Guides rest days -climbing therapy

Some nice personal climbing therapy with my friend Maggie.

Maggie on Senza Nome - Placche di Oriana -settor sinistro - Italy

Abseiling down the 6 pitch climb.

Caco girls - Switzerland

Maggie leading a 5 b pitch but she was more confident  and climbing better than me on the 6a pitches too. A wonderful rest day for me.

Aiguilles Marbrees complete traverse

The Aiguilles Marbrees has a superb ridge line with some nice alpine scrambling and climbing but also quite a bit of loose rock, the first three quarters of the route is well travelled but the second part which is a bit more technical is not guided quite so much but of course it's a Mont Blanc climb so its still done lots. Frankie and I did the complete traverse the other day, it was superb outing.. and one has the advantage that is relatively easy walk/scramble back onto the glacier rather than abseiling down some nasty loose rock.

Frankie has a quaint habit of using her knees, and then complains that they are sore!

Nice route to the main summit with views of the Aig ou Dent du Geant and Arete Rochfort behind.

Climbing on Placche Pre-de Bard, Italy.

With Frankie we drove through the Mont Blanc tunnel again and continued our drive up the Val  Ferret to the road head at Arp Nouva. From there in just under an hour one can walk to some magnificent granite slabs which are known as the Placche Pre-de Bard. There are 4 bolted lines on the compact slab. They are all about 8 to 9 pitches long of varying difficulty but none of them are over technical and it really is a super location to introduce people to multi-pitch climbing and the skills required to abseil efficiently down once you've climbed to the top. It's an exciting location in the Aiguilles Rouges de Triolet, with abundant alpine wild flowers and the melt waters from the Pre de Bard glacier rushing by.

Back to the daily guiding work

After my rest day yesterday where Kacper, Justyna and I climbed on the south face of the Aig. du Midi it was nice to be back in Italy climbing with Frankie today

Frankie was confident to do some out door leading today and sort all the ropes out to make a safe decent.... progress is coming along  impressively well. 

Frankie on more technical slab moves.

South face of Aiguille du Midi

Guides rest day so yesterday we climbed the Baquet- Rebuffat route (first ascent 13 July 1956) on the South face of the Mid.Here is my good Polish friend Kacper Tekieli in action

Justyna Kowalczyk

Justyna loving it!

The technical but short lived 6b moves near the summit

Kacper and Justyna at the summit

Some sport climbing.

After our busy day on the traverse of the Aig. d'Entreves Frankie wanted to go rock so here we were:

Lots of nice bolted rock in the Aosta valley!

This particular crag is in the shade of some wonderful trees which makes it a nice summer venue.

Very Alpine!

Traverse of Aiguille d'Entreves 3600m.

With Frankie we went and climbed this nice traverse from the Refuge Torino  3371m. It's an exposed  excellent climb on good granite where it counts.

One of my guide friend Phil took this quaint image of me.

Frankie on the traverse.

Frankie after a strenuous pull up move

Refuge Torino, easy accessed from the Skyway.

Breithorn, Pennine Alps, first climbed in 1813

Oh, I see I have not done a blog post for ages.The joys of being busy and enjoying my life I suppose.  Not that I do not enjoy posting on my blog, but sometimes there is so much media stuff going on and I do find my self wondering what the hec I am thinking when sometimes I find myself prioritising typing on key boards when I aught to be also finding the time to be out and about chatting with my friends. Today was a pretty special day for me though as in 1999 I guided Gordon and his partner Sue on the Breithorn and today I took Gordon and his 18 year old daughter Frankie up the same wonderful hill, and it was Frankies first 4000 m peak...so it has been a very special day  for me with wonderful moments.