach where we had started.  I scrambled up the fourth class gully to the top and the clouds had broken enough that I could see all the way down into the valley of Chamonix.  It looked glorious.  The sun was reflecting of L'Arve river, the grass was green, I could almost feel the warmth.  Then a hole opened up so that I could see straight across the valley to the Brevant side, where it also looked sunny and warm.  I joked with Bucky when he got up there that the Aiguille du Peigne was just messing with us and trying to live up to it's name (Peigne is pronounced pain).  From the top of the breach we knew exaclty where we were again, and how to get down.  Eight hours had gone by from when we left the mid-station at 8:00 that morning and we still had almost the entire descent in front of us.  When we neared the top of the Papillons ridge section of the Aiguille we swore we could hear voices floating up to us through the clouds.  It being very late we were surprised there were other people wandering about.  At the bottom of the first rappel from the ridge we looked up and there was a British party heading up the ridge.  It being 6:20 at the time, the last tram leaving 10 minutes before, they were wisely planning on staying at the Aiguille d'Plan refuge.  Bucky and I, on the other hand, were once again walking the two hours, and 4,200 foot descent to Chamonix.  On the way down we ran into a chamois goat, or at least I think that is what it was after looking at some pictures online.  It was standing in the middle of the trail, staring us down, and blowing it's nose in a high pitched warning.  As we got closer I assumed it would run away; rather, it looked like it was going to charge!  I raised my arms above my head and yelled in the most bear like voice I could muster.  I am happy to say that the chamois backed down and did not decide to head butt me off the mountain!  At around 9:30 we stumbled into town, feeling haggard and very foot sore.  As soon as I sat down back at the apartment I did not want to get back up.  Leaving the packs still packed, the blog unwritten, and dinner uncooked, we went to very welcoming beds, resolved, now more than ever, to never miss a tram down again.