Breithorn / Monte Emilius - from Aosta Valley.

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 FockeWulf 28 Sep 2022

I want to post this blog to serve as a bit of information for anyone thinking of doing the same mountains from Aosta, particularly out of season when the huts are closed and there's no
ski lifts working. 

Things to consider:

I'm 33 years old, medium build. I'm not athletic or a "gym goer" but I walk around the lake district/north wales about 2 or 3 times a month, to mountains that are around 1000m, and have built up  quite decent strength in my legs and can do these hikes without overly exerting myself. 

I'm new to Alpine mountaineering, and the trip was not without some serious errors of judgement - so hopefully this blog will help new Alpinists get a better perspective of what to expect/not expect. 

1) Monte Emilius (3,559m)

Planning - there's not a great deal of information online about claiming Emilius. One poster on here recently pointed out the same thing I discovered (ie, there are a few pages about it online, but it was difficult to piece all the information together in a visually coherent way). I don't get the impression is a very popular mountain to climb. It was one of our preferred choices as didn't look as dangerous as most of the surrounding mountains. And my girlfriend was a bit nervous of doing anything with snow. Monte Emilius was completely absent of any snow. 

We discovered about a week before we arrived  that all the ski lifts were out of action and the huts were closed. I used Ourdooractive maps app to look at the route from Aosta valley, and it seemed that it would take 20 hours to walk all the way up and down back to Aosta. Luckily, the people at the Tourist Information centre were able to provide us with bus time tables which showed that we could get a bus to Pila (none of this information could be found online). 

We wanted to keep the hike simple, and didn't want to be in places that were too exposed, so after a bit of research (mostly help from the UKC forum members) discovered that the best route for us would be to reach the summit via the south ridge (Passo dei Tre Cappuccini). 

The the hike - we got the first bus at 6am from Aosta. We arrived in Pila at 7am (roughly 2000m). 
The first thing I noticed was my legs were extremely heavy. I was struggling from the very start of the walk. This may have been effect of altitude (having been dropped off at 2000m) or if it was because my fitness was a bit rusty. I actually think it was both, because there was noting out of the ordinary - just a steady uphill walk. It didn't get much easier the entire hike. 

We headed east to Lac Chamole, then over the ridge. There was a moderately exposed section on the ridge going down, but it didn't feel dangerous. We made our way down to the Arbolle Refuge, and stopped for 15 minute rest. 

We then continued east and followed the valley around to Lac Gele. 

We made it to the last scramble up to Passo dei Tre Cappuccini around 1pm, but were cut about 200/300m short of the summit due to time constrains (the last bus back down from Pila was 6pm).

Unfortunately, we decided to turn around at this point. 

When we arrived back at the Arbolle Refuge. They were happy to serve us drinks. We didn't ask but they assumed we may have wanted to stay the night, so told us that they were closed and no room was available. (I don't know what the exact policy would be if you were genuinely stuck - but I have been told they have winter rooms?) 

The walk back was quite demanding. The heaviness in my legs had got worse. By this point I definitely felt like this was one of the toughest hikes that I've ever done. 

We got back to Pila (circa 6pm) and weren't able to find where the last bus was going to stop. We knew that it would take another 4/5 hours to get back to Aosta and we were seriously running out of energy. Thankfully, someone stopped us on the road and gave us a lift back down (thank you GiGi!).


2) Breithorn (4,164m)

Planning - again, we are out of season, there are no ski lifts. We made the decision to stay in Breuil Cervinia the night before the hike so we could set off 4/5am and get to the glacier when it was light (7am).  We arrived there by bus from Aosta.
I understood that we were going out of season, but it was a real shock to discover that there was NOTHING open apart from one Bar.  We had no food or water, so had to get a bus back to the nearest Village (Valltournance) to get supplies. 

Again, we are new to Alpine climbing. My girlfriend was already nervous about crevasses on the glacier, so I wanted to keep the route simple as possible. Other UKC members suggested a route from Champoluc, but  a brief look on a map seemed to show quite steep/difficult hiking terrain, so we decided to keep it more simple and start the route at Cervinia (around 2000m). 

The hike -  We started at 5:30am, My feet were much better this time - perhaps staying the night at 2000m helped me acclimatise.  We walked for hour and half, when it started getting light and started walking up to Plan Masion. It's pretty easy to navigate, you basically follow the cable cars and paths/roads to Theodulhorn Pass.  We arrived at Theodulhorn Pass at 11:00am. 

This time it was my partner that was struggling with altitude/fatigue. She needed to take regular breaks (perhaps 5/10 minutes every hour). 

As we got most of the way onto the Plateau Rosa around 2pm, my partner was pleased that a lot of the crevasses had been renovated into safe walking paths. 

Whilst this was nice to have on the way to your first 4000m + mountain, there was a bit of an "artificial" element to the hike. 

We could see Breithorn in front of us to the east, but we made a judgment that it would take us another 3/4 hours to get there and back to Plateau Rosa and would run out of time to get back to Cervinia for the last bus (20:30pm). Feeling a bit deflated, we decided to get to the top of one of the closer peaks (Passo di Venitina Sud). 

There were a few crevasses 100/50m leading to the summit. Very narrow, but looked about 20/40m deep. We had 30m of rope (between the two of us), crampons and ice axes, so we felt reasonably safe. 

We made it to the top of Passo di Venitina Sud (3,665m) and turned around to walk back to Cervina. 

We made it back around 19:00pm and went to the only cafe which was open for a quick beer and coffee, before getting the last bus back to Aosta. 

Conclusion

Now having a better idea of what to expect, we could definitely do better and summit both mountains next time.  We intend to do them both again next year. Perhaps I will look into the Champoluc route up Breithorn instead for a better, less artificial, experience 

Thanks  
 


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