Rock climbing at Praz Torrent today with Andreas. It’s located in the north east edge of the Aiguilles rouge between Argentiere and Vallorcine. We parked near to the La Poya ski area and walked in from there.
Because of the heatwave we decided to leave really early and avoid the overbearing heat for the walk up. We started walking up around 6am so we were on the route by 7:30am ish.
The route we did was called Voie Parat-Seigneur. It is a classic line on the crag about 7 pitches of easy 5’s. I started the route, it started as an easy scramble. The interesting climbing was really only the 3rd and 4th pitch which I linked together which involved a bit of route finding as it wasn’t hugely obvious where to go. Then Andreas 6a pitch had one awkward move in it which made it a little fun. With the chimney pitch I was expecting thrutchy and little gear. In fact there were loads of pegs and you could easily bridge your way up the whole pitch which made it pretty chilled out and enjoyable for a chimney! The last pitch and getting to the summit was fine. We put the ropes away for the scramble to the summit although some of the rock was a little loose so we were careful and didn’t rush. We traversed the ridge for a while and found the abseil quite easily. We decided to do 2 abseils instead of 1 as we felt it would be less likely to get the rope stuck that way. The descent via the scree was pretty uncomfortable but then again, walking on scree is never fun!
Nice day out with beautiful views however I wouldn’t recommend that specific climb.