Italians Sergio de Leo and Marcello Sanguinetti have climbed a new route along the right flank of the Brenva Spur. Another Italian team repeated it two days later. Unusually, almost all of this line had been followed before, but in the opposite direction.
The Brenva Spur, first climbed in 1865 and now one of the most famous Mt Blanc snow and ice classics, is the easiest and safest line on the 1,400m Brenva Face.
The crux is normally the exit through the upper serac barrier to gain the ridge above the Col de la Brenva, and difficulties here vary from year to year. Currently, a long rightwards traverse is deemed necessary.
A lengthy, initial mixed section above Col Moore leads to a quasi-horizontal snow/ice arête, and in 1892 Paul Güssfeldt and his three guides short cut the ascent by climbing serac-threatened slopes direct from the Brenva glacier to the upper end of the arête. In 1973 this was more or less the route used by Heini Holzer to make the first ski descent.
Fast forward 36 years and bring in Pierre Tardivel, arguably the most accomplished of all extreme mountain skiers. In June this year Tardivel (France) and Sebastien de Sainte Marie (Switzerland) skied from the summit of Mt Blanc to the top of the Brenva Spur, weaved a difficult course through the seracs below, and then continued down the north flank of the spur, via a series of ramps and couloirs, to finish via the Güssfeldt approach.
Tardivel named his line Les Brenvitudes and reported sustained slopes of 45-50°
Later in the summer, de Leo and Sanguinetti followed Les Brenvitudes in reverse with two points of difference, most notably in the upper section, where Tardivel and de Sainte Marie had skied quickly below threatening seracs and a rock buttress.
The safest route at this point was to climb through the rock buttress, sandwiched between the spur (on the left) and seracs to the right. This gave two pitches with a crux section of 6b. Above, the Italians made a long traverse right below the final seracs.
Other than the rocky crux, the new route, named Le Reveil de L'Ours, is similar in difficulty to the Brenva Spur (AD+/D-).
On the left side of the Brenva Face stands the Grand Pilier d'Angle, and here the highly talented French alpinist and guide, Stephane Benoist, with three young climbers from the French Alpine Club's excellence program, has made the third free ascent (and on-sight) of the legendary Gabarrou-Marsigny route, Divine Providence.
The first ascensionists climbed the route in 1984 at 6b and A3 but an almost free ascent was made in July 1990 by Alain Ghersen and Thierry Renault, who climbed the overhanging A3 corner completely free at 7c but needed three points of aid higher up on a wet roof.
The following year the ‘wet roof’ was dry when British climbers Andy Cave and Paul Jenkinson made their ascent. The roof went relatively easily at 7a but Jenkinson was forced to use four rest points on the overhanging corner.
The long awaited first free ascent came in 2002 when Denis Burdet and Nicolas Zambetti from Switzerland climbed the whole route on-sight; as did Slovenians Andrej Grmovsek and Marko Lukic, who made the second free ascent in 2003.
However, the Slovenians felt the quoted technical grades of the hard pitches were overrated, reflecting the wider perennial issues that concern the difficulty of awarding meaningful technical grades to any really long, hard route at altitude in the big mountains.
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