Mer de glace ultra traverse

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 philipjardine 10 Jul 2022

Two French guides (Frédérick Dégoulet and Benjamin Ribeyre) have just started on a second attempt on a 50km circuit starting on the Verte and ending on the Chamonix Aiguilles.  Good luck to them.

 jon 10 Jul 2022
In reply to philipjardine:

I thought it had already been done way back, not long after Moran and Jenkins' attempts. Clearly not. Certainly there were some serious attempts...

OP philipjardine 10 Jul 2022
In reply to jon:

I think François Damilano may have tried it??

 jon 10 Jul 2022
In reply to philipjardine:

That's indeed the name that came to me imediately. Maybe Gabarrou... the sort of thing he might do.

In reply to philipjardine:

I think Damilano did part of it on a traverse from Champex-le-lac to Les Contamines. I bumped into Fred Deg in the street in cham the other day and he reckoned another team had done the Verte to Jorasses section too, but I can't remember names.

 jon 10 Jul 2022
In reply to Will_Thomas_Harris:

My memory of it was that Simon Jenkins and Martin Moran laid the gauntlet down with what they called the 'Mer de glace watershed'. They stashed food and maybe gear in strategic cols. When they called it a day they went back up and retrieved their stuff. I had a feeling that the whole enterprise stirred up gallic pride and a couple of French attempts were made... so one of these could probably be the Verte > Jorasses section your mate mentioned (unless he was talking more recently). Certainly at the time Damilano and Gabarrou would have been likely suspects...

In reply to jon:

From an alpine journal article by Martin Moran that you linked to in a previous thread on a similar topic:

Any such traverse clearly demanded an intimate and efficient partnership
between two equally committed climbers. Simon Jenkins and I had been
aware of the 4000ers challenge throughout the late 1980s, but instead had
thrown our energies into the shorter but technically harder project of a
non-stop unsupported traverse of the Mer de Glace skyline from the Drus
to the Charmoz.
The experience was bitter. Twice each, in 1988 and 1989, we set out from
Montenvers and traversed the Drus. In each year we had installed food
caches at four of the cols on the skyline. Our best effort got us as far as the Aiguille de l'Eboulement after five days, where we had to abandon the
venture owing to a worsening respiratory infection which was affecting us
both. On each attempt we encountered mixed climbing more sustained
than we could have imagined, rock that was shattered beyond belief and
snow conditions which varied from perfect neve to abominable slush. Our
lack offoreknowledge of the remote sectionsround the Talefre and Leschaux
basins counted heavily against us.
We emerged from these failures happy to let the prize of the Chamonix
skyline fall to someone else but immeasurably strengthened as a partnership
and much the wiser about Alpine climbing conditions. Meanwhile, we were
individually amassing a sizeable tally of 4000ers in our work as guides, so
that our route knowledge approached the level required for a rapid traverse
without eliminating the novelty of the enterprise.

 jon 10 Jul 2022
In reply to Will_Thomas_Harris:

Ah yes, I remember the account now. And the Aiguille de l'Éboulement... how apt! Sounds awful doesn't it? Surely it'll be even looser now...

Post edited at 15:52
OP philipjardine 17 Jul 2022
In reply to jon:

They got round! 9 days


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