North couloir of the Capucin

The North couloir of the Capucin off the Col du Tacul is one of the many classic moderate couloirs around the Mont Blanc massif. Easily accessed off the Midi by a quick ski down the Vallee Blanche to the bottom of the Geant Icefall and then a 900m skin up the Glacier des Periades. A final boot up a couloir leads to the Col du Tacul and a view down the line to the Leschaux Glacier 1000m below.

Guy skinning up towards the Col du Tacul (centre of picture)

The final boot pack up to the Col, Mont Blanc in the background

Three 30m abseils from the col gets you over the rocky ground to the remaining 250m of the 48^o couloir. It was the first time on anything relatively steep for me this season so rather than getting straight into the turns it was a bit more like skis on, stand there, stand there some more, side slip a couple of meters and eventually put the first turn in...

Guy contemplating his first turn

Once over the bergshrund and onto the lower angled Capucin Glacier we'd hoped for nice powder and big fast turns. Unfortunately like everywhere else in the Mont Blanc massif at the moment the slopes had been hammered by the strong winds over the last few weeks so hard wind blown snow lead down to an exit onto the Leschaux Glacier.

Evening sun on the Cosmiques

Sat back in the flat, cup of tea in hand, after a nice afternoon run down the Petite Envers it seemed a bit early to be calling it a day on my last day off for the week. A few quick phone calls resulted in a sprint in ski boots back to the Midi to catch the 4'oclock and last cable car of the day with team Benson.

It was 5 o’clock by the time we were rapping into the Cosmiques Couloir for a quick lap in the evening sun. The snow was good, not amazing but facing west the light was stunning by this time. Amazing powder on the slopes below the north face of the Aiguille du Midi in the setting sun brought us out at the Mont Blanc tunnel entrance to a waiting taxi courtesy of Mrs B.

Andy rapping into the Cosmiques Couloir

Looking west from the couloir

The Bensons enjoying creamy powder below the Aiguille du Midi

Guides winter induction

I’ve just been back in Scotland for the final of the three induction days for entry to the British Mountain Guides followed by two days of winter skills training. All seven of us met up in Aviemore on Friday night not looking forward to the prospect of a long walk from Glenmoore Lodge up into the Corries to spend the day ‘digging’ our way up a route. I think the MWIS forecast on Thursday summed up the situation pretty well ‘by dawn there will be enormous quantities of snow’!

In the end it was decided to cancel the induction day for Saturday as with even more snow than forecast, even if we’d made it into the Corries snow conditions would have been very dangerous and climbing painstakingly slow. But not wanting to miss an opportunity for a day’s climbing and with much less snow in the North West five of us had an early morning start and drove over to the North West and walked into Beinn Bhan.

Ross and I headed round to climb most of The Cooler which was in great condition, proper continental water ice. It was a pretty busy day, with a team already on the main line soon to be followed by some visiting Italian climbers we decided to take a line up the right of the ice fall. After 3 pitches there was only one possible line up the last ice fall and with a team already about to start up the final pitch and not wanting to miss our 3 o’clock ride home we traversed right below the top pitch to find another exit. A fun turfy grove with a steep pull at the bottom lead up to the final terraces and a blustery top out.

Second pitch on The Cooler (photo - Ross Hewitt)

Ross climbing the 3rd pitch

The final easy slopes to the top

With the ski road still closed on Sunday morning we walked up into the hills behind Glenmoore Lodge for our first day of winter training. We spent the day looking at teaching methods for basic winter skills like cramponing, ice axe arrest and snow anchors as well as brief introduction to short roping.

The induction day had been rescheduled for Monday and an early start had us driving back over to Beinn Bhan and walking into Coire na Feola with Jonathan Preston, a local guide who was running our induction. The idea of the induction days is for the trainers to see that you are climbing comfortably at the required level, for mixed climbing this is Scottish grade V. Route choice was pretty limited but Bounty Hunter, IV 5, looked as white as anything so we headed up to gear up below the buttress. Not a grade V but by the time we’d finished we’d climbed 5 good pitches and with a few direct variations to the original route we’d made it around, V 5, and Jonathan was happy with it.

The winter induction was the final box to be ticked before we were official accepted onto the scheme to become trainee guides. Next up is the summer training which takes place in May, 3 days in the Lakes and 4 days in North Wales to get us ready for the assessment at the end of the summer.

The hard work begins

After a number of years umming and ahhing last year I put an application into the British Mountain Guides, which thankfully, was accepted. Things started off last September with the Rock Induction day at Tremadog followed by two days of initial training on single and multi pitch climbing guiding as well as a full day on rescue techniques.

Carrying on this winter we had two weeks based in the Alps. The first a three day ski technique course in Leysin, Switzerland with top swiss ski instructors working on personal ski technique. This followed by the ski induction day, like the rock induction a chance for the training committee to assess and make sure your skiing standard is at an acceptable level to start the training and as with the rock we all passed. Finishing off the week was the cascade guiding training day, looking at all aspects of safety, client care and coaching methods involved in continental ice climbing guiding.

Not coming from an instructional back ground it’s all very new to me and there’s a lot to take on all at once. Running up 1000m alpine north faces is seeming quite simple now compared to looking after two clients, keeping the ropes organised and efficient belay stance management. Maybe I could pass some rope management skills onto Nick...

Nick trying to sort the ropes out on the North Face of the Droites

The last of the two weeks was the avalanche course based down in La Grave. A mixture of class room based sessions and time spent out on the hill digging snow profiles, looking at stability, recording data, discussing safe travel through avalanche terrain whilst getting a few good turns in ourselves. We also had an intensive training session on transceiver search method. It was quite interesting and scary to see how unorganised six fairly competent people are when thrown into an unexpected emergency situation! Modern transceivers are getting very clever but as was discovered they still don’t do the job for you, to be efficient you really need to know how your transceiver works and not just relying on the arrows pointing you in the right direction.

Andy Nelson and Steve Jones looking at a full depth snow profile

Next up is the winter induction day at the end of February up in the Cairngorms, if successful in passing we will become trainees and then the hard work really starts! Its a great group of people starting the scheme this year so hopefully mixed in with the hard work over the next few years there should be a few good days out on the hill too.

Chang Himal North Face ED+ / M6

This time last year Nick and I returned to Kathmandu early and empty handed, literally, after having our base camp robbed and grand old sum of zero climbing. Things went a bit different this year, everything seemed to just work out, great weather, great mountain, brilliant base camp cook, no robbers and a summit.

North Face of Chang Himal, Central Spur, 1800m ED+ / M6 (Bullock & Houseman 29/10/09 - 02/11/09)

The awesome 1800m North face of Chang Himal (6802m) was quite daunting to wake up to each morning, looking directly across at it, 1km away over a jumbled glacier/moraine mess. Having filled our cook 'Buddy' with confidence after failing to reach the top of some nearby 6000m bumps and taking two attempts to get up the local trekking peak, 'route finding errors...', dawn on the 29th October saw us a good way up the lower part of the face and fighting off the initial signs of a bout of Gardia, perfect timing!

We spent 5 days on the face, covering well over 2000m of ground, the second been the slowest and crux with run out climbing up to Scottish 7/M6 on steep rotten ice/snow over loose rock. Gear and belays seemed to take an age to uncover, finding something if you were lucky. Any un-comfy second night on a 30cm snow ledge was eased slightly hoping the crux section was, hopefully, below us. After a few hours simu-climbing the third day ended with 3 pitches bringing us up into the steep Peruvian style snow flutings below the summit.

Andy starting out from the Bivi on Day 2. Photo: Nick Bullock

Waking, not sure if we'd climb ourselves into a dead end Nick peeked over into the next fluting returning with a grin, game on! Leaving all the gear at the bivi we managed to grovel up the final flutings to follow the east ridge for the last 100m to the summit.

Nick heading up the second and crux pitch on Day 2

Over a year of looking at photos, nearly two weeks staring, watching from base camp – will it? won’t it? To finally be sat, along with Nick, one leg either side of the knife edge summit, wow! I can’t begin to describe.

Down climbing back to the last bivi we spent another night there before abseiling the rest of the face in 14 hours and crashing out in a small cave at the base, bodies trashed but big smiles.

A massive thanks to everyone who supported this trip, Mountain Equipment, Black Diamond, Scarpa, Mammut, DMM, SIS (Sports in Science) and the Lyon Equipment Award for their continued help with gear and financial support from The BMC, MEF, Nick Estcourt Award, Mark Clifford Award, Shipton/Tilman Award. This trip couldn’t have happened without it, your support is much appreciated, thank you.

Summit joy! Photo - Nick Bullock