UKH

Anyone know how long the abseil is from the top of the Midi down to the tourist platforms? Trying to work out if a 60m rope is enough.

Rébuffat-Baquet (TD+ 6a)

Dunno but I've watched people climbing it and it looks amazing. Enjoy!!

Given you've not had any answers from people who actually know I'll give a bit of a guess... It's been probably three or four years since I was there, so I could well be wrong.

Assuming we're talking about getting down to the midi platforms after topping out the Rebuffat.

I don't think you'll get down with 30m in one from the top. However, from memory I think there are various metal spikes along the line of the abseil which you could use to split the ab into two. If you do that I think you'll be ok.

Having said that I'd rather climb with halves or with a tagline, makes retreating in case of emergency easier and means that you won't have to worry about having enough length for the ab from the top.

For future reference its less than 30 metres from the final belay to tourist terrace. We did it in one but there is big swing potential and as Fellover mentioned there is an intermediate belay if needed.

Nice one! Thanks for the update - good to know for the future. Hope you enjoyed the route.

Absolutely loved it! Very pleased to have climbed that outrageous lump of rock.

While I'm here, we got lost on (Rockfax's) pitch 7 and I see from the logbook others did too. There's a belay on a big ledge and you walk left....then what? Rockfax suggests to keep traversing round so that's what we eventually did but it was unprotectable and exposed. Camp to camp says to climb upwards but some other climbers in front of us said that was really difficult. What did other people do? 

I tried 3 different options about a week ago, and still don't know which was the correct way to go. I eventually ended up going very far left, stepping down over a big drop onto a big ledge, and I think we ended up on Dame du Lac for a pitch...but it actually put us back on track quite nicely in the end. I previously attempted 2 more direct options, with less traverse left before going up, but both seemed to lead to much harder ground. Seems its a mysterious pitch unless you know it well.