Jam:
Beer with breakfast, not the start I was
expecting (wanted), but Sam’s achievement of taking his first tandem flight
from an icy ledge @ 3800m was worth toasting… The agenda after that was to
start my acclimatization, which simply involved taking the lifts up to where
Sam had just flown down from, walk the stairs and get sun burnt (not sure the
latter was required, but we did it anyway). It’s amazing how just a few steps at
that altitude can get you out of breath and make you feel dizzy – everyone had told
us the importance of acclimatizing and my first experience up at 3800m really
proved that point. Over the coming days waiting for a weather window – we aim
to spend as much time at altitude as possible, taking it easy, reading books
and perfecting our flip cup skills.
On Thursday the weather was good to fly so
we took this opportunity to become familiar with the kit we’ll be carrying up
and flying down in. Irwyn and Graham were fantastic; they found a gradual slope
strapped us to the paraglider (“wing”) and told us to run. To be more specific;
the task was to try and run with the wing correctly inflated and in control
whilst keeping enough forward momentum for a quick and safe take off. Sam went
first and I videoed (laughed); the learning curve was steep but after a few
attempts the battle of wing vs sam started to shift in his favor. I followed
and wasn’t much better.
The next exercise was to strap Sam and I together on
the wing, one playing the role of the pilot and the other the passenger. The
reason being that a quick and safe take off is a team effort; the pilot
controls the wing and the passenger drives everything forward to the point of
take-off. Irwyn and Graham wanted us to experience this from both sides, making
us all the more prepared for the challenge ahead. However, two people although
being heavier, produced a lot more power and meant that the wing quickly was
over our heads and in a position where we could fly.
On Friday the plan was to walk down from
the Aigle Du Midi towards the cosmiques hut so that we could gain some
experience walking with crampons, ropes and using ice axes. Sadly, the bad
weather that had been forecast for Fri evening beat us to the top, making the
conditions unfavorable for what we intended to do. As we are quickly realizing,
plans are important in the mountains but they are entirely weather dependent
and we always have to be prepared to react to changing conditions. With this
knowledge, we descended down to the middle station (~2500m) where conditions
were perfect for a 5km alpine walk over to the mer de glace glacier. Here we were
able to put on our crampons and got to walk on some steep ice! To keep things
interesting, Irwyn demonstrated some of the skills used for steeper and more technical
ice climbing.
On Saturday the weather above 3000m wasn’t favorable
meaning it would be another day at low levels trying to keep our fitness up. Our
advice; walk up to the middle station from the valley bottom (~1000m vertical
climb). This was the perfect opportunity to use my new Rab 100% morino wool
base layer. The guy in the shop told me I could sweat into this 4 times before
it needed washing. When we got down, it needed washing.
But my absolute
highlight of the day was Sam getting a phone call from Rich Webster to say that
he’d missed his 2pm flight out to come and see us due to a big Friday night….
He booked on the first flight from Gatwick for Sunday morning.
Sunday started with a 7.30 phone call from
Rich, he’d missed his flight again due to a messy Saturday night… But the old
rule stands, 3rd time a charm and he made it in to Geneva for 2pm.
As this was our rest day we took the chance to go down to Lake Geneva where we
had lunch in a beautiful medieval village called Yvoire and then headed to a pier to perfect our acrobatic diving and backflips - whilst also getting in a solid Waboba
session.
No comments:
Post a Comment