| Aiguille L'Index Trip Report |
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| Aiguille L'Index   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Haute Savoie, France, Europe Date Climbed/Hiked: Jul 6, 1997 | Page By: tor Created/Edited: Apr 2, 2003 / Object ID: 168878 Hits: 1637 Loading... Page Score: 0% - 0 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
Aiguille de l’Index (2595m) in Aiguilles Rouges
IV -- 150m from base -- 1.5 hrs estimated time
7/6/97 (Sunday) Susan & Tor with Glennys and James
It was a rainy Saturday again (with snow up high) but Sunday was expected to be better. We decided to do a simple rock climb in the Aig. Rouge with Glennys and James, her 10 year old son. We took the Flegere telepherique but then could not take to next chairlift because of the dogs. Thus, we walked from 1877m towards the top of the chair. The morning looked good with potential for clearing in the afternoon! Wrong! During the hike, we decided to climb the Index rather than the longer and more difficult Chappel since it seemed that Glennys and James might be a little slower. We got to the base around noon, left the dogs in the scree and started up a short snowfield to a ledge that traverses the block to the start of the climbing.
We probably started climbing around 1pm with Glennys and James going first. The route was quite easy, about 150m (ideally 3 pitches!!) and mostly 5.4ish. Unfortunately, Glennys was a little slow. We did about 6 or 7 short pitches and got to the top around 5 pm -- wow!! During the climb, the weather varied continuously, from brief sunshine to rain to snow to sleet and wind and back to rain. Much of the time we could see the Aig. du Midi, Mnt. Blanc du Tacul, and Mnt. Blanc drifting in and out of the clouds and sunshine. It was great fun although the pace was very frustrating and sometimes we got pretty cold waiting! Finally, we had to descend from the top into a snow gully with rotten rock. It was more than a full 55m rappel but we downclimbed the last 10m to the snow. The rappel started as a vertical or overhanging descent and then we had to traverse right across wet and verglassed rock -- it was pretty tough. James did fantastically throughout with only one or two spontaneous crying bursts. We got to the dogs about 6pm -- they were very patient -- had obviously missed the last telepherique down and finally got to the bottom about 8:30pm after descending 1545 meters.
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