On Aiguille des Pèlerins Tom Livingstone & Symon Welfringer establish La Croisade

I'd noticed this line in the middle of the north face of Aiguille des Pèlerins a while ago. When I ascended Beyond Good and Evil back in 2019, I saw this amazing roof suspended in the middle of the wall and wondered if a route could pass through it.

I knew Xavier Cailhol and Jeff Mercier had tried to open a line to breach this roof, but in the end they opened the pitches of Flammes de l’enfer, an amazing variation of Beyond.

On the 31st of January Tom Livingstone and I ascended to the base of Les Pèlerins and climbed the three long pitches of "Flammes", which provided some sustained drytooling pitches up to M7. I really respect Jeff's climbing; he always manages to find pleasant, tiny cracks that are made to be climbed with ice axes! And as it happened, Xavier was down in Chamonix and he managed to spot us with his binoculars! At the end of that first day, Tom and I managed to fix some of the hard sections before descending to Refuge du Plan de l'Aiguille.

After an early start to return to our highpoint, the new pitches appeared on the second day. After some tricky climbing on poor rock (around M7) we finally arrived at the base of this massive roof: 30m climbing up a 45° overhanging crack, impressive.

The crack was continuous so we knew it could be climbed, but it was hard to judge just how hard it would be free. Tom took the lead and managed to do a great job, climbing past some difficult sequences before resorting to some aid. The pitch looked really hard! I then tried my luck at climbing it free as the second, but after 10m I gave up, it was way too hard for me and above all way too steep! This pitch is amazing and climbing it free could be a great challenge, maybe somewhere in the region of M9/M10?

The next section provided some really cool climbing, around 6 long pitches from the top of the roof to the summit ridge. 3 pitches remain really sustained and require good conditions (from M5 to M7), while one of the pitches I led required a few meters of tricky climbing and then some A2 aid, but this could well be climbed free, too.

For La Croisade we suggest M7+, A2, V+ and 5+. Grades remain really personal and hard to define precisely, but we tried to agree with each other based on our different experience. We also tried to keep them in line with other climbs in the Mont Blanc massif. The route breaks down as follows: first pitches of Beyond Good and Evil, then into Flammes de l’enfer (M5, M6, M6) then the new route M7+, M6+, the A1 roof (maybe M9 or M10?), M5, M6+/A2, M5 and a further 100m of easy terrain. The descent is obvious, you rappel down to the col of Pélereins and use the rappels of the Rébuffat which are really direct and fast.

La Croisade provides 600 meters of great climbing on really solid rock and freeing the route is no doubt a cool challenge.

by Symon Welfringer

Symon Welfringer thanks: Elbec, La Sportiva, Petzl, Millet