Pecher Mignon

After getting stormed off Pecher Mignon last week, we tried again today. Neither of us are very enthusiastic about "Alpine starts" (i.e. getting up really early), being modest sport climbing wusses, but we wanted to try to be the first ones on the route this time. We got up around 5:30, left at 6:30 and were at the foot of the climb by 8:30 or so (it's a 1:20 drive to la berarde from the centre ville, then a ~40 minute walk).

La Tete de la Maye is a modest peak right next to La Berarde which on first glance looks like a huge rubble pile, but it has some nice climbing on it, if Pecher is at all indicative of the other routes.

The route is on the very left hand side in this photo.

Like on our previous effort, the first pitch was a good kick in the teeth with solid 6b/5.10d smearing on slightly crumbly granite. A lovely vertical pitch was next on chunky and featured terrain (6a+/5.10c), then a meandering 5c+/10a pitch which finished with a virtually hands free traverse:


here's chloe resting at the third belay station, looking back towards Les Etages


The next pitch was the crux, and at 6c/5.11b, it didn't disappoint. It was a traverse, but had a distinctive and balancy crux, followed by 6a+/10c climbing. This is Chloe happily cleaning the .10c part after battling the crux

and at the belay

I also tried an experiment: make a panorama looking down of the face and valley:
or bigger(500k)

This last pitch gains you a grassy ledge, then you begin the second tier of the climb, which starts on a big black water streak on slightly slick stone, and brings you to a small roof (6a+/10c). One more pitch of 6a+ follows ( which Chloe managed to get completely lost on) and gets you to a stout looking overhang if you skip the first set of chains. This next pitch turned out not to be very hard at all (10b overall, roof=10a), but was varied and magnificent climbing. Sculpted and solid granite features take you up over chicken heads and onto an airy arete. Just perfect. The final pitch guarding the slabs going up to the summit is a 6b+/11a slab which turned out also to be fantastic, but quite hard. Here I am looking back down at chloe halfway up

and here's the crux

Chloe starting up it

and past the crux


Chloe and I realized how out of practice we have become at slabs during this climb! Nonetheless all leads were done free, and a vue, which I was happy about. Victory kiss:

It took us roughly 4 hours. Because the top of this climb is fairly inaccessible there are a lot of Edelweiss growing wild. I'm not sure how I even knew what one looked like! Maybe from here?. Anyway, I took a picture of one:



The glory of walking up to the summit was somewhat lessened by the fact that there's an easy randonee trail up the back side. Here's a separate picture of La Meije

and Le Pic Boucet

Chloe with the Clocher des Ecrins behind here

Me with awesome hair and La Meije behind me


here's a panorama from the "top". I've labeled some of the peaks in the area.

I also have a bigger version(836k) of the same thing, and a quicktime VR(3.5 MB) which you can pan and zoom in.


Keep in mind that I haven't actually been up any of these, so I'm a little unsure of what the name of the peak labeled "Clocher des Ecrins" is. It's certainly near the Barre des Ecrins (the highest peak in the Dauphine), but each sub peak has a name, so I'm not sure I have it right. If you look closely, you can see a "window" in the rock where part of a glacier is dropping chunks of ice. Here's a zoomed in version (big thanks to Gail and Kenji for the compact 5 megapixel T3 for this shot!)

This puzzled me: how could there be a glacier on something that looks so jagged and arete-like? When I got home and looked at the excellent IGN topo map of the area and discovered the answer. What you see from the Berarde side is one part of a giant horseshoe ridge with a massive glacier in the center:

We are looking in the direction of the arrow.
And the "window" allows some of the glacier to escape laterally. Very cool.

You can see that none of the peaks in the panorama are very high (compared with these!), but many of them have important places in the history of mountaineering. The story of the first ascent of La Meije in particular is a fascinating story (well told in Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps by Fergus Fleming).

After some hearty potato and cheese stuffed crepes in La Berarde we drove back to Grenoble and collapsed.