Mountain landscape - Europe

Grand Capucin

Grand Capucin I understand is named after a Capuchin - a monk in brown robes. It is the 500m high rock tower on the right-hand side of this photograph (signposted by the crevasses), located above Glacier du Géant in France beneath Mont Blanc du Tacul. A coveted summit for climbers and mountaineers, 3,838m high, its steep and difficult flanks are rich in climbing history. The first ascent of Grand Capucin’s east face - the one we’re looking at - was by the Italians Walter Bonatti and Luciano Ghigo over four days in 1951, whose visionary line started bottom left, cut into the middle and then went almost straight up. (The pair also made the first ascent of the Walker Spur on Grandes Jorasses in the same year). It was Bonatti’s second attempt at the east face of Grand Capucin after a first attempt with Camillo Barzaghi, in 1950, was unsuccessful. In 1968, members of the Italian climbing club, Ragni di Lecco, including Casimiro Ferrari and Carlo Mauri - both of whom, as well as Bonatti, have a rich Patagonian climbing history - put up the Lecco route on the left hand-side of the tower. The right-hand side of the face was climbed in 1984 by a team of three including Jean-Marc Boivin who had previously put up a direct route from the base of the east face the year before and who, later, in the 1980s, skied the large gully separating Grand Capucin from the tower you can see on its left, Trident du Tacul. (Presumably there was a lot more snow that there was on this occasion!)