Aiguille du Tour

Happy with the Petit Aiguille Verte, Penny and I decided to try the Aiguille du Tour. The mountain is about the same height, but you start a lot further down from the Albert premier hut at 2700m. Must of the route is over glacier and then you move onto rock for the final scramble to the summit.

The first part of the summit trip was to get a chair lift up the mountain. Then there was an hour and a half walk in to the Albert Premier hut. Along the way we passed these grazing cows. I was disappointed they were not purple. But they did have the traditional cow bells.

We started off at 6am for the route. This picture looks back down the Glacier du Tour (the hut is behind the ridge in the center) as the sun was coming up.

There were a number of other people from the MCI meet planning to climb the Aiguilel du Tour on the same day. And there are a number of different ways to the summit. We decided to head up the Glacier du Tour and then climb to the Col Purtscheller. You can see it here just to the right of center. The fun part was getting over the bergschrund at the back. The rest of the way to the top was up a 45-50 degree snow slope which became rocky at the top.

We finished up the mountain with some lovely scrambling over broken rock. This is Penny and I on the top about three and a half hours after we left the hut.

As it was a nice pleasant route with no surprises there was time for some posing photos on the way down. This is me (note: this side of the mountain is in Switzerland)

Here is Penny as we headed down the Col du Tour (now back in France)

The Albert Premier hut is beside this interesting crevasse field in the glacier du Tour. At the bottom left you can see people practicing glacier skills.