Mont Blanc traverse (15.07.2009)  

Wednesday, 15th July 2009

Bumming around in the morning and generally not rushing around was quite nice after 2 days of early starts. In fact, 10am actually came round pretty quickly and we were soon met at the apartment by our guides Hannah and Anthony to make the drive over to Chamonix (yes, it became something of a joke that there were actually three Hannahs in a group of 6). The general plan was to have lunch in Argentiere and then continue to the Aiguille du Midi station in Chamonix. Surprisingly it took less time to travel by car than it did when we took the Mont Blanc Express train, despite all the switchbacks in the road which probably made the route longer. It was about midday by the time we parked up in Argentiere and we sat at some park benches to eat our sandwiches. Chamonix was immensely hot by the time we arrived there an hour or so later, even though there was a fair amount of cloud cover.

After buying our rather pricy 40€ return tickets, we got into the endless queue for boarding the telepherique amongst a mixture of tourists and other climbers. We got off at the Aiguille du Midi station. From there we took a short amount of time for pulling on our climbing gear before making the exposed descent down the ridge into the Vallee Blanche. It was quite a sweltering walk down, which was beginning to be something we expected at some point during the day now. Fortunately it lasted just ½ hour before we’d traversed below the foot of the Cosmiques Arête and plodded the final few metres up to the Cosmiques hut itself. I would guess we arrived there around 3.30pm in the afternoon but our dormitory was already full with climbers, either taking an afternoon kip or having taken the bottom bunks already. I made an attempt to join the nappers and try and get some sleep but it didn’t really work and in the end I gave up and joined the others in the dining room for some coffee before the dinner at 6.30pm. There was a pretty awesome display of clouds after the dinner – it was structured like one huge mass of cotton wool which was slowly rising up from the bottom of the valley and rolling its way up the western side of the Mont Blanc massif. I would have liked to stay longer on the balcony to watch it, but was immediately deterred by a) the guy smoking and b) dessert being served in the dining room and c) despite the renewed enthusiasm to climb the mountain after the amazing cloud display; I was in the mood for going to sleep as well. Breakfast was arranged for 3am, and by about 8.30-9pm most people were in the dorm and had stopped making too much noise.

Thursday, 16th July 2009
I don’t know if it was just an effect of sleeping higher up but for some reason I had about half a dozen different dreams in the space of about 4 hours, and it still wasn’t even time to get up. There had been some rustling going on at midnight, maybe 1 or 2 early starters, but it sounded like the majority of climbers were getting up for the 1am breakfast slot. I followed suite at 2am with the plan to sit in the dining room and wake up slowly with several mugs of coffee before the others came down. That didn’t turn out as planned though because the hut wardens had locked the dining room, presumably to clean up before the next influx of climbers at 3am. So, as it turned out, I sat on the bench outside the reception instead to pass the time – although I did manage with some success, to get something hot to drink anyway because I had some hot chocolate powder and a thermos flask full of hot water which I’d got filled up before going to bed. Extra faff time was clearly the way forward as I was pretty much dressed and ready to go by the time the others had made an appearance at 3am. The breakfast bread was shockingly good, which I hadn’t expected after the poor quality stale variety had been served at dinner the previous evening. A welcome surprise to kick off the summit day. I’m guessing that the bread didn’t have much of an impact on the mood of many other people though!

Fifteen minutes later we were gearing up outside the hut. It seemed like not that many people had taken the later breakfast option, so fortunately there wasn’t too much pushing and shoving to get by or traffic jams forming at the bottom of the slope up to the hut. There was a little bit of a mist layer camped over the col before Mont Blanc du Tacul but it didn’t take us long to get above it as we climbed slowly upwards. Anthony, Hanna and Tobbe had already started off before us and had pretty much disappeared from view, which I thought was a bit disappointing. It would have been nice to stick close by to each other to climb the mountain as four friends together. Never mind. We took one or two stops to sort out clothing and take a drink/photos etc, and were soon on the shoulder of Mont Blanc du Tacul and making good progress.

The sun hadn’t really risen by that time, but the sky was well illuminated by brilliant shades of dark reds and blues and purples, once we’d crossed the col and started the long slog up Mont Maudit. It was a really gorgeous sunrise though. We could just about see the others ahead of us but didn’t really catch them up until we’d reached the in-situ gear at the bottom of the steeper section of the climb. We clipped in while Hannah led up to the top of the pitch and placed a couple of ice screws along the way. Meanwhile, Anthony, Hanna and Tobbe, who were waiting now behind us, decided to go on ahead again and move together instead of pitching the route.

We eventually reached the belay where Hannah was stood, and soon realised how cold she must have been as there was a severely nippy wind blowing at the shoulder of the ridge. So we didn’t hang around there too long and soon started along the traverse towards the col below the final long summit slopes. Interestingly, whilst Dan was faffing for a few minutes with his gaiters at the col, a helicopter flew over the massif and hovered around. It wasn’t too clear what was going on but there didn’t appear to be much of an emergency anywhere on the mountain so we decided it was maybe some sort of training flight. Nice day for it too!

By this time the summit slopes were littered with climbers who were either on their way down from having made an earlier start or those who had ascended on a different route. I don’t think it really spoiled our enjoyment of the mountain though. The views were fantastic and were getting better and better the further up we climbed, even if the altitude was now making it feel like much harder work! Well, after a long slog - with the odd stop to give our legs a brief rest and catch our breath again, we finally made it. It felt like the hard work was finished and we could relax a little to take in the views and the satisfaction of having climbed the highest mountain in Europe, even if many climbers wouldn’t regard the route as technically the most rewarding peak. It was reasonably windy at the top, so I chucked on my shell jacket whilst we spent some time gazing at the rest of the Alps all around us, and took some photos. At the same time I knew really that we couldn’t relax yet as we still had to reverse our route and get ourselves all the way back to the Aiguille du Midi station again, but I thought it was best not to think too far ahead and just take each section as it came! A few metres back down from the summit, we caught up with the others. Hanna looked very cold and it was apparent they didn’t really want to hang around for any longer, so whilst we took a short break to get something to eat, they began their way back down again.

Anyway, to cut a long and tedious descent story short, nothing too spectacular happened on our way back apart from the novelty of having to weave our way back down the other side of Mont Maudit through the traffic jam of all the climbers coming up. It seemed like a lot had opted for the one-day trip and decided to make the ascent straight from the Aiguille du Midi, having caught the first lift up of the day. It was definitely a cheaper option – the overnight stay with dinner and breakfast at the Cosmiques hut had cost us each 50€!! But I was pretty glad we didn’t do that though, as it would have meant having to endure the heat of the sun for a lot longer instead of getting much of the climb over with whilst it was still dark and cold. The snow condition on Mont Blanc du Tacul was rubbish, and pure irritation to have to walk down on. Nevertheless, at that point I was still preparing myself psychologically for what I anticipated to be the worst part – the climb back up to the Aiguille du Midi, which in fact turned out to feel like a walk-in-the-park. For whatever reason, the sheer effort and determination which I thought I’d have to put in to get back up there was never really required. Dan wasn’t really in agreement and found it hard work, but I was still trying to get over the fact I’d been moaning so much about how awful I thought it was going to be and after all that it was not an issue at all. So basically I also felt like an idiot at the same time!

Possibly the greatest disappointment of the day was first having to forge our way through a load of tourists, then trudging up the stairs to the toilets at the Aiguille du Midi station – before joining a massive queue of people to get into the telepherique car again. Once back down in Chamonix again, we stayed only long enough to have a quiet cold drink at a bar just outside the town centre to celebrate, then we were soon bundling back into Hannah’s and Anthony’s cars again for the journey back to Evolene.

Friday, 17th July 2009
We finished off the week by having a really lazy start, a 10am pick up at the chalet. Rock climbing was the plan. Art gallery was the awful weather option. It was raining when Anthony and Hannah came round, so the boys went into Les Hauderes to return their gear to the rental shop whilst Hanna and I waited back at the chalet to see if the rain would stop. Eventually we came to the decision to drive down to Sion anyway, which was close by to the climbing crags and if the weather was still crap then we would head to Martigny and do art gallery activities. If it improved then at least we would have the opportunity to climb. Actually, I didn’t anticipate climbing even if the weather did get better, as there was no way I was going to be able to pull anything other than a flip flop onto my left foot because of the excruciating toenail pain I'd discovered on the way back from Mont Blanc. I was gutted about that.

Well, the rain did stop, and we parked up in a village just outside of Sion, then walked the short way to the foot of the crags. It was quiet and tucked away within a forested area, so there was a nice feeling of having the place to ourselves – although not much in the way of choice of climbs, but at least they were of different difficulty. I must have spent at least an hour watching the others before succumbing to the temptation of wanting to climb too, and despite wearing a skirt (art gallery attire), I somehow managed to devise a way of wearing Hannah’s harness over the top and doing the easier grade climb wearing my flip flops. Which everyone found highly amusing as spectators. It was worth the mild humiliation anyway!
Without going into much more detail of the climbing – apart from to say it was good fun and chilled out, we finished off the week with a dinner out at one of the restaurants in Evolene in the evening. I guess the week had gone by pretty quickly for everyone, and it was great to catch up with what the other groups had been doing and the peaks/routes they been climbing. The food was pricey – as expected, but quite generous portions and above all, tasty! A few guys got a bit drunk and merrily entertained us for a while before it got a tad irritating to most people. I didn’t stay all that long, and was (surprise!) the first to head back to the chalet, although I had some real problems trying to actually fall asleep at all without the help of some drowsiness-inducing Night Nurse tablets.

And that was the end of the trip. A successful and quite enjoyable one too. We left Geneva the following day to return to the relative normality of our PhD space-plasma-physics-student’s lives...........