Rock Climbing: Les Drus, Directe Americaine (fr)   Renkfälle 

Date:	July 2003
Partner:	Andi Fichtner
Conditions:	Ideal: the face was dry, no snow.
Short Comment:	* Great & infamous alpine rock climb * The best granite I've seen so far,    beautiful view, superb climbing: a must !
Approach	Chamonix -> Montenvers Train (every 20 Min)  -> Ladders ('echelles') 2,5h towards Charpoua Hut -> 2h to first bivy site in rocks & grass -> 1h to second bivy spot on glacier and to base     of the climb
The Route	The DAV-Guide topo was good but not foolproof (Fools are so inventive! ;-) See my big topo picture for a good overview We started at 8 AM and started rappelling from the bloc coince at 3:30 PM
Equipment	The first 4 (of ~18) pitches are bolted(!) with huge anchors. From there on, there are old pitons and rotten wood-pieces + all kind of weird other stuff jammed in cracks. Mucho to clip, but nothing bomber, as many slings are already old & brittle. (Gives you a gentle landing, at least after three stops or so ;-) We took a set of 6 friends, 10 nuts and 10 quickdraws - we hardly used any nuts, but frequently used all friends. The main problem was, that we lost the route a couple of times (at least we thought so) and did other cracks (there are many possibilities), which are just as nice as the ones on the left and right, but they only had very little in-situ equipment. Rappeling takes quite long, because the rope gets stuck everywhere :-( Better to do more short rappells.
Links	* SummitPost.com - Les Drus  Climbing Information * SP direct link to the DIrete Americaine route