Les Droites

Date:

30.06.2022

Characteristic:

Alpine climbing

Duration:

13:29h

Distance:

10.9km

© Hannah Vickers Les Droites was a bit unlike some of the other 4000m peaks in the sense that it wasn't one that I have really wanted to do for years – but one that is on the list of the 50 principal 4000m peaks in Martin Moran’s guidebook. But it kind of fitted in nicely as a 3-day trip with Dave after a couple of days of bad weather and we’d found out that the normal route up the south ridge of the East summit was still “doable” according to a German guide who’d been there the previous week, even though conditions were very dry for the time of year and the access couloir no longer had a decent snow cover. We headed up to the Couvercle hut, the starting point for the normal route by taking the train up to Montenvers from Chamonix, then used the telecabine to join the long series of stairs that lead >>>

Cabane Des Dix

Date:

26.06.2022

Weissmies

Date:

25.06.2022

Characteristic:

Alpine trip

Duration:

8:49h

Distance:

14.0km

© Hannah Vickers I've been wanting to do a "proper" alpine route solo for a few years and the south ridge of the Weissmies seemed to be a friendly option for a first solo route. I'd done it a couple of years earlier when it was plastered in new snow, but after last weekend's heatwave most ridges were now dry and clear of snow so it appeared to be an ideal opportunity to do it again. I booked a night at the Almageller hut and half expected to be the only British person there, but I ended up meeting quite a few other British guys there and had a much more social afternoon than expected chatting with them in the dining room. Had breakfast at 4am the following morning and thought I would end up behind queues of other climbers on the approach to the Zwichbergenpass, but they were taking so long to get ready >>>

Lauteraarhorn

Date:

17.06.2022

Characteristic:

Alpine climbing

Duration:

18:00h

Distance:

30.0km

© Hannah Vickers The Lauteraarhorn has been sitting on my to-do list for the last few years, or basically ever since climbing the Schreckhorn but not continuing to do the traverse across to the Lauteraarhorn. Rather than going back from the Schreckhorn side, the other alternative was to approach it from the Grimsel Hospice to the east and ascend the Lauteraarhorn via its south face couloir and southeast ridge. However, with the length of the walk-in to this route being of the typical Oberland expedition type (i.e. LONG!) I’d sort of hoped that it might have ended up being an approach that I could do on skis. Of course the one year that I manage to get to the Alps with skis it turns out to be one of the driest winter/spring seasons ever, so there was basically too little snow to bother with a ski-in to the Aar bivouac >>>

Cabane de Bertol

Date:

12.06.2022

Pointe du Tsaté

Date:

06.06.2022

Breithorn

Date:

04.06.2022

© Hannah Vickers Kjekt å flytte hjemmekontor til alpene i et par uker ;-)