What an ice day!

Contrarely to the beginning of the holidays, this weekend was quite busy! After Vieux Chaillol's hike on Friday, I went in Alpe d'Huez ski station for some ice climbing. With difficult ice conditions and uncertainly weather, we chose to set up many different ropes in Ice Bill, a classic of Alpe d'Huez icefalls.

The wind accompanied us while we were reaching the bottom of the icefall, and we admired some beautiful spin drifts hurtling down the cliff. Suddenly, the wind became very strong with powerful gust at 100km/h or more that forced us to wear all the clothes we had.

At 3p.m.,the wind was so strong that we decided to go back, because of the avalanche’s risk which was growing increasingly. The rescue team of the station even went to order us to leave the place, as several avalanches already went off on the road. That’s how we ended this climbing day with a homemade igloo!

On Sunday, and because of the huge snowfall and the wind from the night, we drove to Bessans to climb an artificial icefall on the cross-country ski slopes. Much safer, but even there, we had to hide away while the ski patrol shot the mountain with their canon to trigger some avalanches and make the slopes safe.

Fortunately, we could climb more than Saturday! Climbing as leader, settling ice screws, reviewing the placements, trying some dry tooling climbing… it was a busy day and our arms felt it!