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July 8th
Itinerary: Bivouac de l’Aiguillette à la Singla – Col de l’Evêque – Plans de Bertol – Cabane de Bertol (3311 m)
Distance: 17,0 km
Time: 8 hours 30 minutes (plus 1 hour for the stops)
Vertical distance: 1370 m uphill; 1260 m downhill
Certain sections of frontier having been declared “out of bounds” or impossible or dangerous by the guides, my options are limited. These sections include the Col du Mont Brulé, the Tiefmatttenjoch and the long east ridge of the Dent d’Hérens. This means that the Dent d’Hérens would have to be climbed from the Rifugio Aosta, itself only accessible from the Col de Valpelline, with a return the same way, at a cost of at least 2 extra days. So I reluctantly abandoned the idea of doing this summit, a pity as it would have been my first 4000-metre peak. Instead, we would do the Matterhorn, from the Italian side as originally planned, because the normal Hörnli ridge on the Swiss side would have too many people climbing it.
Sadly, we had done no more summits after Mont Vélan: it is far too warm, nothing freezes at night; snow is soft, progress slow; stonefall danger; impossible to do anything serious in the afternoons.
We had 3 days without any mobile phone signal! It was only at Plans de Bertol, above Arolla, that there was a signal, which allowed me to update the blogs.