Climbing around the Cabane d'Orny

We had planned a four day mini-vacation at the Cabane d'Orny to enjoy some alpine climbing on granite (and do some more tours from Dani's new book).

Saturday: long train ride down to Orsieres and a hotel night

Sunday

First bus up to Champex, the lift to La Breya, and then the hike up, up, up to the hut. It's a beautiful sunny day, but it's really warm and the packs are heavy, so we don't enjoy this nearly as much as we should. After dropping extra stuff at the hut (loads of people around!) we head up to the klettergarten to do our first tour: the Aiguilles d'Arpette south ridge. 

Rather than hiking through the klettergarten, we opt to start with a pitch of actual climbing. After some looking around to find the route we choose XXX, which is 5a according to Plaisir West (the topo in the hut says 5b). Since the rest of the ridge is scrambling/very easy climbing, we decide to challenge ourselves and do this in the mountaineering boots. The route has a step in it which is, at least at the moment, quite burly to do, but G makes it over in lead and A follows. Aside from that step it's easy climbing on good rock. At the top we shorten the rope, find the use trail which we start us on the rest of ridgem, and then start to head up the ridge. G pretty quickly ends up feeling lightheaded (probably the heat+altitude), so we bail and head back to the hut. After checking in, we rest/nap for an hour or so and then head back up to the klettergarten to do a bit of climbing (with rock shoes this time) before dinner.

There are ~10 of us in the hut, so dinner (pretty good) is nice and quiet. After dinner it's off to bed for an early(ish) start the next day.

Monday

Breakfast at 6, on our way by 7. The plan today is to climb the Aiguilles d'Orny (a lovely and prominent rock spire, labelled Aiguilles Tourelle on the map) via the "Classique Sud" (along the SW ridge). We follow the trail towards the Cabane de Trient for a while and then follow a clear(ish) use trail up towards the foot of the Aiguilles d'Orny. The German couple we had dinner with are ahead of us (they left before us), taking a slightly path up and are doing a different route. The start of the route is easy to find since we have a picture and there are some faint markers. 

We put on the gear and then start our way up. The pitches, according to Dani, are 3c, 4c, 3c, 4b, 3c, 3c, 4b, 4b/5a. A starts. The climbing is really nice. Mostly good rock, a decent number of bolts and/or places to self-protect, and relatively easy route finding. Also excellent views which get steadily better as we make our way up. We do a quick food break between the 5th and 6th pitch. The climbing in boots at these grades on this rock is no problem and we are pretty efficient with everything. Since everything is going well, we opt for the 5a variant of the last pitch (the only difference is the beginning, with a couple of moves up a chimmney and then around the corner to join the 4b version... this goes without a problem) and are on the peak all too soon. G has the peak to himself for about a minute before the lead of the French team who we had seen arrive a bit later arrive along the route La Mosquette (the last pitch of this ends at the abseil stand). While A is on her way up, the lead German arrives on the other peak, so there are eventually 6 of us up there enjoying the views. Total climbing time for us was 3:10, including the break (Dani says 3). We do another quick food break while getting ready to abseil and then follow the French team down. 

The descent is along an easy-to-follow use trail with some cairns through the rocky bits and it leads us down, down, down to the trail between the two huts. Another break to eat something and pack away the last of the gear and then we head back to the hut.

After a nice break we still have a few hours before dinner, so we decide to go back up and finish the Aiguilles d'Arpette. This time we take the hiking/scrambling route through the klettergarten, and follow the use trail up into the scrambling bit. We do the scrambling with the rope on (~12m between us), but don't end up pitching anything other than the steep (but easy) bit up to the "Kanzel". A actually goes up the couple of meters to the Vorgipfel, but G skips that. Now some downclimbing, between the two towers, over the next bit, and then down to the saddle below the wall to the peak. We have some time pressure and A isn't feeling super motivated, so we skip the last three pitches of climbing and opt to leave the gear in the saddle and take the walking/scrambing route to the peak. A bit of view enjoyment here then back to the saddle. There we pack up the gear and head down through the loose couloir and then follow a use trail/cairn markings back past the side of the klettergarten and onto the trail back to the hut.

There are a few more people in the hut tonight (thanks to a big group of newbies there with a guide), but it's still <20 and reasonably quiet.

Tuesday

Breakfast at 6, on our way by 7. The forecast is questionable, so we want to be efficient and flexible. The plan is to do the SW ridge and then S face of the Aiguille de la Cabane (the route name is Voie bon Accueil), because we can break that one off in the middle if the weather changes. We'd seen the line on the hike up to the hut and it is really appealing. The approach is easy, along a path with plenty of stone men, and takes about 20 minutes to get to the bottom of the route. There we put on the gear (including the climbing shoes this time... the first pitch is 5b). The pitches are, according to Dani, 5b, 4c, 4a, 4a, 4b, 4b. The first one, which A starts, has a couple of trickier bits (the 5b parts) on the face to get us up to the SW ridge, which we then follow for the next three pitches. A short walk past the saddle which we will later return to and which leads to the descent route (steep, ugly looking couloir) and then along the descent route from the Aiguille du Glacier Rond takes us to the foot of the S face. Here two really nice pitches lead us up to a stand just below the peak, with an abseil point just around the corner. Total climbing time 2:30. The weather is starting to look dodgy, so we quickly rig the abseil and drop down the 15m to the beginning of the descent route. We do a quick food break while packing away most of the gear and changing our shoes and then start following the cairns for the descent as it starts to sprinkle. The cairns lead us back the saddle and from there we follow the obvious trail down the couloir. As always: it's not nearly as bad as it looked from above. Not too long afterwards we're back at the start of the route where we pack away the last of the gear and then head back to the hut. The gentle rain stops along the way, but since the forecast for the evening isn't good and for Wednesday it's even worse, we decide to head back down. After a nice lunch of soup and wienerli we say goodbye to the hut warden and then make our way back down, down, down to the lift. Of course the sun comes out along the way. :-)

There's definitely tons more fun stuff to do around the Cabane d'Orny, so it would be at all bad to head back again.

Tracks from the whole thing: