UKH

I've been watching the excellent French alpine climbing channel on You Tube lately and have been impressed by the quality of filming of some of the Alps famous and not so famous routes.

What I particularly like about the productions are there is no background music, no dialogue apart from when the climbers meet up at belays (its in French anyhow), just the sounds of climbing axes and boots making contact with the terrain. There is thankfully very little nausea inducing head cam footage as well.

Ive not climbed much in the alps, done most of my alpine climbing in the dolomites and cogne so i'm not very much up on true alpine conditions etc.

But what I've noticed mostly from these videos is how they are always produced when the weather is perfect. Cobalt blue skies, no wind, very litle spin drift avalanches, perfect neve , no ploughing thro knee/waist deep snow, plastic ice everything is just so perfect it gives you the impression that alpine climbing is a walk in the park.

TV Mountain is brilliant for exactly the reasons you wrote. A lot of the routes are probably good weather only and if the weather does break I imagine filming concerns will take a back seat.

We were filmed by TV Mountain on La Lune, la Ronde etc... ! They tried to get past us but my mate said 'non' (we were first, and were climbing OK.) After that they were perfectly pleasant, and highly competent; very impressive to watch. They didn't get my joke though... 

What was your joke?

Not funny enough to retell I'm afraid, but it's still on the original film.

They climb with big boots as if they were wearing rock shoes, but I think the guy on the Walker Spur was in rock shoes as boots were attached to the back of his sack. Great viewing though. Thanks for posting.

Yes I can understand that. The reason i posted this topic was because a good friend of mine did a lot of big Alpine routes in the late 60's early 70's. 38 route Eiger N.F., Walker Spur, Bonatti Pillar,Frendo Spur and many others in the alps and dolomites. Most of these ascents were either in atrocious weather conditions (electrical storms on the Eiger and Frendo) or involved some major/minor disaster en route, so the tales he told would put many off venturing anywhere near the alps.

I was scared off alpine climbing by similar stories, plus Rene Desmaison's Total Alpinism was one of the first climbing books I read.