September 29-30, 2018
While having a beer at The Beckett & Wilde in Chamonix Sud, my mate Lewis and I conspired to have a crack at the route, L’eau Rance d’Arabie on Aiguille de Blatière. Lewis was getting ready to leave Chamonix to visit family and have other adventures, so this would serve as his send-off party.
Aiguille de Blaitière (Translation: Needle of Blaitière) is one of the striking triangular peaks sitting above Chamonix, to the Northeast of the Aiguille du Midi. There are a half-dozen or so fantastic climbing routes on the Red Pillar of Aiguille de Blaitière. L’eau Rance d’Arabie is a popular route grade at French Grade 6b.
I met Lewis at the bottom of the Aiguille du Midi lift station the next day after his work shift. My preference is to self-power climbing missions “from the valley” but I had a long week with a lot of vertical meters and I was untroubled by taking the lift up to the Plan de L’Aiguille station. We were on the last ride up which was shared with paragliders making an evening flight and other mountain creatures planning to stay the night (or nights) in the mountains.
It took about an hour to get to the base of Aiguille de Blaitèire from the Plan de L’Aiguille station where we set-up camp and made dinner. It was a typical alpine hodge-podge of ingredients that Lewis had to clear out of his apartment. Cous-cous, tuna, tomatoes, pepper, and the main ingredient, cheese. This is France after all. We watched the sun linger on the horizon while we made dinner and took some snaps with Lewis’s vintage camera.
I was stoked to use my Black Diamond Hilight tent for the first time since I arrived in Chamonix! There is something about the minimalist design that makes you feel like a serious alpinist. It has been a year since it got mountain use from an attempt on Mount Robson in Canada. The night was eerily still and we slept with the door open waking up occasionally for rocks tumbling around the Mont Blanc massif.
The next day, we woke up about 6:30 AM to eat breakfast, enjoy an instant coffee/hot chocolate concoction, and jam to some music (see video below), while we waited on the sun to radiate some heat. If we started too early the climbing would have been slightly miserable since the temperatures were around 5 degrees centigrade when we woke up.
We left camp at 7:45 AM and were climbing L’eau Rance d’Arabie by 8:30 AM. Lewis took the first pitch which was technical slab climbing, graded 6b. This pitch definitely woke us up more than the coffee did. Lewis put it down and I was happy to second up. We swung leads after that with difficulties ranging between 5B to 6B. Click here (Camp to Camp) or here (UK Climbing) for the route description. I think the climbing was challenging for the grade, but this seems typical for any route put up by Michael Piola. Mr. Piola is a prolific Swiss climber who has his name in and on most guidebooks in the area. Lewis commented that he will never have to buy another beer in his life. I reckon he is correct.
Post-summit, it was a bit of a rush to get off the climb since we wanted to make the last ride down at 4:30 PM and that included packing up our campsite. Getting off the climb was probably the most dangerous part of the day, but we did it safely and efficiently despite a rope snag or two. We finished where our conversation started at Beckett & Wilde for a celebratory beer while we looked up at Les Aiguilles de Chamonix safely from the Valley. Au revoir, Lewis! See you back in Chamonix, or maybe in the Pyrenees =).
