Simon Richardson and Duncan Tunstall added a major route to the Mont Blanc Range in early September when they made the first ascent of the South-West Spur of Punta Baretti. 1200m ED1.

Punta Baretti (4013m) is situated on the Italian side of Mont Blanc and is considered to be the most remote of all the 4000m peaks. The peak is rarely climbed and access to the huge 1200m-high South-West Spur that drops directly from the summit, is guarded by the chaotic Mont Blanc glacier.

Global warming has caused significant retreat of many alpine glaciers in recent years creating increasingly difficult access to many alpine routes. The retreat of the Mont Blanc glacier however, has turned its lower icefall into a smooth glacier snout that has opened up access to this major but isolated alpine face. Inevitably the great extreme skier Pierre Tardivel was the first to notice, and with Jeremy Janody and Sebastian de Sainte Marie he climbed and then skied the TD+ central couloir on the SW face in May 2006. The couloir was repeated as a summer climb in July of this year.

On 7th September Tunstall and Richardson climbed 400m up the lower glacier on easy but brittle ice to reach the foot of the spur. This gave 40 pitches of absorbing climbing over a series of difficult towers, a whaleback ridge and a final steep headwall that was turned by a knife edge ridge on the left. The pair reached the summit on the third day and descended to the Eccles Hut. Difficulties were sustained at V and V+ with a couple of pitches of VI and the route was compared in difficulty and character to the North-East Rib of the Finsteraarhorn in the Bernese Oberland.

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