Aiguille du Midi – Rébuffat (5.10b)

Today my friends went to do via-ferrata in Switzerland. With no-one to climb and despite I hadn’t fully recovered from a cold, I decided to go with an aspirant guide climb the Rébuffat route, 6a+ (5.10b) on the South face of the Aiguille du Midi.

I did not regret my choice. As we were early at the bottom of the face, we quickly passed the first rope parties and we had the entire route free for ourselves on top of us, while other rope parties were starting to crowd below us at the base waiting for their turn to start.

I really loved that route. The line is beautiful, globally homogeneous ; granite sticks under the climbing shoes and under a great blue sky of another scorcher, the temperature was perfect in high altitude and landscapes breathtaking. Simply the best climb I’ve ever done so far.

I also enjoyed to climb again the very typical Chamonix cracks. I didn’t found the 5.10b section in the last pitch hard. It’s more the 5.8 dihedral (in itch 7 I think) that I had to fight with. Anyway, there is still a lot of work to do to lead climb such routes but that motivates even more to train harder.

The video is available here.