Arête Forbes

Again nothing turned out as planned… The plan was to try the Liongrat Ridge on the Matterhorn together with my old childhood friend Tomas. Sadly Tomas had to call the climb off in the last minute, leaving me without a climbing partner.

Luckily I had booked a week after our planned Matterhorn trip to climb together with Krister Jonsson, a Swedish mountain guide. I already knew Krister from last year when we climbed the Mittelliegi Ride on the Eiger together. We had a lot of fun on Eiger and other mountains for a week. The first “Matterhorn” week was instead spent in the Mont Blanc area, hiking and doing some acclimatization scrambles.

On Monday, September 8th, Krister and I met up in Chamonix and headed for Aiguille du Chardonnet, a 3,824 m high mountain in the Mont Blanc range. After some a few hours of hiking, we reached the newly renovated Albert Premier Hut. The alarm was set to 01:45 AM and one hour later we were ready and headed for the goal, the Arête Forbes on Chardonet. Arête Forbes is the ridge to the left. The route traverses the summit and follows the right hand ridge down to the glacier.

This climb really had it all; thunder and lightning from the Aosta side of the mountain during the approach, later snowfall, clouds and finally blue skies! A delicate bergschrund, steep ice and snow, abseiling’s, somewhat awkward moves, at some passages the ridge narrowed to a thin exposed ridge. To sum it up, a really nice and fun climb!

Later during the week, Krister and I climbed several other routes, including the famous giant tooth, Dent du Géant and the narrow rocky ridge on Aiguille d’Entrèves!

 

Arête Forbes / Aiguille du Chardonnet 3,824 m

 

Per @ Arête Forbes

Per @ Dent du Géant

Per and Krister @ Aiguille d’Entrèves