Psyche was high. Once again Dan and I had a winter ascent of the Dru north face on our minds. The forecast was perfect, the face in bon con and our skills hopefully up to the task. Then the inevitable happened. Our old adversary, the wind, had decided he was going to visit Chamonix. The…
Despite having lived in Chamonix for over three years it’s taken me a while to get round to exploring Cogne, the European ice climbing capital just a short drive from Cham. I guess the usual prime ice season (Jan/Feb) coincides with prime powder season and it can take a bit of willpower to turn down…
Sometimes it seems odd how routes go in and out of fashion. Occasionally you get on a route that’s an absolute classic and wonder if it really deserves that status. Other times you get on a route that’s faded into obscurity and wonder why no-one ever does it. Yesterday, Dan and I had a go…
Coming into this summer I had a simple plan. I was going to focus on climbing big alpine routes. Smaller, technically harder routes would be put to one side. This would be the summer of smashing out mega classics and getting beastly fit but super weak. To a large extent I did just that. Though I…
Take a ride back to 1980 and the era of enchainment alpinism, the linking together of multiple routes in a single push, was about to kick off. Over the course of the next decade Europe’s top alpinists would put in jaw-dropping feats of endurance, enchaining multiple hard routes in a single push, often solo. Some…
It’s funny how motivation and psyche can fluctuate. If you’d asked me a couple of weeks ago if I wanted to climb the north face of the Grandes Jorasses, I’d have said no without a moment’s hesitation. Why spend a long day climbing cold and loose rock on an austere face when I could be…
Years ago, when I first heard of Chamonix, it wasn’t for its climbing or skiing. Back then I didn’t climb and though I skied I rarely ventured outside the poles that marked the sides of the pistes. Instead it was for the running. At the time, running was my thing. I’d regularly put in a…
Good training on the Midi north side today. I headed up from first bin to climb the Col du Plan Gully. Following a week of unsettled weather there was no sign of any track on the route. This meant I certainly got the workout I was looking for. All good fun, in a type 2 sort of…
Fun times last Friday climbing Petit Viking with Sam. It wasn’t our first choice objective, but with a short weather window we figured it was sensible to leave bigger routes aside and just have a quick, fun day on this modern classic. We chose to stay the night at the Argentière refuge, hoping an early start would…
Last year I had some great times climbing in the mountains with my mate Alex. Foolishly, at the end of the autumn he decided to return to London and ‘use his degree’ to get a ‘proper job’. A terrible mistake on his part. Fortunately though his psyche for alpinism hasn’t been completely killed by city life and…
Tim Oliver Alpinist 