SINGAPORE (Team Geared Up) - Ok, so this is part III (see part I Gran Paradiso and part II Castor). This should get you in the mood for the Summer that’s not far away!

We left off in Gressoney la Trinite near the Swiss-Italian border having climbed a great route on Castor. Back in our little hire car, we sped off without a plan - all we knew was were were going towards the French border with the potential of a spur of the moment bivvi on the Dome du Gouter on Mont Blanc. While Rallying down the valley bends flicking through all our insurance documentation and trying to get the hire company on the phone to find out if we were covered to travel out of Italy into Chamonix we managed to get flagged down by some Carabiners (ok, so that’s what we called them - Police) with machine guns pointed at us for speeding. We’d been tailed all the way down the valley by an undercover police car who duly pulled in beside us and the driver went for a smoke in the police jeep. uh oh. After a bit of me talking in English, him talking in Italian and some very stern looks we drove off ticket-less, and yes - I stalled the car.

Deciding that we couldn’t cross the border and the Italian route on Mont Blanc would require an earlier start than we had (with no maps!) we headed for Cervino on the south side of the Matterhorn. This is a view of the summit block of the Matterhorn from our hotel window :-)

With a plan to ski for a day in the Zermatt summer ski area and then climb the easy 4000er Breithorn and ski off the summit the next day we headed up the cable car and hired skis in the mid-station.

The icy blue lakes below due to the glacial run-off were incredible. The Cervino valley is visible in the background.

We checked into the Refugio Guide de Cervino with a spectacular back porch view!

After a quality morning on the slopes getting back into the technique (which shut at 2pm in the summer) we sat out in the sun in deck chairs with some beers, a great meal and a book. Hours of bliss!

We hit bed very early ready for something like a 4am start. Our plan was to break trail and be first on the summit for the day. This was the view out the window lying in bed.

Waking to a cracker of a morning, we set off into the sunrise with a view like this to gaze at as we puffed our way up to the top of the glaciated ski slopes and onto the flats beneath the summit slope.

This is the Matterhorn imposing itself on us, from two angles.

Here’s the skis on Eoin’s pack. Our bags were very heavy with skis and descent boots in them! (nobody would hire us ski-mountaineering boots - they didn’t understand we wanted to ski off the summit :-)

And not before long… we we the only people on the summit…! Which is extremely rare on Breithorn due to the height of the Swiss Cable Car.

And here’s the view looking towards Castor (our previous route).. spectacular!

And… here’s the Matterhorn! We’re a bit higher than earlier now! This is the direction we would ski off - straight over than and curving around the summit to the left down to the glacier below.

It was extremely icy - I took a good tumble with my iceaxe on my back keeping me nice and straight :-) flipping me head over heels - but Eoin got down gracefully! What a great experience!

As a great final surprise back at the hut we managed to get right in under the weekly beer delivery!

What a fantastic 2 days - (note: TGU Blogger Alx summited Breithorn in 2005 and I had done it in 2004).

So that wrapped up an unreal trip to Italy! I wish I was back there right now! Bring on the summer!

-Robin.

For example, the 51k Trail Blanch Font Romeu gets you one point, while the Bob Graham Round gets you two. The list can be linked from here. There are no Irish events listed and if we were to suggest any to them I reckon it would have to be something like the Wicklow Way or the Wicklow Round. Any other races you’d think would be comparable to the ones listed?

I’m not sure they won’t end up completely changing the spirit of this race. Don’t you think it will end up as one of those races with just serious ultra-heads involved, and no first timers like I was?

-Aisling-

Image from UTMB gallery.

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Here’s some more of these flying maniacs in wingsuits, this guy is known as “The Dude” (full post coming tomorrow on landing without a parachute (thanks to reader tipoff). These videos are incredible. Absolutely incredible.

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Follow Tango & Cash the NI MTB Boys in their latest adventure, To Err-igal is Human.

The mighty Mount Errigal, County Donegal. Basically a big 750-metre-high wobbly peat trifle with granite crushed nuts on top. We always wanted to have a crack at it on/with the bikes, so we departed Antrim at 5:40am on Saturday 15 December 2007, to climb the mountain.

We knew it was a carry to the top, so we padded the top- and down-tubes with pipe lagging from B&Q. It’s a good idea if you are going to be carrying for a long period.

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MS “Beluga SkySails” is the worlds first tanker to be towed by kite. The kite is 160m sq.

Ship christening of the worldwide first cargo ship with SkySails-System took place at the Hamburger Landungsbrücken/Überseebrücke on December 15th, 2007 – Milestone regarding the use of environmentally sound propulsion technologies at sea.

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The Kandersteg Ice Climbing Festival starts tonight in Switzerland. Love that event. Above is one of my photos from 2004 when I watched Ines Papart win first place.

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How not to launch an RNLI lifeboat from the beach. The on-shore wind blew this English crew back onto the beach, for a minute it looks like they weren’t going to get away. Massive seas. Watch this video. (Thanks diverman).

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All climbing have a great video of Will Gadd ice climbing icebergs from waterlevel. Massive icebergs too! Iceberg-oldering anyone?

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Adventure Race World Series has been announced in Ireland for June 14-21 2008. Location is South West and more details are available from Jan 11th.

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-Robin-

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND (Team Geared Up) - The big thing stopping me from back country or off piece snowboarding is all the horror stories you hear about people getting in an avalanche and eventually suffocating if the force of colliding snow didn’t already kill them. True, methods of avalanche prevention and rescue have drastically improved but sometimes it still isn’t enough. The clever people at Snowpulse (from my country of residence) are coming out with The Life Bag, a snow sports airbag basically that will drastically improve your chances of survival in the event you are caught in an avalanche by keeping your head and neck stiff and helping you stay to the top of the snow flow. That and if you are stuck on 7 hour economy seat night flight, my guess is this thing would make for quite a comfy instant neck and head rest. It could scare your neighbor and possibly smack them in the side of the head on inflation, mind.

The « Life Bag » is an airbag for avalanche designed for all winter sport addicts, and professionals. The airbag is triggered manually by pulling a handle. Once the handle is pulled, the 150 Liters of the Snowpulse airbag inflate in only 3 seconds.

The « Life Bag » can easily be reused and refilled. Professionals and resellers have the possibility to refill the air cylinder themselves. Training is therefore possible since you simply have to refill the cylinder after trying your Snowpulse airbag.

* The « Head on Top® » technology maximizes the chances to get the head out of the snow
* Head and thorax Head and thorax shock protection
* Respiratory track protection
* Creation of an air pocket in case of burial

* Weight of the system is only 1.3Kg !
* Compact system : volume used within the backpack 3 Liters
* Release handle can be stored in a dedicated pocket to avoid unwanted inflations during backpack handling.
* Mountain professionals and Snowpulse resellers can refill gas cylinder themselves. No parts have to be changed after use, you can train yourself
* Snowpulse airbags are the lightest and most compact airbag solutions in the world

The « Life Bag » is designed to bring you the best protection, while still remaining light, compact and user friendly. Snowpulse airbags are a set of innovative solutions.

-Alx-

(Image credit: Snowpulse) Via MedGadget

LONDON, UK, (Team Geared Up) - This one wins all the prizes. Forget ascending Everest blind, as an amputee or even running the A-Z of Marathons, this is way cooler. Having tried to climb Mont Blanc myself (and getting white washed off in a snow storm) I have ultimate respect for them lobbing these gas cylinders up there.

These guys lugged a full jaccuzzi to the summit of Mont Blanc, re-constructed it, and then heated it at 4810m.

Check out all their photos on their site jaccuzzi.ch. Well worth seeing what they carried up.

Credit to GoBlog for the tip.

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - As I posted on TGU in 2005, after hearing Simon Anthamatten speak at the Kandersteg Ice Climbing Festival about his 7 new lines on the Eiger North-face in one summer and seeing him climbing I was truly taken by him. Amazing character, although it helps if your ‘da is a Bergfuhrer!

Bren (mountaintraining.ie) has just reported that Simon and Michael Lerjen have just set a new record on the Matterhorn climbing from the Hornli Hut to summit in 1hr 40mins and returning in 53mins giving a total round trip on the Hornli ridge of 2hrs 33mins. Normally this route takes 7-9hrs for a fit experienced climber. This is sensational.

-Robin-

(Image Credit: Matterhorn Hornli Ridge from Zermatt, by Robin Blandford)

The easiest way to see the Irish performance is this posting on the Irish Mountain Running forum. Being honest, the overriding thoughts in my head were of proving that the Jungfrau marathon the week before hadn’t tired me too much and that by being second Irish woman home I deserved my place and that’s what happened, so huge relief for me. I also got to meet Jonathan Wyatt, 3 times world mountain running champion, although he wasn’t running. He must have been too tired after winning the Jungfrau marathon the week before! ;-)

-Aisling-

(The photos are from my flickr set).

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:

View Larger Map

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

-Robin-

Irish hill running girls Grainne Connor and Sarah Moores (well she’s an honorary paddy) came home in 4.53 and 4.54 and were thrilled with super runs in this unique event. It really is incredibly well organised, supported and stewarded. There’s a water/ gel/ provisions stop right when you need them - they also mark the tough climbs every quarter of a kilometre which is brilliant because you break the climbs into 250 metres and suddenly you’re eating through the kilometres. Big congrats to TGU blogger Eoin, I didn’t manage to bump into him or Mick of Mick’s Mountain running in memory of his brother Tony. Both had cracking runs and you can read about Mick’s experience over at his blog.

Image is Mick crossing the line! (Stolen from his blog ;-) )

Race winner was Jonathan Wyatt in 2.55 and the female winner Anita Hakenstad Evertsen in 3.23. Incredible running!

-Aisling-

Scary Profile of the Course from the Jungfrau Website.

I hear they have your name and country flag on your race number, that’s a nice touch isn’t it?! It might make it easier to bump into Mick! This year, Jungfrau also happens to be the World Long Distance Mountain Running Challenge and I’ve heard enough horror stories about altitude during this course to make me realise it won’t be easy!!

Anyway I’m hoping to get around slowly and without too much distress! So wish us luck! And of course best of luck to the other Irish hill runners travelling including Gerry Brady, Sarah Moores and Grainne Connor.
If you don’t see a blogpost by me on Monday it means I ran very badly or my legs don’t work……(or a missed flight…..)

-Aisling-