Aiguille Verte - Whymper Couloir (18.06.2023)
Written by hmsv1 (Hannah Vickers)
| Start point | Couvercle hut (2,687m) |
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| Characteristic | Alpine climbing |
| Duration | 11h 00min |
| Distance | 9.0km |
| Vertical meters | 1,453m |
| GPS |
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| Ascents | Aiguille Verte (4,122m) | 18.06.2023 |
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After acclimatising in the Saas valley I was originally supposed to head over to Evolene on the saturday and meet up with British mountain guide Tim Neill and climb with him for a couple of weeks again. I was really looking forward to this as it had been a few years since he’d been out in the Alps for the summer season. We had been keeping in contact during the week about potential objectives, and as things turned out it looked like there would be a weather window for doing the Whymper couloir on the Aiguille Verte on the saturday/sunday after my trip up the Lagginhorn. I had hoped to have had two good nights sleep down in the valley before embarking on another 4000er like the Verte, but as most of the routes on the Aiguille Verte are a bit tricky to get in good condition this opportunity seemed too good to pass, so things ended up being a bit more hectic than I would have liked. After getting back down to Saas Grund from the Weissmies hut on friday morning, I travelled over to Evolene and started getting things packed up for going over to meet Tim in Chamonix early on saturday. Moreover, since the Courvercle hut was fully booked on the saturday night it meant we would have to bivi nearby, so I had to source some bivi gear pretty quickly since I hadn’t brought any with me! Fortunately when I got to Evolene Graham Frost said he could lend me a sleeping bag and mat (thanks Graham!) which I picked up on friday evening. I took the bus and train over from Evolene just after 6am on saturday which got me into chamonix some time around 9.45. By the time we’d bought some food supplies and got the train up to Montenvers it was almost midday and baking hot before we’d even started the hike up the Mer de Glace towards the Couvercle hut.
The hut walk itself was similar to when I’d been up to the Courvercle hut in 2022; it started with a some uninspiring walking on rubble and eventually we were walking up on grippy ice in our trainers for several kilometres, then had a lunch break before crossing more rubble (on a sort of path marked roughly by red sticks) to get to a steeper pile of rubble at Les Egralets leading up to the ladders going up the cliff face. The steeper pile of rubble was more or less my worst nightmare as it was either loose rocks or super hard ground covered in small loose stones, which made me feel like I was going to end up sliding down sideways at any minute. Needed a minute just to recompose myself once we finally reached the ladders, which were by far a much more solid way to gain height. By now I was also starting to feel the weight of all our climbing and bivi gear plus food and on top of that I was super thirsty and was a bit low on water. It was fairly nice to climb up the ladders, but the final few hundred metres slogging up the path to the hut felt pretty hard and I was more than overjoyed to see the hut when we finally reached it after nearly 5 hours since descending from Montenvers. We’d taken a slightly longer route than in 2022 as well, spending more time walking on the ice before crossing over the rubble to Les Egralets. Tim spotted a good bivi site on a grassy patch a few hundred metres west of the hut, so after having something to drink at the hut we crossed some snow to get to the grassy spot, which looked like it had been specially made for bivis with a great view of the huge north face of the Grandes Jorasses. Since it was already early evening and Tim wanted to get up at 10.50pm we didn’t have a huge amount of time to rest, eat or sleep so I was already a bit stressed out that I wouldn’t be recovered enough from the walk-in by the time we had to start climbing again.... nevertheless, I think I did fall asleep for an hour or so, but woke up again with a cold face and cold bum and spent the final hour just waiting for the alarm to start ringing.
With some reluctance I eventually managed to get up and start packing away the bivi gear and other stuff we didn’t need to take up the mountain with us while Tim had already started firing up the jetboil to make coffee (some of which I very unhelpfully spilled a bit later....). I ate half a sandwich for “breakfast” (who eats breakfast at 11pm??) but didn’t manage to find the enthusiasm to eat much more at that point. Time seemed to be flying by and after sneeking quietly inside the hut to use the toilets it was already 11.45pm before we began the trek up into the Talefre basin. There was snow already from the hut, but we didn’t put crampons and ropes on until we reached the edge of the glacier some 20 minutes later. From there we made use of an existing track to ascend the 700m (ish) up to the bergschrund guarding the entrance to the Whymper Couloir. My body was generally feeling tired and it felt like a big effort just to walk up the track, which was feeling quite steep in places with tired legs. Although it hadn’t felt like we’d been walking for that long, it was in fact about 2.5 hours before we’d reached the bottom of the couloir and by that time other teams who’d slept for a bit longer at the hut had also caught us up too. Here we took a break to get ice axes out, eat/drink, pee, put on extra jackets etc, then continued on steeper snow slopes upwards towards the bergschrund. The route took us a bit left to climb over the bergschrund, after which it was necessary traverse out right again to get back on route. Tim had descended the Whymper several times, although never climbed up it but seemed to know his way around better than most of the other teams on the mountain, the majority of which seemed quite content to stay behind us for the rest of the way. There were abseil points set up alongside the right side of the couloir, which was partly mixed, partly snow in the lower part, but some way up where the couloir appeared to divide we traversed back out left and carried on climbing up the right hand side of this left branch. We’d been fortunate to have been climbing up in good bucket-sized steps until now, which helped reduce the overall effort a lot compared to if we'd had to front point up the entire couloir, but there was also some great neve and ice in places higher up which also made for really fun two-axe climbing, as well as a bit of rock thrown in too. Lower down in the couloir we had climbed a few pitches but for the majority of the climb up the couloir we moved together on a long rope with running protection, so there wasn't that many times to have a decent break and rest.... Would have been even more enjoyable if my legs had been less tired and if my lungs hadn’t had to work so hard for what seemed like forever ;-) After endless hours of front-pointing up the couloir in the dark, it finally began to get a little light at about 4.45am and some gorgeous dawn colours gave a great view behind us, both down the couloir and across to the Grandes Jorasses north face. Another chilly hour later (after also having to really dig deep and find some power in the legs to keep moving) we were finally at the ridge leading to the summit with a beautiful sunrise on the other side. Given how tired I had been feeling already on the walk-in on the glacier, I’d never expected to have gotten this far, so it was almost a bit emotional to be so close to the summit of this amazing mountain and get to see such a wonderful sunrise too! It was only a short walk up an elegant snow arete to get to the summit, and there was a brilliant view of some climbers on the Grande Rocheuse as we looked back down the ridge. Made it to the summit at 6.30am and joined a bunch of other climbers in admiring the brilliant views everywhere. I was assuming this might be the one and only time I ever climb the Aiguille Verte (who knows, I might do it again when I finally forget how hard work it was....) so I took a load of pictures to remember what a gorgeous morning it was.
However, since we really needed to get down and out of the Whymper couloir before the sun hit it, we didn’t have an enormous amount of time for hanging around on the summit, plus it was also still a bit chilly there – so we began making our way back down to the top of the couloir after some 10 minutes at the summit. Several other rope teams had also started descending just before us so a bit of a queue had formed at the first abseil point at the top of the couloir. Some pairs seem to be quite efficient with abseiling (almost running backwards down the couloir!) and retrieving their ropes while others were maybe less so. Tim got a little impatient with the pair who had got there just before us and were taking their time getting their ropes sorted, so we eventually managed to squeeze past and get out of their way. After the first few abseils (of about 12 in total), we made good progress descending the couloir, mainly thanks to Tim’s efficiency with navigating down to the next abseil point, sorting out the ropes and a joint effort pulling them :-) Fortunately we didn’t have too many parties directly over or under us in the lower part of the couloir where there was a bit more risk of loosening rocks and by the time we’d done the final abseil over the bergschrund and down onto the Talefre glacier it was around 9am. We’d basically stayed up all night to climb a mountain! On the glacier a young couple who’d bivied up on the ridge were keen to chat so we had a good break here, mainly stripping off many jackets as the temperature had soared now we were out of the shady couloir and into the sun and having something to eat and drink what was left of our water. I’d drunk a lot on the way up after having gotten a bit too dehydrated on the walk to the hut the previous day! Despite having still about 700m to descend back to the hut it actually didn’t take much more than about 1h 15, although it ended up being a roasting hot 1h 15. In total it had taken about 11 hours for the return trip, and it was a relief to get back to the hut for some drink and proper food. We stopped here for a little over an hour as we still also needed to pack up our bivi gear before walking back down to the Mer de Glace and back up the stairs to Montenvers (this part I was dreading most).
For the descent/ascent back to Montenvers we tried out the “new” path as neither of us could face the steep rubble slopes below the ladders of the Les Egralets route again. The newer route from the Couvercle hut down to the Mer de Glace started off quite pleasant, and after a few ladders here and there became a nice kind of balcony path above the glacier, but didn’t really descend much for a long while. I had somehow got it in my head that the ladders would be somewhat tamer than the old route, but in the end wasn’t any less exposed. As the path got closer and closer to the rock bands abover the glacier the route became one long series of steep ladders, the length of which I had underestimated! In hindsight given the steepness and length of them I think it might have been wise to have at least had a harness on and a lanyard readily available to clip onto the ladder just in case I’d wanted to take a break, as it was pretty exposed. Fortunately the rubble at the bottom was not nearly as traumatic as the rubble at Les Egralets and we were soon quite quickly back on the grippy ice of the Mer de Glace. We took a short break here before continuing the journey back down the glacier and up the final flights of stairs to the Montenvers train station (which for me was the most excruciating part of the day). Once there we also bumped into Valentine Fabre, a friend of Tim’s, partner of guide/photographer Ben Tibbetts and also a very good skimo athlete.... we ended up chatting for a little while as the gates to the trains were closed off when a helicopter needed to land and pick up an older man who’d got sick. Bit of an unexpected finish to a long and incredible day but we did eventually get back down to Chamonix! Thanks to Tim for an awesome but tiring start to the holiday :)
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