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.