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 Bouldering in the upper Chamonix Valley |
 Climbing the Razor's Edge on the Chappelle de la Gliere South Ridge (2663 m) Mont Blanc in the background |
 On the Papllions Ridge route of the Aiguille du Peigne. This is in the Chamonix Aiguilles which tower above the town proper. This was my introduction to European Alpine Climbing techniques: Merde! what are doing? Just step on ze damn piton. Alez, alez! |
 On the Cosmic Arete route on the Aiguelle du Midi. Nice mixed ice and rock route ending up just below that antenta tower at the top. Mostly what I remember is this sea level dweller flailing up the 5.8+ crux in plastic boots, heavy pack in 20 degrees and snowing, while gasping for oxygen at 12,000 feet. Since enough time has passed to forget all that, What a Great Climb! |
 This is still on the Cosmic Arete shortly after the previous photo. We had climbed the ice slope to the bottom of the tower in the middle, traversed to the right and then up the ice grove, popping out on the ridge again. |
 This is the South Face of the Aigulle du Midi. Going straight up the middle is one of THE classic Alpine Climbs. The Cosmic Arete (our route) follows the ridge on the left side. To get to the climb, we took a telephrique (cable-car) from Chamonix to the terminus hollowed in the top of the mountain (complete with bar & resturant!) Go thru a door and within 10 feet, step out onto a knife edged ridge with a 3000 foot drop to one side and 1000 foot drop on the other. We bounced out onto the ridge (right side in photo) followed it for a while and dropped down onto the glacier (foreground) below. We traversed the glacier eventually ending up at an abandoned hut below our ridge. The hut had orginally been used for astrophysics experiments, hence the name, Cosmic Arete. |
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