Multi-Pitch Climbing Course in Chamonix

A multi-pitch day takes you off the single-pitch crag and onto routes several hundred metres long. Most people can already climb the grade — what changes is managing a rope system at a hanging stance with your partner out of sight, and that is what the day teaches.

Belays. Building and equalising an anchor from bolts or natural gear, direction of load, and clipping in with the right tether length. Guides usually run the sequence once on the ground before you leave it.

Rope management. Bringing up a second, stacking rope so it feeds rather than tangles, and racking so your hand finds the piece where it expects to.

Changeovers. Swapping between leader and second without unclipping the wrong thing. This is where most of the day's learning happens, and it is why routes are chosen well below your limit.

Communication. The standard calls, and what to do when wind and distance mean you cannot hear each other.

Route-finding. Reading a face where nothing is marked and the line is not obvious from below.

Abseiling. Threading, backing up, and always being attached to something. Guides give this real time, because abseil accidents outnumber climbing accidents on multi-pitch routes.

You will second most pitches at first and may take a lead on easier ground once the changeovers are working — though whether that happens depends on the route and how the day goes. Chamonix has enough routes across enough grades that the objective is matched to you. Request a guide and tell them what you climb, and they will pick something that fits.

The Aiguilles Rouges, reached from the Flégère or Index lifts, hold most of the moderate multi-pitch routes in the valley — compact granite, well equipped, with short approaches from the top station. Les Chéserys is the usual first-day venue.

Lower down, the valley crags at Les Gaillands, Les Houches, Servoz and Vallorcine give shorter routes and are the fallback when the weather is unsettled.

Higher and longer routes sit on the Mont Blanc side — the Aiguille du Midi granite, the Petit Capucin, the Pointe Adolphe Rey — and across the tunnel from the Skyway at Punta Helbronner. These add a glacier approach and altitude, and are the natural progression rather than a first outing.

Routes are generally climbable May to October, and the sunny Aiguilles Rouges faces often longer than that.