North Ridge on Piz Badile

Matt blowing up his thermarest at the high bivvy spot

Matt Leggett and I made a return to Piz Badile last week, from our comfortable spot in Bondo. By now we had a big stash on the hill containing everything we needed for the bivvy and climb of the North Ridge, so all we needed to bring was food, and water from the hut - a light bag - fantastic. We found our bivvy gear where we'd left it, and moved it up to as high a spot as possible. This time we were going to be first on the route - we would start with the rope from the bivvy site.


Setting up our bivvy below the North Ridge on Piz Badile from Max Hunter on Vimeo.

We got our bivvy set up by early evening, and our evening entertainment immediately became clear - there was a team stationary at the half way point on the Cassin Route, and there were 3 teams abseiling off the North Ridge. By 7.30pm, with about 90mins of light left, 2 of the teams had successfully completed their North Ridge abseil, leaving 1 team still in the upper half of the climb, making a slow descent. The Cassin Route team of 3 had finally decided to retreat, and started their first abseil, from about 400m up.

Changing colours as the sun goes down

I finally had to go to sleep, but even then at about 10pm, the Cassin team's headtorches were still high on the face, and the North Ridge team not much better. I got woken at about 1am, when the Cassin team had finally got down and came to share our bivvy spot. I was toasty in my bag, but they had to improvise. The first man climbed into his rucsac as far as possible, the second stood and flapped his arms all night! The third cooly pulled a bivvy bag from his rucsac, so would have had the best night! The North Ridge team seemed to already be down and walking off.

Moving quickly on the ridge

Matt and I started early, to be sure to be first, but as we stood up and made tea, we could see a team already on the Cassin route - at about pitch 3, at 3.30am - good effort. Even a couple of hours after dawn, the Cassin bivvy team had not moved - I think they needed a lot of sun to fully warm up again.

Matt leading higher on the ridge

Although it is a ridge, there is lots of variety. This section definitely felt like a ridge

The ridge was mostly simple climbing, so we moved together for most. With no-one to follow, we chose a line - and on relfection we missed the easier line twice. Hot on our heels now was Tim Neill + client Andy. Our second deviation from the easy line took us onto the NE face and the top section of the 'Another Day In Paradise' climb. Matt donned his rock shoes and made easy work of this pitch. Tim was ready to overtake but let me second first.

The upper cracked slab, with Tim Neill in hot pursuit

At the top of the upper cracked slab, we stopped for a second breakfast, and let Tim steam past, his schedule was taking him to Chamonix by the end of the day! All we had to do was get to the campsite, for an evening BBQ.

Matt showing off

The upper section of the long broken ridge. Again we managed to miss a time saving short cut - we got it on the way down, bypassing 100m of the broken ridge.

Chilling at the top

One of many abseils on the way down.

It took us about 5 hours up and the same on the way down. On the way down we could see that it actually was a busy day on the ridge, with many teams. When we got to the campsite, my tired legs were explained by seeing that from the summit to the car was just over 2000m of descent - a brilliant day out. Ben Wallace enjoyed it a couple of days earlier - his day was a really busy day for the ridge, but I think he was at the front, because he had a high bivvy and an early start. 

Queuing On Cassin

Piz Badile viewed from Bondo in the valley. Cassin Route is in the shadow and the North Ridge is clearly visible on the right of the shadow

Time for a holiday. Myself and Matt Leggett arrived in Bondo, in Switzerland, last week and quickly got excited about the Cassin Route on Piz Badile. The people we met told us we had just arrived at the end of a very wet number of days. We had a block of good weather days to look forward too - brilliant luck.

The upper section of the Cassin Route on the NE face of Piz Badile

The Sasc Fura Hut was full at 1904m. We chose to bivvy higher up intending to get an early morning head start on all the Hut teams. Unfortunately there were lots of other teams bivvying with the same idea! We did an evening recce, and found teams bivvying everywhere.

The lower section of the Cassin route

We got started well before dawn, but as we left the bivvy, we realised we were in a train of teams all heading up for the routes. Some teams were heading for the 'North Ridge', others 'Another day in Paradise', but most were heading towards the 'Cassin Route'. As we put the rope on and did the abseil on the approach, I counted that we were team 7 !! In the next hour, I counted 7 other teams behind us! Everybody was attempting to overtake and jostle for position.

Early in the morning, just after dawn, the Rebuffat Diedre 5a. It was damp and saw many people falling off it.

At the first 5a diedre (above), we established our position. I stood behind a second about to move off, ready to lead - as an Italian Guide pushed in and proceeded to lead up! So I started climbing! Immediately behind me a woman overtook the entire queuing crowd and started to climb. I've never heard such Italian abuse. She fell 4m and got a cheer! As I climbed through the top of the wet corner, I couldn't move because people were standing on and pulling my rope! Eventually I could run off to the belay.

The queuing at the bottom of the Rebuffat Diedre. There was some queuing, but also some blatant pushing in. A female Italian pushed in and got the most abuse from the Italian crowd. When she fell 4m, she got a cheer!

Matt had to second and push through the climbing (and sometimes falling) crowds on the pitch. By now, 2 Italian guides had overtaken us, so we started moving together and made up another 2 places, by overtaking pitching teams.

Count the ropes! This is the 4a easy diagonal crack section. Here there was a lot of jostling for position. We moved up a few places by moving together.

We eventually got to the 3a crack where we found everybody had become stationary, and sat down! In front of us, as far as we could see, there were people sat down, and as we looked at our position, teams started arriving behind us jockeying for position.

Looking back down the diagonal crack, at the teams hot on our heels

An easy 3a section turned into a sitting queue. The teams built up behind us.

We sat precisely next to the team in front to give no space for the predatory teams behind. But even this didn't stop the team behind us from climbing OVER us to get ahead. It was at this point that we had had enough. One of the guides that earlier overtook us, turned back and retreated, telling us it may be a 12 hour ascent to the summit with a summit bivvi!

In front of us I estimated about 7 teams

After about an hour of sitting, waiting, watching the sun come further up and watching these alpine crazy antics we decided to retreat. The Greek team just in front of us (shown in photo above) carried on - with about 500ml of water and little food! 2 days later in late evening we met the Greek team at the campsite - they were looking broken! They had completed the Cassin Route, in 12 hours. Improvised bivvied on the summit (with other teams), and descended the North Ridge the next day - making it to the Hut for their first water in nearly 2 days. The next day they made it to the campsite. All of this news made me happy we had made the right decision.

Abseiling off, very disappointed

Retreating along the ledges. This block of hard snow had to be negotiated by passing below. Only 2 days later, the entire block collapsed and went down the mountain, there was nobody passing beneath at the time

As we got to the notch on the North Ridge we stopped to think about the next few days, and made a bit of a plan. It had been really hard work to carry all our stuff up the hill, so didn't want to carry it down again to the car, before the rack and rope had visited the top of Piz Badile. So we made a stash at the exact start of the North Ridge, and ran back down to the car (1200m below) , for a campsite BBQ to make up for a disappointing day.

Scrambling In North Wales

I finished my Outward Bound course at the end of Friday and managed to get to North Wales to start my scrambling course on Saturday. I met up with Robert, Annie and Hein, and we started with the West Face of Tryfan leading to the North Ridge. Above I'm clearly having a tough day at work jumping from Eve to Adam. The team had a great time and wanted something slightly harder for day 2.

On day 2 we enjoyed a day around, on and above Idwal slabs and Cwm Cneifion.

On day three we were back on the West Face of Tryfan before crossing to the East face for a Bastow Buttress variant and then back down the North Ridge. At the end they were happy and felt challenged - ready for the afternoon/evening drive back to London - where life starts again... (And I made my way back to Fort William ready to meet the Harry Potter fan club!)