Climbers are making the best of the Alps during these longest days of the year: Leo Billon has opened a new and difficult route on the Aiguille du Plan, and Vivian Bruchez has finished his 15-year project to ski down all 84 of the 4,000m peaks in the Alpine Arch.
Long days, long climbs
June is an interesting month in the European Alps: long days and — usually — moderate temperatures are ideal for long rock routes. Meanwhile, diehard skiers still find enough snow on the glaciers and higher summits for some extreme descents. Often, these include rocky ridge climbs and long treks down to the valleys with the skis strapped to their packs.
Recently, the unstoppable Leo Billon has opened another new route in the Mont Blanc massif, this time with Enzo Oddo, a comrade from the French High-Mountain Military Group. The pair climbed a 700m route on the West Face of the Aiguille du Plan, above Chamonix. The new line follows the face’s central spur, close to the Bonington/Tejada-Flores route from 1965. Billon and Oddo named the route OSS ne répond plus and suggest an overall difficulty of 7a+.
Oddo on his new route with Leo Billon up the West Face of Aiguille du Plan. Photo: Leo Billon
Wall of shadows
The climb is a positive ending to a tragic story. Billon was asked to climb the Bonington route (very close to the new line) in November 2019 with good friends Max Bonniot and Pierre Labbre, but he already had other plans. Sadly, Bonniot and Labbre fell to their deaths on the route.
“Since then, this mountain face [the West Face of Aiguille du Plan] has been for me a wall of shadows and vertigo, loaded with sadness, fear, and emptiness,” Billon wrote. “[Now], with Enzo, we restored a little lightness, beauty, and positivity.”
Bruchez finishes
Nearby on the Grandes Jorasses, Vivian Bruchez climbed 4,065m Point Marguerite and skied down, after downclimbing the unskiable summit ridge last Friday. This was the last summit of a 15-year project: to climb and ski all 82 of the 4,000m peaks in the Alps.
“I put all my heart, all my body, all my energy into this,” he wrote afterward.
The climb/ski line followed by Vivian Brichez (the image was shot in 2024). Photo: B. Langenstein. Topo: V. Bruchez
On the Grandes Jorasses, he teamed up with Mathieu Navillod.
“Given the verticality of this peak, we approached the mountain on skis and then climbed to the summit via the Italian side,” he explained.
He admitted the snow conditions were far from perfect, but they used the skis as much as possible, as Bruchez has done throughout the project.
Vivian Bruchez last Friday on the summit of Pointe Marguerite, Grandes Jorasses. Photo: Mathieu Navillod
During the project’s years, Bruchez has carved 22 new ski routes, including four on peaks that had never been skied before. He has also skied more than 100 lines. In June last year, he skied from Picco Luigi Amedeo on the Italian side of Mont Blanc with Gee Pierrel.
Bruchez said such a project had not been undertaken before, and admits the last two years were the hardest. He had injuries, and the remaining peaks were so difficult that he was unsure he’d succeed. For this, he credits his climbing partners. “What was once an individual project eventually became a collective one,” he said.
Babicz returns
Heat wave
Forecast for the Northern Alps on Saturday, June 28. Graphic by Meteofrance
