Pics from the Cogne ice climbing trip, Feb 2006
(click on a thumbnail to view the bigger picture (each around 1Mb)
Set 1 - Lillaz Gully
This route is the classic of the area, as the multinational hordes gathered on the weekend will attest. It is a long rambling string of five or six pitches most around UIAA grade II/III, in beautiful surroundings and with continual interest.
First pitch, Lillaz Gully, with easy (blue) and hard (red) lines. What you don't see here are about eight teams gearing up at the bottom for a free for all simultaneous assault on the ice. Total mayhem.
lillaz gully, first pitch lillaz gully, first pitch with routes
A surprise awaited us as the very top, just before the pull out, as the apex of the ice cone had broken off to reveal a hollow, vertical tunnel inside the ice, all the way to the bottom of the fall. One had to balance on the rim of this cone, astride the void, and pull over the rock lip to the plateau above.

lillaz gully, first pitch lillaz gully, first pitch
After an easy second pitch the walls of the cascade valley close in, but the scene is too beautiful to be claustrophobic.

After 70m or so, the valley opens up, flat and boulder strewn. There are no pictures of pitch three unfortunately, but there were three options. The middle one was a fat cone, easy to climb (II), but with an unusual and unnerving feature - a ten-inch thick cross-section completely missing about half way up. The right option looked tasty and steep with a hard crux. The left was incomplete.

Pitch four is a 55m ramp at around 60 degrees, a chance let off a bit of steam. I led this a full rope length on three screws and Jerry set off when I was 5m from the top to

The second shot is the view from the top of pitch four. Simply stunning. The final pitch began with a short steep section, and then grade II almost to the top. A final, relatively easy ten meter pitch leads to the trees andt he path down. An absolute classic.

lillaz gully, first pitch lillaz gully, first pitch
Set 2 - A couple of routes in Valnontey
avalanche gully pitch 1 avalanche gully pitch 2
The name escapes me (watch this space), but this 180m Grade III on the right side is a good test piece for the established ice climber.

Looking down into the first pitch (left) it is a relatively easy romp up. The second (right) is steep, sustained, technical, with the crux right at the the top. The line can be seen in the picture starting on the left and trending right into the middle of the icefall. The horizon is steep at 85%, but when I climbed this last year the really hard moves (not visible in this picture) involve escaping a small cave and ice pillar about 5m from the bolts.

Oh yes, and prone to avalance as the boys found out. By some quirk of luck I was off looking for an ice screw I'd left on the previous route. 		Acheronte Top Pitch Deep into Valnontey we found l'Acheronte, a serious undertaking. A long, relentless route with steep, technical sections that get harder as you ascend. Though we didn't climb the upper pitches, we saw a team who did and this is hard climbing. Decent, apparently by abseil into the adjacent route on the left, was not obvious from here.
The foreground of the picture here shows the easy angled, but utterly trecherous middle section. The photo does not show the hard, blue water ice under the snow, or the steep 50m drop in to space behind at the end of the chute. A fortnight ago two British climbers, Peter Hussey and Sarah Ball, slipped in this section and fell tragically to their deaths. Local copper Brigadier Viglione is quoted as saying 'Where they were climbing is very easy. It's possible to walk it and there is no need for ice or rock hooks.' I would beg to differ.