Author Topic: Tour du Mont Blanc 2019 video  (Read 1310 times)

dank86

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Tour du Mont Blanc 2019 video
« on: 23:24:27, 08/08/19 »
Im not great at writing trip reports but I did film as I went round the trail. I've done the videos in 3 sections. If youre interested in looking here's a link to the playlist.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDdk_fVHlF26lXIUCgw2US2kBtNTFwpnS

Warbler

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Re: Tour du Mont Blanc 2019 video
« Reply #1 on: 14:26:26, 10/08/19 »
Nice videos. Looks a fantastic trail, breath taking scenery, but...…………….that section with the ladders scares the hell out of me.

gunwharfman

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Re: Tour du Mont Blanc 2019 video
« Reply #2 on: 16:29:07, 10/08/19 »
When I did the TMB I remember the ladders very well. It was a blisteringly hot day and when I arrived at the base, after a long plod up,  there was a queue of hikers waiting to go up, a few were also trying to come down.

A middle man and woman's turn came. He politely let her go up first. A few rungs up and she just froze with fear. I'm sure he told her not to look down but I bet she found it hard to resist the temptation.

We below then sat around watching this little cameo of human behaviour unfold. He tried to encourage her to gain confidence at first and when she didn't respond they then had a 'domestic!' Both were shouting at each other, I think they were Dutch. The memory I cherish most was when he decided he would try to push her up manually! Even today I can remember his hand on her bottom, pushing and pushing with no effect whatsoever other than to leave a momentary posterior imprint of his efforts for all of us to see.

She did eventually move and made it to the top. When she got there we all cheered loudly, she was then beaming and waving to us all.

My turn came, I had my 'heavy' rucksack on, it was still very hot and I was already exhausted. I just used my learned cherry-picking ladder-climbing technique, handed down from generations of Kent pickers. I reached up as high as possible, grab the highest rung I could with two hands and just kept them in place. Then one leg on the first rung, then the other leg on the same rung, then repeat until the body was arching towards my hands. I bit like in the book 'The Hungry Caterpiller.' Then I reach up again as high as possible and gripped another again with both hands and repeated the leg movements.

By the time I reached the top, I was truly exhausted and was steaming with the effort. All I could do was crawl under a boulder in the shade, rest, drink water and watch the other people come up. The beauty of this task is that the ladder just takes up about a third of the route, the rest is footpads and metal handgrips and a rail. The worst part was, as I was going up, two people had to pass me going down.

On the Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt there's a ladder en route that is even longer! It's on YouTube for all to see.

dank86

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Re: Tour du Mont Blanc 2019 video
« Reply #3 on: 17:24:34, 10/08/19 »
I'm not sure I'd have been able to stop laughing if I was watching that unfold....

I think the ladders are more a mind game than anything else

bricam2096

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Re: Tour du Mont Blanc 2019 video
« Reply #4 on: 17:45:33, 10/08/19 »
I was more worried reading about the ladders than climbing them. I was away quite early from Montroc and there was no queue, just a small group of walkers who I happily let get quite far on before I started.

A steady rhythm seemed to work for me, no stopping and certainly no looking down  O0
LDWs done - 32 in total including 16 National Trails and 3 C2C

Wainwrights 176
www.brians-walks.co.uk

 

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