climbing – Page 4 – Ross Hewitt Guiding

Directissima, Trident du Tacul

23rd Aug 2018by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

Sustained crack climbing after the easy intro pitch was the order of the day. A beautiful burly route on fantastic granite.

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Me on the 6b warm up pitch.

Gareth seconding the 6b warm up pitch

Gareth engaging the 6C P2

Burly laybacking approaching the belay

Bulgy with a gravelly mantel onto the belay ledge

My view as I weigh up the physical layback and foot smears that lie ahead

And the view down from the belay

Gareth arriving at the belay after the crux 7A pitch

A German team behind starting off on the crux

Pulling hard on finger locks here.

Wooden wedges on the final traverse pitch

Indurain, Trident du Tacul

22nd Aug 2018by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

Indurain for me is the best of the Trident route with varied climbing on splitter, flakes, laybacks and grooves. So good!

The Trident

Me on the initial warm up 6b pitch with required a forceful approach with a toasted body from a hard days cragging the previous day.

Gareth on the diagonal crack

Grovelling around in the offwidthSpanning out to the layback flake

Burly moves onto the belay ledge

Gareth departing on what I though was one of the finest crack pitches in the massif. A fine 6C hand crack heading up right.

Gareth fully engaged in the hand crack

Nearly there, on the steeper bulge at the top

Me on the groove 3rd pitch

Me on the crux 4th layback pitch

Looking down the layback pitch, Gareth’s white helmet just visible

The top 5+ pitch, a bit gravelly but the final 6th pitch is worth doing and takes you above Bonne Ethique’s ab line.

Traversing the Peigne, Pelerins, Deux Angles, Plan, to the Midi

21st Aug 2018by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

This was a marvellous adventure we did earlier this summer in search of all forms of terrain from splitter cracks, jenga stacks to north face snow and ice as we prepared for our guides test. Akin to the traverse of the Aiguilles, it avoided the dangers of a dry Nantillions Glacier and a descent that would take its toll on our legs invoking a rest day. My partners in crime were fellow aspirant James Clapham and Chamonix regular Andrew Wexler who was over from Canada to work the summer season.

It rained through the night so we elected to take an early bin to give the Carmichael cracks time to dry, leaving Plan de l’Aiguille at 0720 and arrived at the Aiguille du Plan at 2000 hrs after doing the route in guide mode with short roping etc and carrying bivi kit.

The route highlighted above.

Carmichael Route on the Pelerins

Wexler on the Carmichael

Myself and James at the junction with the Gruter Ridge on the Pelerins

James on the penultimate pitch of the Gruter Ridge

Myself and James on the summit of the Pelerins

Traversing to Col des Pelerins

Looking back to the Pelerins

Me climbing up good rock after Col des Pelerins

Unstable choss in the amphitheatre

Wexler

Lush granite on the Deux Angles

Wex on the 5C pitches up the Deux Angle SW Spur

James and myself seconding on one rope

Happy days, on the North Face of the Plan

Wex and James on the North Face with the Deux Angle behind

8 pm, time to bivi to avoid the puddles on Midi Plan

Time to get up and sort our shit on in the morning

Enjoying the sunrise

Midi-Plan, Mont Blanc and its outliers

Mini pano of Dent de Geant to Cham Valley

Absorbing some warmth from the sun

Another pano with Grand Jo

James climbing up the rognan

A pano but Wex move so ended up with a tiny body

Whats left of Grand Envers top pitch

Charles Eternue – Red Pillar of Blaitiere

2nd Oct 2017by rosshewittguiding1 Comment

A fine trip to the Red Pillar of the Blaitiere with the every psyched Andy Perkins to climb Charles Eternue. This route was named after the French Foreign Minister (Charles Hernu) who ordered the sinking of Greenpeace’s flagship vessel ‘Rainbow Warrior’ in 1985 while she was in port in Aukland New Zealand en route to demonstrate against the French nuclear tests in the Atol. One person was killed in the sinking and two French agents were arrested and found guilty of manslaughter in what the New Zealand authorities referred to as state sponsored terrorism. Interestingly my father used to work on this vessel when she conducted research. The climbing is varied with cracks, offwidths, corners, slabs, laybacks and a steep finale. Quality

Summer Alpine Guiding

29th Sep 2017by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

The focus of this summer has been my first season as an aspirant and gaining as much alpine guiding experience as possible. With a low tide last winter and an exceptionally long hot summer, the glacier conditions have been suboptimal providing some additional hazards for travel, but in general there has been a good, varied and continuous supply of work. This has kept me busy travelling far and wide across the Alps to the Matterhorn, Breithorn, Castor, Pollux, Lyskamm nose, Mt Blanc, Peigne, Dent de Geant, Rochefort, Entreves, Marbree, Cosmiques, Vallee Blanche, Stockhorn, Barre des Ecrins, Rifflehorn, Jegihorn and a few others. During this time I’ve got to work with some fantastic guides and also meet a bunch on incredible, motivated clients who were after some big adventures in the mountains. A big thanks to everyone I met along the way and also to those who sent me some of the photos which I’ve shared below, in no particular order. There were a lot of great days out but if I had to pick a favourite it would be the 5 Towers Ridge on the Stockhorn, while the low point was getting soaked to the pants coming back over the glacier from Cervinia to Zermatt during a Foehn storm – a bit too reminiscent of North Wales for my liking ;).

Roll on next year!