Iceclimbing with Marcus and Max

Marcus and Max are in town for a few weeks of winter climbing action. We spent the last 2 days iceclimbing and would have today except the climb we walked into is still a waterfall!

Basically most of the ice is out of condition and the fluctuating temps have played havoc with it.

We went to La Cremerie to warm up (no photos), but while Max lead the first pitch Marcus copped a big chunk of falling ice in the face, which left a pretty nasty gash. There were about 10 parties around and the bombardment of falling ice was constant...just not fun.

Yesterday we headed to an icefall near the ski resort of Le Tour, which had looked to be in condition a couple of weeks ago - unfortunately its really melted out in the sun now. I lead about 25m of 60-70º ice before finding very thin ice over rock, I got pretty spooked and down climbed off. Max went up for a look and picked up a few screws on the way before making leading a fantastic 60m pitch through some hostile ice (interupted by some fierce hot aches) to some bolted anchors. At this point the sun had hit the ice and there was a party above us dropping a lot of ice so we rapped off and ran away.

Finally this morning we went looking for some easy ice (away from anyone else!) unfortunately we found a water fall not an ice fall! So we had a play with the tools and went for a drive into Switzerland to scope out some more ice falls that are higher and south facing. Hopefully we will be able to get some better ice next week.

Now all we need is some snow and some cold weather (pretty much everything is out of condition - the mountain routes need more snow, the skiing is ice not snow and the climbable ice rotten).