26/1/10 Chatelard ice falls

Once he had arrived at the belay we both looked across at the technical traverse (crux) that was still to come. He would have to climb up on to a hanging Ice bulge then bridge across onto a massive (heavy) hanging pillar. We exchanged the kit and he headed off to get stuck in. Looking psyched he was making the climbing look relatively straight forward until he leant on a huge piece of ice to the right of the hanging bulge, with no warning it became detached from the wall and crashed into him smashing him in the shoulder. He was out of site from where I was belaying at this point and before I knew what was going on a 50kg chunk of Ice came hurtling towards my feet, I jumped out of the way and shouted to Damien if he was ok. He said it hurt but he should be fine, so he continued to climb on. When he got to the changing Icicles section he was getting an excruciating pain in his left shoulder when he tried to removing his axe (not what you want when you’re about to cut loose on a hanging ice pillar). Not feeling the psych anymore because of the pain he decided to lower down to the belay. It was starting to get dark at this point so we quickly exchanged the kit back to me and I headed off to get stuck in!

I got up to the Hanging bulge and clipped a very old and rusty peg in the roof, it was probably useless but it made me feel good to clip something that was well and truly attached to the rock. I bridged out between the bulge and the pillar and swung my right axe into the hanging Ice. That was the easy bit, the hard part was committing to getting both feet and my other axe onto the other pillar. After some heavy breathing and a quick stern word with myself I completed the traverse, which included a lot of locking of with my right arm and both my feet blowing from the ice at one point. After this I moved up to the more stable Ice and placed a good screw, I think the next words to myself were “thank F**k for that”. I moved up another 20 meters of fairly steep Ice to the belay and shouted to Damien that he was ok to start climbing. By the time he had reached the belay it was totally dark and I was glad I had brought my head torch. We set up the abseil which was also a bit interesting as the ropes had totally frozen over due to water running over them from the Ice and the large drop in temperature as night moved in. We made the 60 meter free hanging abb back to our bags and swiftly headed back to the car.

Despite the few setbacks it was one of the best days Ice climbing I have had, and both the routes well deserved the three stars they are given in the guide book. I would recommend them to anyone who is looking to climbing hard but very interesting Ice routes.