Up Close with Father-Son Climbing Team Michael and Tom de Csilléry
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- Created: Wednesday, 20 November 2024 17:16
Up Close with Father-Son Climbing Team Michael and Tom de Csilléry
Father and son climbing team Michael and Tom de Csilléry have climbed together all over the Alps. This summer, the pair both completed the 82 4,000m peaks, with Tom likely the youngest completionist in history. We sat down with them to hear about their highlights from this journey and to find out how their partnership works.
Tom 'enjoying' soft and unconsolidated snow looking back to the summit of the Grand Pilier d’Angle
First of all, huge congratulations to you both. Can I kick off by asking how you both felt completing your respective 82 peaks?
Michael: Kind of relieved! My last two summits were on the Peuterey Intégrale and we’d actually had an abortive attempt the year before and in 2022 as well. And so to actually get it done was quite special. Obviously I finished when I got to the top of the Grand Pilier d'Angle, but when you get to the top of that it doesn't really feel like the end of the route because you’ve still got 600 meters more and it's serious.
Tom: There'd been lots of snow because there'd been a storm when we were in the Craveri bivouac. So when we got towards the Grand Pilier d'Angle, we were bashing through knee or waist-deep snow at points and we were on heavily corniced ridges. So it felt quite serious and it really didn't feel like it was over when we were on top of number 82 for my dad. But getting to the top of Mont Blanc at sunset was quite special. There was nobody else there. The sun was this big red ball in the distance, the light was amazing and we knew we were safe.
Michael: If I'm honest, I wasn't thinking that Tom would finish this summer. After climbing the Peuterey, he had 14 peaks left and we had 17 days before my wife came to join us and we turned into pumpkins. But when we finished it was great being on top with Tom and sharing that moment with him.
A lot of people are introduced to climbing by a parent, but not that many carry on with them as a partner. How does your partnership work and how do you share decision-making?
Michael: It's sort of a family thing. My dad introduced me to the mountains and then I introduced Tom and his sister to the mountains. We started out doing via ferrata and
easier things before I got Tom and his sister some formal instruction through introductory courses at the ISM. And then we sort of morphed from doing those earlier routes with guides to climbing as just the two of us and getting into more and more adventurous stuff.
Tom: I've never done any alpine climbing with anyone else. Partly because I haven't met anyone in my age group who's got a similar amount of experience to me. I've been on lots of rock climbing trips with my uni friends and done a little bit of Scottish winter, but in the Alps we've always climbed together. There was one route we did where we invited a couple of my uni friends who are both E1/E2 rock climbers and have a little bit of alpine experience. But even though they're very fit and strong, they weren't used to moving at the kind of pace that that you have to go at in alpine terrain.
Michael: I'm just happy that he still wants to climb with his dad! I think we're a pretty good team. We tend to share the decision-making and it's nice agreeing stuff together and deciding what routes we're going to do. To begin with, I obviously had a lot more experience and I was generally taking the lead on route finding, but it didn't take long for Tom to get very strong and more experienced. He’s a much stronger rock climber, so he's my rope gun on all the technical rock stuff and I tend to lead the mixed pitches because I've got more experience on that sort of stuff. So we sort of complement each other. [To Tom] Although I tend to be the one that has to kick you out of bed in the morning.
Tom and Ella plus dad Michael on the Weissmies summit in 2012 - Tom's first 4000er
Michael powering up Pointe Hélène on the Grandes Jorasses traverse with Pointe Marguerite behind
You’ve climbed a lot of the 82 multiple times and you’ve often done them by less popular, longer routes and link-ups. Can you talk a little about the motivation behind that?
Tom: We've never really been interested in “summit bagging”. Even the 82 is only something we started thinking about in the last couple of years. We were always more motivated by doing certain routes than climbing mountains. Martin Moran's guidebook is a bible for the 4,000ers and it's got lots of great routes up to TD-.
Of the ones that stick out, I'd definitely say the Zmutt Ridge on the Matterhorn, especially with the newly constructed Lonza bivouac hut. It's amazing having that ridge to yourself.
Michael: It's just a lot of fun being on a wild ridge or wild face and feeling like civilisation is a long way away. I don't like climbing if somebody's right behind me, and I also don't like climbing behind other parties in case they kick rocks down. In fact, this year I had one of my scariest moments when a party ahead of us on the Täschhorn kicked a big rock down which smashed into my head and knocked me off the mountain as we were short roping a steep couloir. Luckily, thanks to Tom holding me and my Petzl helmet, it all turned out okay.
You’ve both had fairly prolific seasons, Tom in particular climbing 26 of the 4,000ers this past summer. What advice would you offer people who want to climb more during a trip to the Alps?
Tom: I think good acclimatisation is key. I hadn’t been doing much training because I’d just done my finals and had a week of partying at the end of the year. So I was quite hungover and exhausted when we drove out to the Alps and there’s nothing like going straight up to 4,000m to sort your system out! And I guess knowing the Alps quite well geographically and working out where the best weather is. MeteoSwiss is your friend!
Michael: I’d say also not coming out with too many fixed objectives. You often hear people who say: “All right, I want to climb the Matterhorn this year,” and they book a Matterhorn week. And then they get disappointed because the conditions aren't right. So just going with an open mind.
Tom surveying the way ahead on the Lauteraarhorn grat traverse from the Schreckhorn
On top of the Grand Pilier d'Angle with Mont Blanc’s Peuterey rdige behind - summit 82 for Michael
So what’s next for you both? Do you have plans in the Alps or maybe farther afield?
Tom: We're both planning on training hard on our rock climbing and then having a look at things like the Frêney Pillar on Mont Blanc and the Bonatti-Oggioni on the red pillar of Brouillard. There's a lifetime's worth of climbing on the south face of Mont Blanc which I want to explore.
Michael: There's a lot of big routes in the Alps, a whole multitude. But the Walker Spur for one.
Tom: Hopefully Morocco at some point this year. I studied Arabic at university, so I spent a year living in Cairo and climbed in the Sinai. So desert rock is very appealing.
Michael: I’ve been walking with my wife in Georgia and the mountains there are absolutely amazing, so we’d love to climb there. Particularly a mountain called Ushba. But it’s quite wild out there!
Both Michael and Tom spoke about the inspiration they drew from Martin Moran’s The 4,000m Peaks of the Alps, Ben Tibbetts’ Alpenglow and Pause & Winkler’s Extreme Alpine Rock.
Graham Zimmerman's A Fine Line is shortlisted for the Jon Whyte Award for non-fiction mountain literature, while Heather Dawe's Dreams of Lost Buttresses and Ben Tibbetts' The 4000m Peaks of the Alps, Volume 1: West have been nominated in the Mountain Fiction & Poetry and Guidebook categories, respectively. 
Livingstone and climbing partner Aleš Česen on the summit of Gasherbrum III following the first ascent of the west ridge 
Aiguille du Midi Web Cam, 13 September 2024
Index Web Cam, 13 September 2024
Emosson, © Pierrot
Nantillons Glacier on 22 August
Point Lachenal on 23 August
The author examining lichen heath on Meall a’ Bhuachaille
White worm lichen (Thamnolia vermicularis) growing amongst a bushy reindeer lichen (Cladonia arbuscular) on the Cairngorm plateau - Nathan Chrismas
Crinkled snow lichen (Flavocetraria nivalis): This pale yellow leafy lichen is a common sight on alpine heath, but in the UK is only found in the Cairngorms. 
Working on the latest prototype for Vertura
Ronnie tackling the cornice on Cinderella, Creagh Meagaidh - Andy Cowan
A sneak peak of the Vertura down jacket out on a test
