DAV Expedkader Women course in Chamonix

Text & Pictures: DAV Expedkader/ Olga von Plate/ Raphaela Haug

In July, we girls went to Chamonix for almost a week. The plan was high altitude tours and granite climbing. After everyone had arrived in the evening, the tour planning for the next day started pretty quickly. Advantageous was, as already with most of our courses, that the weather looked stable for the next days. Somehow we seem to attract the good weather as a group, hopefully this will also work out for our final expedition...

First we went up to the Aiguille du Midi for acclimatization, between tourists and alpinists the train ride is already a small experience, culture shock in the souvenir store included. The south face, however, more than makes up for this with 200 m long routes in brilliant Chamonix granite, most of which we had to belay ourselves. In three teams we climbed the "Contamine" (6c), the "Super Dupont" (7a) and the "Fou de l'Aiguille" (7b):

Photo Olga from PlateLulu in the lead in "Contamine" (6c) on the Aiguille du Midi

Photo Lulu Deubzer: Caro in "Fou de l'Aiguille" (7b)

Despite the moderate length, everyone was unanimous in their enthusiasm afterwards.

The good weather still continued, so the next tour should take several days. Due to the long-lasting high-pressure area and the high temperatures, the classic combined tours in Chamonix were already relatively dry and prone to rockfall. Therefore, we decided to stay in the rock and went first to the neighboring Orny area. With a shared bivouac in the most beautiful landscape and the possibility of swimming next door, there was no reason to doubt this decision. The next day the team split up: Three started to the Dorées crossing, while the other four went to climb the Petit Clocher du Portalet.

Photo Raphaela Haug: Caro in the Dorées traverse

Janina managed a smooth onsight ascent of the dreaded off-width "Etat de Choc" (7a) with Dörte, while Lulu and Amelie tested their clamping skills in "Ave Caesar" (7c) and dripped off in the onsight in the last key length just below the belay. The next day they swapped. Lea, Caro and Raphaela climbed the "Sud Est" (6b+) at Petit Clocher. Due to the danger of thunderstorms, the rest of the group could climb only the first part of the ridge, but there they made a nice circuit and also collected some meters on the running rope.

Photo Olga von Plate: Lulu in "Ave Caesar" (7c)

On the last day, the topic of crevasse rescue was on the agenda. At first, it was planned to practice this in real life on the glacier, but due to the announced thunderstorm, we finally switched to dry practice in the climbing garden. Here we practiced the loose roll, the self-rescue from the crevasse with the help of clamps or prusiks and other helpful techniques.

A small list of things we learned last week or became aware of again:

• with a ring as a stand, the openings of the carabiners always to the outside
• with three people on the ridge, more than 25 m of rope between each other or more than one set of cams is helpful for efficient movement
• when knots in the rope cannot be untied during rappelling, the Prohaska knot is a useful magic trick
• the rope bundle now also finally looks much more consistently good

Thanks to special guest Raphaela for coming along and sharing your knowledge! 

Also before and after this week some of us were on the road and took advantage of the good weather: Amelie was able to climb the Peuterey Integral with Kathi Sandbichler and Martin Feistl, while Caro climbed Mont Blanc via the Brouillard Integral with Marina Krauss in parallel. Lulu also stayed on the topic of integral climbing and was able to finish her sport climbing project Speed Integrale (9a) just in time for Chamonix and was thus highly motivated to let sport climbing be sport climbing again. Following the course, Amelie, Rosa and Lulu then made experiences with unplanned bivouacs and unexpected thunderstorms in the Republique Bananière. Fortunately, all that remained in retrospect was an impressive memory and the lesson that sometimes a little less optimism is also good.