Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey

Date:

07.07.2023

Characteristic:

Alpine climbing

Duration:

12:33h

Distance:

12.0km

© Hannah Vickers The Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey. I remember first hearing about this peak, which is located on the italian side of Mont Blanc, around 5 years ago when Tim was telling me about the time he’d guided it with one of his colleagues. It sounded like a proper adventure just to get to it and an overall cool outing with its reputation as being one of the trickier 4000ers. As things turned out, it was also the last 4000er I had to do, so it seemed quite fitting to have saved the best until last ;-) Up until this point it felt like I’d been quite fortunate with the weather and really great snow conditions this year, and the remainder of my final holiday week looked like it would give us good enough weather for an attempt at the Aiguille Blanche. After descending the Dom we had an easy tuesday and drove >>>

Mont Maudit - Kuffner Arete

Date:

26.06.2023

Characteristic:

Alpine climbing

Duration:

12:15h

Distance:

13.9km

© Hannah Vickers The Kuffner ridge on Mont Maudit has been sitting on my “wishlist” for a number of years; not just because Mont Maudit is also on the 4000m list, but because of what I’d heard from other people and seen cool pictures from the route. Moreover, the route description opens with “This is one of the finest ridge climbs in the Alps, combining snow aretes with interesting mixed sections and unfolds amongst scenery of the highest order....”. After a binned attempt in June 2022 (we only got as far as Cirque Maudit after a night with no decent refreeze) I was super keen to make the most of any opportunity with good weather and snow conditions this year. Since the Col de la Fourche bivouac hut got swept down off the ridge and destroyed last summer by rockfall, our only options were to start >>>

Nordend

Date:

24.06.2023

Characteristic:

Alpine trip

Duration:

10:10h

Distance:

11.0km

© Hannah Vickers Nordend is one of the 50 major 4000m summits listed in Martin Moran’s guidebook to the 4000m peaks of the Alps, despite having a prominence of less than 100m, so it was on my to-do list for this summer even though given the choice I’d rather have done a ski-assisted ascent much like I’d done on the Dufourspitze a couple of years earlier. After almost an entire week of strong gales and a storm depositing new snow up high I’d originally wanted to use the new weather window to go and climb the Kuffner Arete on Mont Maudit, but since both the Torino and Cosmiques huts were full for friday and saturday night, we ended up heading to Nordend first since there was still many availabe beds in the Monte Rosa hut, which had literally just opened for the summer season. We drove over to Zermatt >>>

Hintereisferner

Date:

16.09.2022

Breithorn

Date:

04.06.2022

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

Aiguille de Bionnassay

Date:

20.07.2021

Characteristic:

Alpine trip

Duration:

6:25h

Distance:

11.7km

© Hannah Vickers The Aiguille de Bionnassay is an elegant peak lying at the western end of the Mont Blanc massif, and like the Lyskamm traverse is known for its narrow snow ridges – in particular the “standard” route up the east ridge, accessed from the Gonella hut on the Italian side of the mountain. Since most snowy routes were in excellent condition this summer it seemed like a good choice to finish off my month in the Alps, so we headed there after spending a night in Chamonix after coming back from the Ecrins. We had a somewhat delayed start because of long queues to get through the Mont Blanc tunnel into Courmayeaur, so by the time we had made it up the Val Veny road as far as we could get to La Visaille it was around midday and we still had at least 5 hours of walking ahead of us to get to the >>>

Lyskamm traverse

Date:

02.07.2021

Characteristic:

Alpine trip

Duration:

11:28h

Distance:

26.7km

© Hannah Vickers I first came to know about the traverse of Lyskamm during a trip to the Alps in July 2003. The original itinerary for the week had been to climb Castor, Pollux, Lyskamm and the Dufourspitze via the Margherita hut and Zumsteinspitze. In the end the traverse of Lyskamm never happened because the guide I was then climbing with decided it was too windy that day, and we ended up ascending Il Naso (the Nose of Lyskamm) and Vincent Pyramid instead. In hindsight I don’t think I had sufficient alpine mountaineering experience to do the traverse, which is basically a 2km narrow and exposed snow ridge so it was perhaps just a well that we didn’t do it that day. However, since then it has been high on my wishlist of routes to do in the Alps but for some reason or another there has never been the right >>>

Castor

Date:

01.07.2021

Characteristic:

Alpine trip

Duration:

4:07h

Distance:

11.7km

© Hannah Vickers Did a short ascent of Castor en route to the Quintino Sella hut, with the main plan being to traverse Lyskamm the next day. Didn't get fully fog-free views from the top, but still nice to re-visit this peak again after 18 years since my first time!

Breithorn x 3

Date:

25.06.2021

Characteristic:

Hike

Duration:

4:34h

Distance:

11.6km

© Hannah Vickers Siste dag med akklimatisering i Zermatt. Kokvarmt på fjellet i dag!

Breithorn x 2

Date:

23.06.2021

© Hannah Vickers Tenkte det hadde vært lurt å utnytte det dyre heisbillettet og godværsvinduet og gå to runder på Breithorn ;-)