In the Chamonix Aiguilles, Spanish climber Pau Escalé has made a serious attempt to climb the huge serac on the right side of the North Face of the Plan.

The classic route on the North Face of the Plan (Dilleman-Charlet-Simond, 1929: 1,000m: TD-) begins with a 400m rock spur leading onto the hanging Glacier du Plan.

The huge serac forms the right flank of this upper spur, threatening the approaches to the popular winter line of the Carrington-Rouse on the North Face of the Pélerins, and the rarely climbed 1964 British Route on the North Spur of Pointe Migot.

Escalé fixed a rope of the first pitch of the couloir (70°) leading up to the serac, and then came back the following day with Marcel Garrell, Josep Grau and David Palmada to push up less steep, snowy ground to the rock wall below the serac.

This section was coined "death row", where it was impossible to avoid being hit by anything that should fall from above. In fact Palmer was struck on the arm by stonefall and was forced to lead difficult ground in some pain.

Grau and Palmada took two full days (from 3am until 6pm) to climb the rock wall below the serac. What they had hoped from below would be a couple of long pitches of F5, turned out to be four pitches of A2+ and A3.

With a forecast that bad weather would move in next day, Escalé decided to tackle the serac the same evening, and set off at 7pm, belayed by Garrell. The ice proved to be, not surprisingly, very hard and brittle, taking many, many blows with the axe to gain a good placement.

He had to climb diagonally away from the belay in order to protect Garrell, and on occasions found himself hanging from a single placement when the ice collapsed below his feet.

By 10pm he'd climbed 50m - about half the height of the serac - at WI6+. Given the lateness of the hour, they decided that Garrell would not attempt to second the pitch, and the two rappelled to their bivouac site below the route.

Increasingly, incomplete lines, which reach no logical conclusion, are being given a name, and this one is no exception. The 530m of climbing (nine pitches) has been dubbed Paranormal Activiti. It seems most unlikely there will be queues at the base to finish it off.

The photograph show the tumbling hanging glacier on the North Face of the Aiguille du Plan. The partially climbed serac is at the glacier's lowest point, just left of centre in the picture. The couloir climbed is directly in the fall-line, disappearing behind the foreground snow ridge.

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