In August 2023, Steph and I headed over to France and Italy in the van for a few weeks of adventuring! :-) We headed to the Vercors first - a stunning region of France next to Grenoble which is famous for its caves in particular, being the home of the Gouffre Berger - the first cave in the world to pass the magical 1,000m depth mark! We spent the week with the Wessex Cave Club, and enjoyed numerous fun canyon trips in the Furons and Ecouges, as well as an excellent 6.5hr traverse of the Christian Gathier cave system, from the Trou de Anciens entrance to the Brudour entrance. The through trip necessitates lots of varied caving, from awkward meanders to 50m+ pitches which are tackled 'canyoning' style, by pulling your ropes down with you as you progress from the top entrance to the bottom entrance to the cave. A particular highlight is a stunning, long section of clean-washed streamway with a plethora of short abseils down waterfalls. The streamway is also coated in lots of stunning calcite and features plenty of impressive formations as well as beautiful clear blue pools. The cave gets much bigger towards the lower entrance with vast chambers, big pitches and lots of amazing formations, before the exit is reached. I had already done this trip once before back in 2009, but enjoyed guiding Steph through this time!
We also had a trip into the Gournier cave system, which was equally as impressive and stunning, with what is probably one of the finest streamways i've had the pleasure to visit. This cave starts with a lake crossing (on a boat we had to bring and inflate at the entrance), followed by a long section of huge fossil gallery, which reminded me of caves i had explored in China and Vietnam years ago. After a good 1km or two, the streamway is reached, and it certainly is aqueous. Lots of fast flowing water, beautiful deep blue pools, and via ferrata installed on some of the waterfalls to allow you to climb up them and continue on up the streamway. It was certainly good to have brought the wetsuits for this section of cave. The end point for us on this particular trip was an impressive 15m or so high waterfall, which required more gear than we had with us to scale safely so we headed out. We'll definitely be back to venture further into this impressive cave system!!
From the Vercors we headed to Chamonix, where we enjoyed some lovely walks and runs, but sadly not a lot of Alpine mountaineering (our intended plan) due to the extreme heat the area was experiencing (up to 35deg+ in Chamonix) meaning it wasnt safe to venture too high (soft snow, weak snow bridges over the crevasses and regular rockfalls - we saw a huge one emanate from the Aiguille du Midi!!). One of the highlights was a venture up towards Mt Buet from the Emosson Dam on the Swiss side of the border. Stunning scenery!
It did cool for a couple of days, with a weather front bringing much needed snow to the Alps, and so we headed down to the Gran Paradiso National Park in Italy with Paul Mackrill (YDGs third director) to make an attempt on this fine 4,060m peak. The weather improved and we enjoyed a fine evening walk up to the Refugio Vittorio Emanuele where we would stay for the night before attempting the summit the next morning. The hut was excellent and we enjoyed a very filling and tasty meal before settling in for the night, in our own room! Up at 5am, a quick breakfast was had before we set off to the summit. Although graded F+/PD-, the climb was really enjoyable and varied - first on scree and rock slabs, then easy snow slopes up to the edge of the glacier. We roped up here and a fine ascent was enjoyed to the summit ridge, enjoying the excellent views across to the Alps. The last section crossed the bergschrund and then became a rocky scramble to a final steep section equipped with metal rungs, up to the Madonna statue. Very pleased to have made an Alpine summit on our trip, plenty of photos were taken before we headed back down to the refugio for some lunch, and then back down to the cars in the valley bottom - 2000m below the summit.
We were now pretty much at the end of the trip and all that remainded was the long but uneventful drive back to the Yorkshire Dales, but with a renewed hunger to get back to the Alps for some more mountaineering!! :-) Roll on July 2024!! :-)
