Team Geared Up

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - This is part II and our ascent of Castor (see Part I: Gran Paradiso). Castor is a 4226m peak located in Switzerland but we climbed from Gressoney la Trinite in Italy which climbs up a long valley from Pont St Martine, the devil town with no ATMs, Maps or Guidebooks. Italy really doesn’t have the same mountaineering tourism as France or Switzerland, and you feel it. On the positive side this means you get spectacularly empty routes - and we were about to experience one of the best climbs of the trip.

We arrived in Staffel at about 11am, and dumped all our kit out of the car onto the road - we proceeded to sort it all back into the packs we’d take up the mountain with us for the night. By the time we were packed we found out the cabel car only ran 3 times a day - and the next one was at 5pm, we’d never make refuge by darkness and climbing to an unknown route with no cable car descent open and no tent is not clever. We’d have to wait for tomorrow… at least we had a nice view! The peak you can see is the hump we would pass over to reach the hut. Castor at 4226m is hidden well behind this and to the left.

We got a room in a B&B and headed to the nearest bar - as luck would have it, it rained heavy and we may well not have survived a night on the hill with no kit, certainly with the thunder storm we would neither make the hut, or the climb in the morning. It could have been disaster. In the bar we were the only 2 people and managed to spend what was probably a week’s revenue for them in 5hrs. They fed us nibbles all night ‘courtesy’ of us buying extra big ‘formidable’ beers at a go. We ordered big pizza’s, it was great - well Eoin ordered two! We ended up ’shouting’ along to a DVD of the U2 Vertigo tour on our own much to the staff’s amusement, and at ‘kick-out’ time we were presented with free hats and a 1ltr bottle of the local spirit! Love it.

Waking very groggy & dehydrated at 6.30am after only a a few hrs sleep, not in the mood at all, we started up the cable car on the 8.45am lift.

It was from here the view just got better…

and better…

and better…!

We started out on the route, and it was a long rock path along a ridge, moving onto snow fields up the slowly rising giant.

The temperature had plummeted the night before and everything had gone into a deep freeze. It was odd for the height we were at as every lake we past was frozen solid. You could throw stones at the surface and not break it.

As we gained some serious height we hit cloud, and during the breaks in the white-out we got some spectacular views down what we had just climbed - we began to feel rather the vertical drops on either side that we’d been oblivious to in the cloud.

We got a fantastic breeze come in and sweep out the cloud around us - the panorama opened up and we could see the final ridge ahead that we needed to reach before we could take on the cabled section and the vertical finish to the refuge.

We eventually reached what we knew from our guide book was the last part of the ridge. This is where it got steep, but fantastic. Suddenly everything we’d seen on the route so far just got amplified and comments started stream out of us “wow”, this was good.

What we had underestimated was the length of the cabled section, it went on, and on! Can you see it running along the ridge below? This was about 1/5th of it.

There were wooden bridges in place to span the big gaps too - wooden bridges I was only just trusting!

In the heat of the moment we were even both caught wearing buffs as a bandana. Practical - but very un-trendy. I regret this photo.

Out of no-where, the hut appeared over the ridge-top.

Fantastic…

3585m, pretty high hut.

Even the first sign of other climbers that day - It had been wonderfully peaceful. Rare.

Toilets too - at this height… squat holes, but with a flusher - so not the end of the world!

Now this is a view to eat your dinner looking at! We sat down and ate a massive plate of pasta each. At about 1 million euro a plate to cover the helicopter fuel to get it up there!

The view of tomorrow’s route & the glacier we would cross before sunrise was clear and the good news was a track was already cut. What we didn’t realise at this point was there was only 4 of us out of the ~30 at the hut who would climb Castor the next day, this just kept getting better.

As darkness set in, we took our last look at the footprints we’d be trying to locate on the snow in the sickly feel of 4am.

The next morning was spectacular - we geared up in the gear room and stepped out onto the ice. It just got so good. I find mountaineering, and especially glacier plods are very much a visual slow moving thing. Your brain races along thinking of things but with your partner 20m ahead of you on the rope it’s a very self-finding experience. I think in this case my photos speak for the climb themselves.

Below is Gran Paradiso, which we climbed in Part I (the days before).

Our ridge…

Some tight navigation was needed!

And then came the summit… pure brilliance!

And the summit views…

There’s the Matterhorn…

And TGU on top! Bonus!

Map:

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Part III next week, with our ski mountaineering descent of the Breithorn.

-Robin-