Diarmuid Collins

Wrecked after a weekend of hiking. On Saturday did a hike from La Madone de Fenestre to Col de Fenestre and across to Lac de Trecolpas. The hike took about 6 hours (970m climbed) and was not too stressful

On Sunday I went back to La Madone de Fenestre to do a “classic” AD mountaineering route. Pierre Axel left Nice at 9am to begin our climb at 10:50. The approach took about 1hour 20mins to climb the 500m to the base of the climb.

For the next 7 hours we climbed the 7 pitches to the summit. We were quite slow as it was my first mountaineering route and PA’s first in 3 years. We summited at 7:45 and were back at the car at 22:10. The climb was quite “airy” but not too difficult. However the exposure added a lot to the climbing.

Completed my first unguided 4000m climb in the Alps. Tamas and I set off on Friday from Nice on the 500km drive to Saas Fee. On arrival we got the last cable car to 3000m and short 1 hour hike to the Britannica hut. After a few hours sleep we awoke at 2:45 and started the hike at 3:45. The start was a steady climb on the glacier with no route finding issues.

On reaching the ridge we followed a well worn path up to the rock step. This was a long steep slog (upto 40 degrees at times). The step was snowed over and due to the congestion we climbed together on the one rope with some protection. We summited at 11:30.

Tamas made a video of the climb: