Team Geared Up

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Eoin & myself took a week earlier in the summer to bag a number of 4000ers in the alps. With our rock skills out of practice and our first trip both on together, we decided on a set of easy routes from the Italian sides which we hoped would give us a good base to work from.

While we were looking for quiet ascents, our first was far from it! Gran Paradiso at 4,061m is the highest peak entirely inside the border of Italy. We landed on the RyanAir flight to Turin and picked up our hire car around midnight. The plan was to stop at the first campsite we came to. Campsites & motorways don’t always come together, and so 4 hours later at 4am somewhere near Aosta we pulled over and slept in the car.

The next morning we continued the drive up into the Gran Paradiso national park up a windy little valley to Pont, the trail head for Gran Paradiso. We set off up a dusty track and a few hours later were sitting in the Emmanuel refuge sipping on a Coke and eating Ritter Sport. Mountain huts are such an oasis for climbers - luxuries flown in by helicopter so you don’t have to carry them.

Our strategy that paid off was to continue the climb to reach the edge of the glacier for our bivvi location. This was a prime spot as we got a head start on the crowds that would set off from the hut in the morning. We were unable to buy gas in Pont as we’d hoped. The one we bought was the wrong size and so it was a cold dinner of a baguette and paprika crisps. That said, it was fantastically hot in the sun. Had it of been a wet cold night, I’m not sure we could have managed without a hot drink.

At 2am we woke to the torch lights of other groups bivving near us. We started up the mountain and were first onto the glacier. We roped up, geared up with ice tools, and started one of the longest trudges in our lives. While Gran Paridiso is an east route F/PD- it is not to be underestimated in the physical sense for unacclimatised climbers. While we may have strolled up it later in the week - this was a really hard one you had to dig deep on to keep on shuffling up in crampons. Mind you - sunrise pictured below, really gave us a kick.

The route is all glacier, all day. The only rock section is the summit block, which for us early in the season was still snowy enough. With precautions were needed while balancing on a small ledge in crampons we celebrated in the high winds Eoin’s first 4000er, and then got the hell out of there before the crowds arrived. We’d been climbers 5 & 6 on the summit that morning out of a potential 100 summiteers. We climbed down the dodgy bits and anchored into the snow in freezing conditions in the shade. Wrecked and barley able to point the camera, we got some good shots looking back up to the summit and across Italy.

Here you can see the crowds forming a summit queue as we began a very long tiring descent into the thicker air!

We hit the valley that afternoon and sorted our gear out from the bivvi. Were were hit by a massive storm and other than sitting in the single pub/hotel eating pizza, we sheltered in the tent.

The next morning we drove on towards the direction of Switzerland to find what turned out to be the best climb of the trip, and how much better it is without crowds.

Part II and my log of ‘Castor’ will come later! Watch this space.

-Robin-