Vallee Blanche traverse & Fidel Fiasco

Aig du Midi Ridge

According to our British friends this was a great way to spend a weekend with your family and friends; One day of rock climbing course, and the next day, a glacier travel adventure.

Rock climbing in a local crag, the whole group learned to belay and to lead bolted rock climbs.
Traversing the Vallee Blanche from France to Italy, was a big adventure. The famous snow ridge from Aig. du Midi is at the moment pretty narrow with some open holes in it, but the track is very good thanks to the every day traffic.

Crevasses and snow bridges

Further down towards glacier du Geant, the glacier has become very open. Due to a long period of high pressure and no new snow, many big snow bridges have collapsed and the crevasses are now wide gaping holes of black ice.

Some rock walls are getting hard to approach since the bergschrunds are too wide to cross. Rock and serrac falls are also common now when the mountains de-freezes. This is the down side of countless sunny days, but it has also allowed many and long adventures in the mountains lately…

Fidel Fiasco on Blatière

Sunday we climbed Fidel Fiasco on Aig. de Blatière. It is a 350m long route on slabs and thin cracks, graded ED overall, considered a classic test piece for advanced alpine rock climbing in Chamonix. It has retained its style of pure trad climbing and is bolted (sparsely) only on the completely crack free slabs, truly 6b obligatory!

You find almost no old slings or left-behind gear. All belays have two bolts and the rappels are clean and trouble free. So the over all impression is a beautifully clean and direct line on a smooth face.

Fighting hard to free climb all pitches, we still need another try to red-point the whole route…

Fidel Fiasco pitch 2, 6a

More photos from Fidel Fiasco in the photo gallery from Wolgang and Pejes’ climb two years ago.

Fidel FIasco pitch 5, 6b

Fidel Fiasco pitch 7, 6a