Struck by lightning on the Aiguille du Chardonnet - 12546ft (3824m) | ||||||||||||
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Introduction | ||||||||||||
lClimb summary | ||||||||||||
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To make amends I promised him a great alpine route. I needed one that I really fancied and I had in mind the Forbes arete on the Aiguille du Chardonnet. The Aiguille du Chardonnet is a close neighbour of Mont Blanc on the south east side of the Chamonix valley. Looking south from the Aiguille du Tour, the Aiguille du Chardonnet is the first of three great mountains that rise directly from the valley. The great bulk of the Aiguille Verte is the second and in the background, Mont Blanc. The north face of the Chardonnet dominates this view and rises sharply 2000ft (620m) from the Tour glacier. It's slopes are a jumble of massive ice slopes, crumbling serac cliffs and giant rock walls. The south face is even steeper than the north and precious little permanent snow clings to it's slopes. Instead broken rocky cliffs fall precipitously towards the Argentiere glacier 4000ft (1220m) below. The Forbes arete is formed by the jagged collision of these two huge faces. It's a serrated knife edge ridge about 1 km long that rises fairly gently to the summit. A continuous series of large rocky towers, like giant broken saw teeth, rise from the ridge crest. These towers make easy movement along the arete impossible. My copy of Lindsay Griffin's Alpine Club guide book described the Aiguille du Chardonnet as a 'beautiful peak'. Of the Forbes arete in particular it said 'An established classic and undoubtedly one of the finest expeditions of it's class anywhere in the alps...combined with a descent of the west ridge gives a splendid traverse'. On past trips I'd been nervous of tackling it. It was harder than any of the other alpine routes I'd completed (including the Hornli ridge on the Matterhorn) and I'd got pretty scared on some of those. However JC was probably a better climber than me and would make a good partner for an attempt on the Chardonnet. The route sounded great and I really wanted to do it. JC took little persuading. Having not even set foot on the Aiguille de Triolet I guess he was just glad to be having a go at something. | ||||||||||||
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