Deeper in Antarctica: Jeremy and Xavier score a trophy line

November 25th, 2009

Today was a fantasy.  I hopped in the zodiak to scope terrain and from that point on it was sensory over load.  On One side of the bay was a mountain called “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”   On the other side one of the most outrages mountains scape’s I have ever seen towered over head.  Before my imagination got the best of me, Doug Stoup points to the peak in foreground and says, “that’s Mt Francois and it is 9600 ft high.”  My scale had never been so off.   Louri (Expedition leader) then tells me out of his 80+ trips down here he has only seen the mountain a few times and that today is a 1 and a thousand days.  It was clear to me that today was a day to get after something real.  It would be a “two axe” day.

Mt Francois. I think it has only been climbed once.  Doug Stoup sat in a storm for 3 weeks trying to get it.

We set our site on the smallest thing I could find that we could get to, had limited ice danger and a clean out run.  You can see our objective in the far edge of the photo.  It is really hard to make a call like this with very little info.  It is a roll of the dice that sets a crew of 8 in motion and will use up the better part of the day.

We learned on our first day that we want to be on faces that get at least 5 hours of light and that we want to be dropping in just before the face goes into the shade.  Too early and the face is hard.  Too late and it will refreeze with in ten minutes of the sun leaving the face.  You can see the triangle we want to ride.  We had know idea if the bergschrund was clean or if the glacier was navigable.

“Pic a spot, any spot” I kept telling myself.  It was all epic. photo: Xavier

3 hours into our mission we have confirmation that it goes clean.  It looks super steep, which means it is even steeper.  We are really freaked out if this is going to be ride-able or not.  Conditions will have to be perfect, not to soft, not to hard to hit something like this.  To get to the face we start on the far left side and traverse just under the bergschrund so we do not have

One of the scariest parts is strapping in on a steep face like this.  The bottom 1/3 is the steepest part but the snow is perfect and I am able to drop into this face with total confidence and fire a line that two hours ago had me shaking in my boots. That is the benefit of climbing what you ride.

Xavier and were finally rewarded for all the time we put in last spring in Chamonix.  With out that session we would not be so locked in here.  In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined riding a face this sick in Antarctica.  It is one for the top of the trophy case.

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