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| Mer de Glace - from Montenvers |
There's a strange noise coming from the heart of the mountain: sometimes it sounds like a low grumble, sometimes a drawn out whine. The past two winters have been warm and wet, dumping great volumes of velvety white gold onto the jagged unforgiving rock faces of the valleys of Mont Blanc. Two great winters causes people to forget what normal feels like...and hence the grumbling and whining begins.
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| Put on your dancing shoes |
"there's no snow"
"too many rocks"
"no point in this cold if not for ski"
blah blah blah..
The first of the tourists and saisoniers are appearing, the lifts are opening but there's no one on the mountain. Even better...up the mountain we go then.
No snow on the ground means the many glaciers of Chamonix will be naked; Every one loves a bit of nudity. So we donned too much gear and headed up to "La Mer de Glace [ocean of ice] via Montenvers railway for a voyeuristic look.
Glaciers are treacherous places. Snowfields of compressed ancient ice spill from their catchment cradle and cascade violently down the steep valley walls at an imperceptibly slow rate. They scour and carve the stone walls that contain them, carrying the debris from peak to val over hundreds of years.
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| rescue helicopter flying around above us - hopefully nothing better to do. |
It is not, however, the mountain that i worry about. As glaciers inch down the valley, they conform to the shape and features of the landscape. In its liquid form, the fluid nature of water does this smoothly, but at this lower temperature the river is flowing ice, which cracks due to the different speeds, distances and stresses the varying parts of the glacier undergoes. These cracks are called crevasses and are very cold, deep, dark and silent places to be. Falling in one would be like a less pleasant version of being buried alive.
The lack of snow means we would be walking on a naked glacier, one where you could see the crevasses. Slightly more comforting.
Due to a lumbering hangover i lost track of the the time (so we were late) and lost track of the track (we took the 'scenic' route down) and so had to cut our day down. We changed routes and aimed for the end of the tongue of the glacier, giving us access to a relatively safe area and a big wall of ancient blue glacier ice.
Global warming causes the glaciers retreat higher up the valley each year, and i could see a big change since last winter, having to walk 100m further this year. The glacier itself was beautiful; the clear blue ice a network of stones frozen in the matrix and riddled with intricate crystal shaped cracks as the ice releases its stresses as it unloads. Below the wall of ice a freezing river littered with debris carried by the giant above. Varying in size from fine dust to great boulders the size of houses.
It was however not a wasted day. lots of crampon training over mixed terrain, axe work, ice anchors.
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| back in my happy feet |
Turns out its not as easy as: the pointy things on your feet will keep you upright, hitting things with the pointy thing in your hand will hold you upright and screwing the many pointed screw thing into big cold things will stop you from dying (crampons, ice tools, ice screws, ice walls)
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| My first play with ice tools - good fun! |
Lucky for me, our party of three consisted of useless TomTom (me) , Andy, the mountain leader (accompagnateur) and Leigh, the adventure sports safety consultant. Good people to know.
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| Andy in Orange, Leigh in Green |
Four hours in ski boots and mountaineering crampons hasn't put me off. I'll be heading up again on Sunday to try again.
so don't forget; deal with the weather: there's always something to do,
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| Long hike back to the bar |
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