Chamonix 9 - 10

Monday was spent mountaineering – getting used to climbing at altitude, practicing ice climbing and learning safety techniques for crevasse crossings.

This was Jam’s first time walking down the knife edge arête from the Midi station at 3,600m – and he headed down roped to Irwyn, whilst I was tied in a three with Jenni and Graham. We had a good couple of hours trekking around the Valle Blanche glacier – the weather cleared beautifully and we had a quick snack on the ice ledge that I’d flown off a week earlier.

The weather started to change though – and as we headed back up the arête the clouds came in and the wind started to whip across the ridge. We kept the pace up and tried to ignore the ridiculous slopes either side and I particularly enjoyed Jam’s face as he emerged from the mist – he was waving at me, but he was wearing mittens and it may well have been with only one finger.

Tuesday arrived and the summit date is getting closer – so we were up bright and early for an early morning fitness session. We go on the first lift up to 3,800m – way above the clouds – and did sprints, stairs, burpees, star jumps and some serious flipcup to get the heart pumping and lungs working on the thinner air.

We then drove to Annecy to do some ground handling and drills to familiarize ourselves with our new wings.

Today we confirmed sponsorship from ITV paragliding – a company steeped in paragliding fame.

 After creating one of the first specific paragliding wings,  ITV have always been involved in the evolution of the sport, peppering its history with famous names and innovations: multicells, eliptical geometry, line technologies, V-ribs, diagonal reinforcements (most of which means nothing to us – but it sure sounds good!). The wings we will be using are the Awak 2s – a really lightweight tandem wing that are easier to inflate and importantly at less than 7kg will reduce the amount of kgs we have to lug up to the mountain. We’ll weigh the total kit with harnesses and ropes before we leave so we can figure out the total loads we’ll be carrying.

Details of ITV and the new wing can be found here: http://www.itv-parapentes.com/en/products/paragliding/awak-2-tandem.html

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing in Lake Annecy – beautiful scenery, crystal clear waters and more importantly rope swings and trees to jump off. 

Flights and more training tomorrow - and a final kit check before pulling together our summit gear.