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From Dent du Geant
Author: Pete
Founder of Sterling Adventures!
On the last day of our holiday we teamed up with our mates again and headed out to sample some of the adventures they had planned for the long weekend. Ticking off some of the French via ferrata near Chamonix.
The end of our two week alpine adventure coincided with the UK bank holiday Monday, and as luck would have it some of our friends had booked a long weekend in Chamonix.
Awesome! Crowded! Scary! Knackering! Do I need to say more?
When we eventually got some fine weather we seized the opportunity to complete one of the routes I'd fancied the idea of for a long while, the Papillons Ridge.
We had planned to leave Ailfroide and head over to Courmayeur (to climb the North Face of Tour Ronde) and then on to Cervinia (to climb the Italian - Lion - ridge of the Matterhorn). However, these were thwarted by (yes, you guessed it) the wet weather.
Finally we did get some dry weather. Ailefroide is a bona-fide alpine destination, with stuff like the Meije traverse (next year?) and the Dauphiné classic South Pillar of the Barre des Ecrins. But it also offers some amazing rock climbing less than the 15 minutes from the camp site.
Of course the dry weather didn't stick around. It never seems to stay that dry in the Alps, in fact I've decided that the Alps are actually a lot wetter than the Lakes! True or not, this August has been particularly wet...
After leaving Spain (see AFF here) we headed to the Alps for our summer holiday proper (I consider myself a climber first and foremost, even to the extent that when someone - anyone - asks me what I do, I answer "climb", not "work in IT").
I've decided that I'm not very good at skydiving! Watching the DVD of my AFF jumps again after getting back from my second session trying to pass the AFF course (check here for the first), it is clear that when my instructor (Andy) passed me and wrote the following in my log book...
