UKC

A friend and myself are planning to walk several stages of the HRP in July/ August over 21 days. We will be staying in the huts and carrying our gear for the duration. My friend would like to climb Vignemale and Aneto which would require taking glacier gear. While I prefer to climb mountains im not keen on carrying gear for three weeks just to do two hills. He's thinking ice axe, crampons and helmet. But I'm thinking we would need a rope and harness as well if we did this. The I would prefer to either do a hut to hut holiday or mountains from valley bases holiday. Not keen on trying to do both. Any thoughts? Anyone done this?

For Aneto you could rent ice axe/crampons from the refuge fairly recently- worth checking;

https://www.alberguesyrefugios.com/larenclusa/

Its a long day- hut was great.

The Vingrau glacier is now tiny- microspikes? 

Wondered about micro spikes. Will email the hit to see if we can rent/ borrow gear 👍

It's twenty years since I did Aneto and no one seemed to rope up for the glacier then, and I understand it has shrunk significantly since then. The supposedly famous rock ridge to the summit was a bit of an anti climax - I climbed a short bit ridge to a high point to have a look at the main ridge to see if my missus would want a rope. I soon realized this was actually THE summit and the 25 mtrs of easy scrambling I had just jogged over was THE ridge! :⁠-⁠) Lovely place but very straightforward.

I was up Aneto last year late in August, with my lad. We had none of the gear you speak of. There was just one dodgy passage crossing a small snow field (lo angle) - we jumped between embedded rocks.

However that was not part of the normal route which we chose not to do because it's a ball ache. We climbed up the SE spur, then descent via the small Corona lakes. Ask again if you want more info in this route which comes up from the S.

So far as I could see the tourists coming up the normal route were not equipped for glacier work.

I climbed Vignemal by myself 20-odd years ago.  Just took ice axe. Did quite a bit of high route and axe was useful elsewhere. It was early in the season

I did The Vignemale by the glacier about 3 years ago. We wore crampons because we had them but others (in the know) did it in micro spikes. There are no crevasses worth speaking of so we didn't bother roping up. Trekking poles would be fine rather than an axe.

You do have to do some scrambling up fairly chossy rock to get from the glacier to the summit though, perhaps a couple of hundred feet though it's not particularly steep or difficult. That said, I've no idea of you're experience of that sort of thing!

If you look at this picture I took https://imgur.com/a/K8Yz79P

you can see a track in then snow. We scrambled onto the ridge where the right hand end of it meets the face, up the red band of rock with a grey band to its left. The people on the summit give you some idea of the scale.

You can also get onto the ridge more easily above the left end of the track and scramble round from there but you have to cross a couple of tricky exposed steps between the two summits in the picture on the same chossy rock.

This one is from the Vignemale looking back to the other peak

https://imgur.com/LSHIYLz

It gives a better idea of the steepness of the red band which you can see to the left of the person.

I will get the map back off my friend and have a look at this route. It sounds like micro spikes and walking poles will be fine which is great as I want to keep the weight down.

Thanks for the pics. Glacier doesn't look steep so micro spikes and walking poles should be fine. Prefer scrambling to choss so will have a closer look at that option.

Yes, that would be fine, but as you approach the glacier, get onto it on your left i.e. furtherst away from the Vignemale. There's a steep rocky area below the middle of the glacier (where the seracs used to be), you can gain it to the right of this i.e. close to the Petit Vignemale, but its steeper on this side.

It's all choss! Actually it's not terrible, but there's no escaping you'll have to cross some less than solid rock somewhere. It has that "chest of drawers" character.

We did this which was fun- hut guardian made our veggie companion soufflé !

https://www.camptocamp.org/routes/54213/fr/vignemale-pique-longue-traversee...

Hi. I'm Spanish and my English is pretty bad, sorry about that. Regarding the choss, I think that the ridge is not as chossy as the direct ascent to the main summit from the glacier, but the main issue here is rockfall. If there are other parties above, this direct ascent can be dangerous. Last year I was there, and saw a PGHM helicopter picking a guy that had been injured by rockfall. Afterwards more rockfall and shouts could be heard while the route was busy. If that were to be the case, I'd rather choose the ridge, longer but safer IMHO.

Regarding the use of microspikes, if the snow cover is good those might be fine, but if the snow is gone and there is black ice, well... maybe not so fine. It might be a good idea to check glacier conditions right before going there. Same about Aneto. Asking the Renclusa hut guardians about conditions and recommended routes at that moment might also be a good idea. Last year there was a lower route that avoided the best part of the remaining Aneto glacier, except for a short patch of ice near the Collado de Coronas; maybe this year this patch has shrunk and can also be bypassed.  

I think you're probably right about the rockfall risk. There was only one person ahead of us as went up the red band and they were already on the summit ridge so we had no rockfall but I'm sure if it's busy that could be a problem, especially as a lot of the people doing the route probably aren't experienced Alpinists used to handing loose rock.

We descend by traversing all the summits around the glacier (well worth doing) so again, no rockfall but there is a tricky area between the Vignemale and Clot de la Hount on poor rock to be aware of if you're not used to that sort of thing.

Regarding the glacier, it was nearly all bare ice when we did it but it's not steep enough anywhere to need crampons so people wearing microspikes had no problem.

By the way, your English is fine!

Thank you very much.

I came from the Spanish side, going up directly to the Col de Lady Lister, so didn't know how steep the glacier is coming from Baysellance. Good to know it is easy enough to cross with microspikes even when it is bare ice. The Aneto glacier is way trickier if there is bare ice, real crampons would be needed if that ice couldn't be avoided.

Regarding the summits around the Vignemale glacier, it's a nice traverse, I agree. We found that the really chossy and exposed part is between Pic Montferrat - Tapou - Milieu, the other three-thousanders of the Vignemale massif that are not over the glacier. It wasn't too bad between Clot de la Hount and Vignemale, IMHO. The ridge between Epaule Chaussenque - Col des Glaciers - Petit Vignemale is nice but sometimes sharp and exposed, some people might prefer to use a rope in that section.

Very nice route. But as we are walking the HRP we do not want to carry a rope and climbing gear. I want to travel as light as possible.

We didn't go that far, just to Montferrat.

We didn't find it too bad either but I can imagine some people might. It's not always easy to know what other people's experince is when you're giving advice online, there's no information on Paddington Bear's profile to judge.

Ok, you're right, I understand.  I'll try to keep that in mind when giving advice online, thanks.