In mountaineering and climbing, enchainment (an anglicisation of the French language word , meaning "linking") is climbing two or more mountains or climbing routes on a mountain in one outing (often over the course of a day or a series of days). Rock climbing two or more routes in this manner are also called a "link up" in the United States. Climbers may do an enchainment of easy routes as a way of training for a more difficult objective, but some enchainments of hard routes are a prize in their own right, a notable example being the great north faces of the Alps.
In alpinism
By the 1970s, the number of possible new routes in the
Alps seemed to be drying up, and so alpinists looked for other challenges. Developments in
hang glider and
paraglider technology, as well as advances in
extreme skiing and the use of
, meant that mountains could be descended much more quickly than they could by foot, making possible enchainments of long and difficult face routes. Early practitioners of this style of climbing were predominantly French, the most notable being
Jean-Marc Boivin, , and Jean-Christophe Lafaille.
[ Jean-Marc BOIVIN: ENCHAINEMENTS, jeanmarcboivin.free.fr, retrieved 4 October 2010]
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In August 1975 Nicolas Jaeger (who had made the first solo traverse of the in 1973
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On 17 March 1986, Boivin, using skis, a paraglider, and a hang glider for his descents, linked up ascents of the north faces of the Aiguille Verte, Les Droites, Les Courtes, and the Grandes Jorasses, flying back to the Chamonix valley after his final ascent and arriving at 0:30 am.
[Mark Twight, Kiss Or Kill: Confessions of a Serial Climber, The Mountaineers Books, 2002, p. 33][
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From 11 to 12 March 1987, Profit was the first to climb the three hardest of the six great Alpine north faces, "the Trilogy", (the Eiger, the Matterhorn and the Grandes Jorasses) in under 24 hours.
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In April 1996, Lafaille made a 15-day solo enchainment of ten classic alpine faces, including routes on the Eiger, and the Matterhorn.
In rock climbing
In mountaineering
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In May 2008, Japanese climbers Katsutaka Yokoyama, Yusuke Sato, and Fumitaka Ichimura, completed the enchainment on Mount Denali of the Isis Face (M4 5.8 A1, 60 degrees, 7,200-feet to, Stutzman-Tackle, 1982), and the Slovak Direct (5.9, 100 degrees, 9,000-feet, Adam-Korl-Krizo, 1984), in a single, eight-day push.
