Ireland
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England
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USA|
Jun
20
2007
|
TGU Alpine Climbing 2007 |
LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - TGU blogger Eoin arrives here in London in 14hrs time. Friday 1920hrs we fly to Turin, the location of the last Winter Olympics to hire a car and drive north. We’ll be laden down with ice axes, screws, crampons, ice-line rope, poles, winter boots, shed loads of gortex, fleece, softshell & ripstop. We’ve 8 nights in the Italian/Swiss Alps planned.
First stop is Gran Paradiso National Park to climb ‘Gran Paradiso‘ (above), the highest mountain wholly in Italy at 4061m. It should be a climb without difficulty if the weather is good to us. We’ll head up on the Saturday early enough to acclimatise over the day, and include a route recci for the low-light dawn start & some refreshers on glacial travel.
Next stop will be Castor (4226m) pictured above and Pollux (4092m), which Aoife & myself aborted in 2004 due to a week of bad weather in Zermat giving us only a window to complete Breithorn (4164m) safely. This year, we plan to complete both peaks in a single summit day, leaving the Sella hut in the early hours of the morning from the Italian side (rather than Swiss) and drop down to the col (joch) in between the peaks before ascending the other. We reckon the second peak will add an additional 2.5-3hrs to get back to first summit before descending.
This still leaves us with 3 free days to play with. We’re keen to open to the floor for some 4000er recommendations if any readers have any (You may have noticed, we’re climbing no more than PD routes on this trip).
In other news today, courtesy of Aisling we appear to have our 7th TGU Blogger soon to begin writing here. The only hint I can give right now is, they’re a very keen Irish mountain biker.
-Robin-
Image Credit: Top photo, Summit block of Gran Paradiso, Italy.
Latest Comments (11):
Have a great time! Sounds wonderful! I hope some readers post some recommendations and you have a go at what they suggest (we have very shy readers here at TGU)! Can I come on the next one?! ;-)
yeh of course! I think we’ll have to do a proper TGU trip.
May the force be with you and may you find ‘paradise’ in Gran Paradiso!
My mum knows how to comment on a blog! I’m impressed!!
Thought I’d post this on my favorite sites. Have you heard of alpine speed climbing in the Pacific Northwest, like Rainier, Shasta, Hood, Adams, maybe others? Lots of information and press to sift through - but, it boils down to a great alpine speed climber in Oregon, Dan Howitt set OFFICIAL records on EACH peak in 2003-4, amazing! Official, that’s right, timed by people like Oregon Peak Adventures, Climb Max Mountaineering, Oregon Army National Guard and on and on. Howitt’s times are amazing, 1:56min official ascent of Hood from the parking lot at Timberline Lodge! Done with a dog, that would slow you down tons! Sub 5hr ascent of Rainier! From the parking lot, 9+ miles 9000+ feet vertical to the summit! Beats the prior record of Jim Whittaker (Everest Legend) by 20 minutes, Jim’s was OFFICIAL too! Awesome guys! Timed by Climb Max people, Jacob Kamermeyer, Brogan Adams, I’ve met both. I’d like to hear more about how Howitt set these amazing feats, courage and endurance! No one has come close to these times, and no one has ever even tried doing officially timed records!
I’d like to hear of others who tried Rainier officially, besides great Jim Whittaker in 1959, Jim was the first US citizen to summit Everest, Dan Howitt is now in the ranks of him for this sport, it’s cool to have Dan in Oregon. I wonder what he’s planning next.
Dan’s done some great feats of courage and strength and endurance on those peaks, definitely.
[COMMENT REMOVED BY EDITOR]
“”Sub 5hr ascent of Rainier! From the parking lot, 9+ miles 9000+ feet vertical to the summit! Beats the prior record of Jim Whittaker (Everest Legend) by 20 minutes, Jim’s was OFFICIAL too!”"
Nice! I found Dan Howitt’s Rainier summit photo. Taken by the timer!
http://www.network54.com/Forum/216122/message/1158816465/Re-+Mountain+Speed+Labrador
“â€Sub 5hr ascent of Rainier! From the parking lot, 9+ miles 9000+ feet vertical to the summit! Beats the prior record of Jim Whittaker (Everest Legend) by 20 minutes, Jim’s was OFFICIAL too!—
Nice! I found Dan Howitt’s Rainier summit photo. Taken by the timer!
http://www.network54.com/Forum/216122/message/1158816465/Re-+Mountain+Speed+Labrador
Very cool.
pretty amazing
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