Pointe du Vallon des Étages - Fourastier route
A big route in the heart of a wild Oisans face.
With David.
A few chimneys are smoking, a vegetable patch proudly shows off young lettuces: Les Etages, a small hamlet in the Vénéon valley, is slowly waking from its winter torpor. On the other side, a tributary of the Vénéon purrs with powerful water, witness to a secret and preserved valley: the Vallon des Etages. In this valley there is no hut, and no col opens this haven of wildness easily to the rest of the massif.
There you discover a long, peaceful flat stretch that slowly rises to the glaciers, whose gentleness is broken by the vertical thrust of the north face of the Pointe du Vallon des Etages. An austere, icy wall, this rampart is wounded in its centre by an obvious oblique line: the object of our visit.
This scratch was first climbed in the summer of 1935 by Maurice Fourastier, Henri Le Breton and Maurice Laloue. Today, this grandiose Oisans route is climbed in more wintry conditions to find ice and snow suitable for progress with ice tools and crampons on so-called mixed terrain. Besides the technical interest of such conditions, the ice freezes the rock in place for greater safety.
The ice conditions on this route are hard to judge and uncertainty remains until the foot of the difficulties, which lie in the upper half of the face, formed by a deeply recessed couloir-chimney invisible from below.
David and I pitch the tent facing the beautiful face, glowing red at sunset. The next day promises to be long.
After a short night, the approach is pleasant on well-refrozen snow and then supportive powder, and we soon reach the start of the route. To step into the line proper, two pitches of climbing on cold, often snowy rock set the tone. But the granite is beautiful and protects very well.
After reaching a spur, we are surprised by a morning visit from the sun, which manages to flood this north face. Indeed, the beautiful diagonal of the Fourastier route breaks the flatness of the face into a morning aspect and an evening aspect, allowing it two fleeting visits from the sun.
The snow nevertheless forces us to put on our crampons to climb the second rock pitch. Then a few mixed moves let us step onto this big diagonal, so obvious from the valley. The simplicity of this feature now becomes an immense world that we travel through like two tiny ants. The line has unfolded into a thousand dimensions of a vast, receding universe. The perspective stretches out; the atmosphere is gripping.
We slowly climb the first part of a couloir whose snow, more or less deep, sometimes rests on large areas of rock with little grip. Protecting well is a constant concern on this terrain, not very difficult but delicate and changing. A few mixed passages require concentration, and we finally reach the foot of the hard pitches in the bowels of a deep chimney.
To our great joy, the conditions, which until now had been very variable and gave no hint of what was to come, become excellent! Above our heads, a thin gully of compact snow and ice threads its way upwards.
These highly aesthetic pitches are devoured with relish and euphoria. The tools and crampons bite securely into tender ice or snow. The climbing is sprinkled with nice mixed moves, a few beautiful ice smears and narrow ice-filled constrictions, and the quality of the protection lets us enjoy it to the full.
This cleft is followed by a steep, suspended snow ramp that opens a dizzying view down the face and leads out to the summit.
The weather has turned and it is snowing, fortunately without wind. It is already late and we start the long descent, which we don't know. We wander in thick fog to find the start of the north-east ridge we have to follow. After a few steep dead ends, we finally step onto the right crest and follow this long ridge, which appears little by little through the cotton-wool weather.
After this endless blind descent accompanied by the glittering of thousands of snowflakes, we finally find our tent in the halo of our headlamps. Very tired, we let ourselves be lulled by the purr of the stove before sinking into a well-earned sleep.
On the morning of a good lie-in, our bivouac is flooded with sun; the landscape is radiant. Contemplative, we savour these peaceful little moments that follow such beautiful, intense mountain days. The Pointe du Vallon des Etages is plastered with snow, our tracks have already disappeared, and we too finally leave this beautiful Vallon des Etages.
A great journey in the Oisans: thanks, Dav'!
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