2024-07-05

Dent du Géant (4013m)

The circus continued on our second day in the Mt Blanc area. After the previous day's aborted attempt we decided to try the same route again instead of going with our original plan of climbing the Tour Ronde North Face. There were a few reasons for this: July is very late in the year for climbing a North face. While this year had unusual conditions and we were cautiously optimistic that it could have worked, looking at the face revealed that crossing the Bergschrund might be an issue and that some sections of the route only had very little snow left. On top of that I had zero intention of experiencing the same kind of idiot traffic jam in a more serious undertaking. So we went up towards the Dent du Géant once more, hoping that an earlier arrival by starting from the hut instead of the cable car would give us a chance of climbing the route in peace.

Early morning view of the objective from our dormitory.
Alpinisti this way. Also everbody else who's drawn by the fame of Mt Blanc...
Just past the Bergschrund.

We had a leisurely late 6am breakfast. Crossing the glacier and negotiating the mixed climbing section at the beginning of the route only took us a little over one and a half hours. Knowledge of the route; going ropeless and improved acclimatization were all helping. When we got to the ledge that marks the beginning of the rock section we encountered a queue of people yet again. At least this time it was progressing - albeit slowly. We still had to wait for nearly an hour, all the while more people showed up and queued behind us. It was already devolving into yet another clusterfuck.

Changing layers of clothing.
Steep no-fall zone all the way to the rock.
I like how you can see the summit literally fore-"shadowed" on the glacier below us. Mt Blanc in the background.

The climb started out orderly enough, but it didn't even last for one or two pitches before people started getting impatient and attempting crazy overtaking maneuvers. Reckless chaos ensued. Parties were climbing stacked four levels deep. Ropes tangling, people (intentionally or not) stealing one another's gear, stepping onto hands and feet, cursing and swearing, overloading anchors by crowding five parties on a single one. Utter madness. At some point we were sandwiched between two mountain guides with their respective clients and one of the guides was practically begging another party to behave and not climb on top of everyone else. No such luck. Some of the guides were themselves part of the problem. They promised their clients a roundtrip from cable car to cable car. This gave them a fairly limited time window in which to complete the climb, so they were trying to overtake and rush their clients and everyone else.

Well tracked snow.
Waiting around for our turn to climb.
Finally progressed to the front of the queue. Arne is already belaying me. I still found the time to take a picture because I had to wait for people to clear the pitch ahead of me.

Once we reached the summit ridge things got even worse. The mountain features a dual summit, you first scale the lower one, then the second, higher one. After which you have to return to a spot between the summits in order to rappel. This meant that we now had traffic in both directions, making things even more chaotic and dangerous. Some parties abandoned their ropes completely and went free solo. Again, one of the more respectable guides was begging them to be safe and follow reasonable climbing practices, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. The mountain comes equipped with two parallel rappel routes (apparently it regularly sees a lot of traffic?). Even so, the rappels turned into another bottleneck. When it was Arne and my turn to rappel, some shoving assholes behind us were making up stories about wives in labor and other such shit to skip the queue.

The queue in the other, the "up" direction.
Massive granite slab.
Arne. Trying to stay warm while waiting around.

By some miracle (and solid climbing and rappel technique practiced on hundreds of outings) we made it back down safely and quickly. All I wanted at that point was to get out of there. If this experience was at all indicative of the Mt Blanc area I'm done with it. I'll happily climb my tier two mountains while ya'll can shove each other off the famous prestige routes, thank you very much. Yes, mountaineering history was written here. And yes, these are some spectacular mountains and climbs. But the spectacle isn't worth it by a long shot. I'm much more proud and much happier with accomplishments like the Nesthorn. Not 4000m (but close), not famous. Not climbed in months and we broke trail all the way instead of waddling up in a queue of guided tourists.

Tracks across tha glacier back to the hut.
More waiting. Feels like that is most of what we did on this climb.
Pretty steep.

Anyway. We did meet some nice people on the mountain as well. Had some good chats with some of the guides and the Italian husband and wife team also returned for a second attempt and made it this time around. Arne was, as always, a super reliable and rock solid climbing partner. We worked efficiently and maintained our safety standards even amongst all the chaos. So that part was great.

Somewhat hard to see, but this guy was just handing out the rope to his lead climber. No attempt at belaying, the lead was free soloing the entire route. The lead was also the biggest asshole on the mountain that day, recklessly climbing over everybody else, even when asked not to.
Crawling mass of people.
Frayed fixed ropes. The mountain would be much nicer if these didn't exist. Would make for more enjoyable and more challenging climbing and hopefully keep some of the more clueless aspirants away.
Unfortunately I failed to take a picture, but one anchor had a metal chain partially melted away and all the nuts and bolts welded together in blobs of metal. Only explanation I can come up with is lightning strikes. If you are the only piece of metal on an exposed ridge, you get electrocuted ;-P
Arne. Waiting for the last pitch to the summit.
Summit!
Rochefort Ridge.
As close as we ever made it to the Madonna statue that marks the summit.
Waiting our turn to rappel.
Waiting our turn to rappel.
The rappels were actually quite steep and fun!
Back at the hut.
Crowds waiting for the cable car. "Waiting" is really the theme of the trip.
Poco Loco burger in Chamonix. The town was overrun with people parading around their mountaineering gear. The Arc'teryx Academy was in full swing.

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