Police Des Glaciers

Linus came with the suggestion to do Police des Glaciers on Pointe Alphonse Rye. Since I had not heard of the route and I didn’t have a clue of where it was, it sounded like a good opportunity to discover some new terrain around Chamonix. The next day we went for it.

For the approach we decided to use skies and worth mentioning here is that for more than 12 months I hadn’t had skis on my feet which got me quite exited about what it was going to be like. Of course I was very close to falling on my first turns, but after about five turns the whole situation felt more familiar and turning felt natural and relaxed again.

With skis the approach didn’t take more than 30 minutes compared to walking which would have taken us about 1-1,5 hours.

At the foot of the route it didn’t look very special but this climb had some really stunning crack pitches and it turned out to be one of the best multi pitches I’ve ever done.

I climbed the first pitch, a beautiful 6c+ crack with a pretty rough ending. On the second pitch Linus climbed an amazing 6c+ corner with a thin crack in it.

After that rough start we had an easier 5ish pitch which also was very nice; this is quite rare for a Chamonix multi pitch because usually there are a lot of crappy pitches in between the really good ones.

However after that we had another 6c+ pitch which started off in an offwidth for five meters and then a crux move past a little roof in to a nice crack that took you up to a big ledge. I linked this pitch with the next one which was the only quite chossy pitch.

The last 6c pitch looked quite thin and after a little while of consideration Linus handed over the leading to me. I started up slowly on some thin moves until I got to a run out between two bolts. I was hesitating a lot and wanted to get something in before I went on. I knew there was a bit of a move just before I could clip the next bolt and falling on that crux would not have been a nice experience, so I tried to fit some tiny stoppers in the crack and it took me a while before I got one in that I was satisfied with. This pitch turned out to be the crux pitch of the route for both me and Linus. The last pitch was a nice and also pretty tricky 6b that Linus led all the way to the summit.

Once we got down from the route we realised that we wouldn’t make it back to Aguille du Midi before they closed the lift. That would mean spending the night in the heated toilettes on the station. Not very appealed to the thought we decided to try and catch the last cabin with the Hellbronner lift on the Italian side. The lift would close half an hour earlier but considering it is much closer, we thought we could make it.

Skinning with our skis as fast as we could we were still very short of time when we only had a couple of hundred meters left. I put in another gear and when I had gone up all the stairs and tried to push the door open, it was closed.

Knowing that Hellbronner closes completely not even leaving an emergency room open for stuck mountaineers, we realised that this situation sucked.

So in a last effort to try to get down we banged on the door to see if anyone were still there. After a little moment an Italian lift guard showed up and opened the door for us. He told us we were lucky because he had already gone down ones but realised that he had forgotten his bag and there for had gone up again to get it and that’s when he heard someone bang on the door.

Grateful as we were to get down we chilled out at a café down in the village before we went to the Mont Blanc tunnel and quickly got lift back to Chamonix, by a very friendly couple.

East face of Pointe Alphonse Rye.