The Frendo Spur is a magnificent classic mixed route in the French Alps above the world famous town of Chamonix. It is approx. 1200m long and sits on the North Face of the Aiguille du Midi in the Mont Blanc massif. Alec and I headed out to Chamonix with a 5 day window and with the Frendo as our target. We arrived late Monday night, grabbed a forecast that promised 2 1/2 days of good weather with a storm coming in on the 3rd day and slept the sleep of the nervous excited climber.
After some judicious packing the following morning we set off from the valley floor for an acclimatisation walk to the Auiguille de Plan where the route starts. We bivvied at the foot of the route and enjoyed a beautiful sunset and cloud inversion over Chamonix. We started off the next morning after sunrise and climbed the rock section. A mixed climb is one that involves climbing rock, snow and ice in the same route. The weather was pretty cold with temperatures of -2c at the Auiguille de Plan dropping to -12c at the top of the route so we had a big dilemma as to what boots to wear. In the end we both plumped for plastics and wore Scarpa Omegas which would be great for the snow and ice, keep our tootsies warm but not be so great on the rock sections. (In reality we had only limited choice due to baggage restrictions on the flight and of course money!)
A recent dump of snow meant that there was plenty of the white stuff about and it all felt quite wintery. We moved unroped for the first section of the climb but the difficulties gradually increase and we moved together for as much as possible with the rope and pitched the difficult sections. There were a couple of pitches of about VS with most of the upper section sustained V Diff to Severe climbing. There we no easy scrambling sections once the initial ramps had been passed. If you are fit and acclimatised the route can be completed in a day but we had decided that due to our lack of acclimatisation we would bivvy after the rock section. We finished the first day late afternoon and brewed up at the bivvy site before settling down for a restless nights sleep.
The following morning saw another 3 hours of climbing to the top. We moved together up a beautiful snow arete whilst the sun came up before pitching a traverse on good snow ice below the summit rognon. We turned the rognon on the right hand side and enjoyed several pitches of good quality snow and water ice to the summit. The photos show the route and more will follow on my gallery pages.
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