I have an idiosyncratic relationship with ladders.
Here’s what I wrote in Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest about climbing the ladders of Everest’s Second Step, which some people consider to be the big peak’s most daunting feature.
The Englishman [Leo] Houlding graded the top section of the Second Step an HVS, or Hard Very Severe… The American [Conrad] Anker rated it 5.10, which is a climbing grade, and not its height in feet and inches. At that moment I could have LOL’d at these abbreviations. There was a ladder, and I was fine with ladders.
The main difficulty I had on the Second Step was lifting my leg high enough to climb a big round boulder between the Step’s two ladders. A can-can dancer would have had no difficulty on the boulder, but for me the easy bit was the ladder.
And yet 5 years later a series of a ladders on Corno Piccolo in the Italian Apennines gave me the heebie-jeebies. Two long vertical ladders towered 1,000m above a deep valley. The ladder sections were separated by a tricky move that involved putting one foot onto a piton that had been banged into a rock. After retreating from this devilish abyss we bumped into some hikers who told us that the route we’d been attempting had actually been closed by the authorities due to its danger factor.
Ever since that incident, the promise of ladders on a hiking route has made me nervous. Would they be like the cakewalk on Everest or the sphincter ticklers on Corno Piccolo?
The Tour du Mont Blanc had been straightforward compared to our hike along Corsica’s GR20 the previous year. There had been comfortable paths and virtually no scrambling. As with the GR20, however, when I nearly died on the last day, the hardest part of the route came at the very end.
I had read somewhere that there were 11 ladders on the Grand Balcon Sud, the airy path coming into Chamonix from the Swiss border. The trip notes from our tour company, The Natural Adventure, had this to say about it:
The ladder section on this day is very steep and exposed, with some scrambling elements. For those with a fear of heights or who are feeling fatigued from the previous day’s walking, an alternative lower route along the Petit Balcon Sud to Chamonix is available.
Bugger. On a more positive note, the Cicerone guidebook was more sanguine about the ladders:
Although abruptly steep and seemingly endless, this whole series of aids should be perfectly safe.
We had enjoyed perfect weather for the first nine days of the Tour du Mont Blanc, but with a certain inevitability, the Lord Sod was presiding over court on the final day. The weather forecast was so bad on the designated day that we decided to take the low route into Chamonix. Luckily, we had a spare day before we had to catch our flight. We decided to spend it repeating the section from Tre-le-Champ to Chamonix, this time up and over the ladders of the Grand Balcon Sud. The weather was still as promising as Harry Brook’s bowling, but it had to be done.
Just how bad were the ladders? As luck would have it, you can now see for yourself by watching my latest brace of top-notch videos. There are 28 minutes of footage in the latest pair. The first covers the Swiss section from Grand Col Ferret to Col de Balme, and the second the French section from Col de Balme to Chamonix.
You can watch the complete collection of my Tour du Mont videos here. You can also see all my photos from the trip here, and read the trip reports for Grand Col Ferret to Col de Balme, and Col de Balme to Chamonix here.
Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB): Grand Col Ferret to Col de Balme
From the 2,537m Grand Col Ferret, we descended into the Swiss Val Ferret on a peaceful wooded valley contouring high above a neat, tarmacked road.
After a night in La Fouly, a quiet resort of mountain chalets, we continued to descend the valley on a trail that became precipitous in places as it rose above a crashing river. We passed through villages of timber-framed houses before climbing a forest path to the resort of Champex, a picturesque lakeside village nestling in a high combe.
After a night in Champex, we set out on the toughest day of the trek as we ascended above the treeline into a rocky valley. We crossed boulder fields to reach the 2,665m Fenetre d’Arpette, the highest point on the TMB. From there it was down, down, down on a rocky path back into forest, from where we followed an elevated bisse path that took us down into the village of Trient, with its colourful, spired church.
The next day we returned up the Trient valley then diverted up a forest trail to Col de Balme, the border between Switzerland and Italy, and a magnificent Mont Blanc viewpoint.
Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB): Col de Balme to Chamonix
As we crossed the border from Switzerland into France at 2,191m Col de Balme, we were greeted with the best view of the TMB. We gazed down the valley towards Chamonix, with the icy crowns of Aiguille Verte and Mont Blanc on the left and the jagged cathedrals of Aiguilles Rouges on the opposite side.
We traversed the ridge to our right, across the colourful slopes of Aiguillette des Posettes, and examined the trails beneath the Aiguilles Rouges from afar, pondering which route to take into Chamonix. Then we descended below the pass of Tre-le-Champ into the village of Argentiere for the night.
The next day the weather was abysmal, the first bad day of our Tour. Thick grey clouds lay over the mountains above and the forecast was for heavy rain. We opted to take the lower Petit Balcon Sud route into Chamonix that day, on a sheltered forest trail a hundred metres or so above the valley floor.
We had an extra day to pass before our flight home, and we were keen to complete the higher route into Chamonix, up and over the ladders and via ferrata of the Grand Balcon Sud, which many people consider to be the highlight of the TMB. The weather wasn’t much better, but we decided to bite the bullet and get a taxi back to Tre-le-Champ to complete the circuit. Damp mist and showers were the order of the day, and we missed out on the views across to Aiguille Verte and Mont Blanc, but the ladders were exhilarating. We arrived back in Chamonix for a second time with a much greater sense of having completed the TMB.
