Great summer, followed by "tough" rentrée (Part 1)

With subtle, gentle comments like, "If you don't write a blog post this week, I am taking your name off the blog!" Brad has been reminding me that I am behind on what began as a joint documentation process. His frequent admonishments, in general, have not deterred my steadfast avoidance of writing the mother of all catch-up blog posts.  However, I have finally conceded and am now, months late, stepping up to the plate to overwhelm you, our massive readership, with a picture show....

Now, allow me to take you into my time machine…

1) June 2012 : We ran really far

Coach 

Training run in the Aiguilles Rouges
with views of Mont Blanc 

Those dedicated readers who remember that I ran a race back in May (coming home with a large leg of ham), may also recall that the May race was training for a bigger, tougher race that I corralled Brad into running with me in June.   The big, tough race was the Grand Duc de Chartreuse, which Brad and I completed under the team name « Fast and Late ».   Acting as a loving and supportive teammate, Brad accompanied me to my 6am start time and then hung out waiting for me to finish my 49km (30mi) and 3,500m (11,500ft) of vertical in 7 and a half hours.  He then took the baton, or in this case mini gps tracker, and headed out.  With an astonishingly small amount of training, Brad managed to speed through his 37km (23miles) and 1500m (5000ft) in the blistering afternoon sun.  There were many seriously intense runners and ultrarunners at the event, but we managed to squeak into 4th place in the male-female team category. 

Brad finishes his leg of the race;
I accompany him in the final stretch

Thibaut

2) Chipie makes the epic voyage to the Pyrenees

After school finished for both of us, and after our good friends Caryn and Kyle left, Brad and I hoped into our trusty euro shitbox and drove across France in a day.   The destination: Vallée d’Ossau.  Nestled in the heart of the Pyrenees, a few kilometers from the Spanish border is the wonderful and welcoming Refuge Pombie.  It was there that we found our dear friend Thibaut (and his benevolent boss Karine) lodged us, and we proceed to have our egos knocked down a few notches by Pyrenees climbing grades on the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. 

Refuge Pombie

Highlights from the trip: 

1) After seeing people camped within feet of the road for miles through a series of mountain passes, concluding that people in in the Pyrenees are crazy, and finally realizing that the Tour de France was passing through the next day.

2) Magnificent traverse of the petit and grand pics.

3) Dismissing the clanging of pots and pans intended to alert us we were off route as cow bells and continuing climbing up a ridiculously hard route

4) finding a field of grazing horses

5) completing the botanical tri-fecta : edelweiss, genepi and chardon bleu

6) late night trip to Spain to see a not-so-free free concert

Brad minds the gap

Approaching the Meije from La Berarde

3) We climb the Meije!!!

As our last objective before I heading back to the US, Brad and I joined forces with the Seb and Cédric to traverse the Meije.  

 The Meije has lived large in my dreams since I arrived in France and saw it towering above La Grave and Chazelet (see the photo at the top of the blog).  The traverse of the arêtes has tempted me ever since JeanMi described it enthusiastically as “un truc unvraisonbable” (as far as I know, that is not a word, but is roughly what I recall him saying from back when I barely spoke any French).  And finally, I began to really covet the “Queen” last fall when Tophe and Brad scored an amazing coup bivouacking on the summit.

Arriving au sommet

With the virgin at the summit

With such sustained build up, I jumped at the opportunity to do the traverse dangerously close to the day that I was leaving the country. The instigators of the traverse were Seb (a researcher at the Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine) and Cédric (a botanist for the Parc Nationale des Ecrins) who swore not to have any fun while sampling alpine plants on sunny south faces for their Vertical Ecology scientific research project.

The traverse took us across
 nearly this entire ridge

Weather reports didn't predict favorable summit bivouac conditions, so we spent two nights in the Refuge du Promontoire before our big day.
Leaving at around 5am, we began our long rock climb directly from the hut, climbing into daylight, traversed a hanging glacier and reached the summit around 9:30 in the morning.  
After a short break, we embarked on the next, and no less demanding part of the journey: the traverse of the arêtes. 

The "droigt de dieu" or
"finger of god"
section of the arête

Brad, Seb and Cédric

Never too easy, but never too difficult, this climb took us across what must be one of the most beautiful ridges the Alps has to offer.  There was a little bit of everything--rock, snow, ice, and alpine via ferrata (on the bolted Dent Zigmondy).  It gave us the perfect amount of spice, and a demanding length, but always in the right dose. 
Over the last 9 months, I've had lots of time to question whether or not I want to keep doing this kind of activity. If any doubt lingered in my mind the morning we left for the Meije, it was quickly erased by a climb that, to say the very least, exceeded expectations and renewed my respect and awe for the mountain environment. 


*****stay tuned for part two of "Great Summer, Tough Rentrée", where you'll be introduced to the challenges of restarting a school year in the Alps****