Climbing Mont Blanc: Ascent Day 1

• Introduction
  
• Preparation - Booking
  
• Preparation - Fitness
  
• Preparation - Gear
  
• Training Days
  
• Restday
  
• Ascent Day 1
  
• Ascent Day 2 - Up
  
• Ascent Day 2 - Down
  
• Epilogue
  

Fitful sleep and up early for the drive to Saint Gervaise. We take the tram to the Nid d'Aigle (2,372m). From there it’s a relatively straightforward hike up to the Refuge de Tête Rousse (3,167m), although the last couple of hundred meters were across ice and our guides told us not to bother with crampons. A nice lunch at Tête Rousse then we are assigned a guide, one per two people, who will try and take us to the summit and back over the next two days. Me and my friend Mac get the guy with good English – hallelujah! I don’t think I could take two days of “tandre la corde!” Poles retracted, roped up, helmets on we begin a steep ascent to the fabled Goûter refuge. Our guide picks up the pace. Soon we stop and guide carbines himself to a cable stretched across a rocky gulley. Listen to what I say and watch me he says. We make dash across the Grand Couloir (corridor) a steep exposed crossing which offers no protection from the frequent rockfall. Before we have time to think about it we are across, unbuckled from the cable and sheltering beneath a rock on the far side. This guide is good. Lots of people get hit by rocks or fall off the Grand Coulier trying to avoid them.

[caption id="attachment_128" align="alignleft" width="384" caption="glacier trek"][/caption]

The mouthpiece of my cambleback pops off again. I learn a new French word "transpirer", meaning perspire - a great joke amongst the guides as I struggle to stop warter spurting over myself. One of my friends out the corner of my eye laughing along hyena-sycophant with the guides. Later he will fail to close his own cambelback properly and have it leak in his bag.

Now it’s a steep scramble up the spine of the Aguille du Goûter. We keep to the middle of the spine as the guide tells us this is the best way to avoid rockfall (and not set them off for people below). The guide loosens the rope to me and leaps up the mountain, setting a blistering pace, and forcing us to pass out other climbers including some dangerously tired people coming down swinging their crampons where we are trying to find handholds. Patches of ice make the going tricky but cables fixed to the rocks allow hand-holds that make this an enjoyable scramble.

[caption id="attachment_115" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="The Goûter hut is a tiny speck (circled) atop this steep ridge which must first be scaled"][/caption]

We arrive at a refuge perched on the Goûter needle. Just above the snowline at 3817 meters, with a shrill encircling wind, the Goûter refuge feels like purgatory. Inside climbers swarm, chattering nervous and excited and trying to battle the effects of altitude sickness. I step inside and immediately feel jittery. Everything seems too vivid and the lines of people’s faces are jumping around. Later I feel like my head is swelling and I hope its not sun or wind burn and just the effects of my body trying to come to terms with the strange air pressure. I hear lots of nationalities: Russian, Polish, German, English, French. An English journalist from the Times asks us some questions. We answer giddily and I exchange emails with him (taking a picture of his on my phone), promising to let him know how we get on.

[caption id="attachment_108" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="inside the Goûter Refuge "][/caption]

I notice people sitting at the tables in the hut lapsing into drowsy sleep. If feels like they are falling under an enchantment and I make sure to stay active and talking to people. People’s faces are either animated and jittery or lapsing into sick sleeps. Some sunburnt, others well-smeared in ghouslish sun cream. We wait in limbo. Its up or down from here, salvation or death.

To start our evening meal we have local speciality of a cheese wedge you break up into a bowl of piping soup. I wolf this down. To follow we have gammon steaks in a tomato, onion and pepper sauce served with a lovely kind of plump grained rice. Then a dessert cake and coffee – which I decline - sleeping will be hard enough thanks. As dinner comes to an end the Bean an Ti raises her voice to make an announcement. Weather just in. Predicted stormy and bad for tomorrow afternoon. As a consequence breakfast will now be served earlier at 01:30 am instead of 02:00. This does not sound good to me. The announcement is made in English and French. The French version is way longer. What am I missing!!?

I can’t speak French beyond a few laboured shopping phrases. Two of our party have quite a bit but not fluent. For this reason the guides are invaluable in the huts for ordering our dinners and reserving our sleeping places. All of which they have done in advance. I am on an upper bunk. In previous refuges I found that the dusty blankets played havoc with my allergy to the dust mite (actually the allergen is in this creature’s faeces). I am loath to take ant-histamines now for fear they might dehydrate me for the summit day when I will only be carrying a one litre thermos. The cold temperatures, the altitude or a combination of both has however conspired to make the blankets of the Refuge de Goûter inhospitable to dust mites so my lungs are unperturbed for a vital night. I put on all my base layer and my mid-layer, my base socks and outer socks, cover my feet in the blanket and drape my goose down jacket over my chest. In with ear plugs.



My mind is racing so I try breath mediations to calm me. I concentrate on my breathing carefully counting on each out breath and finishing at five each time. No use. Dark thoughts crowding the edges of my mind demanding my attention. What if the weather turns bad earlier than predicted and I get blown off the bosses ridge? I worry about my wife worrying about me (turns out she wasn’t!). Dear God if you get me out of this one alive I promise never to do anything so ridiculous again. Eventually I sleep for a bit. Wake needing a waz. Slip on runners and head outside. Wind is howling and swirling and someone is getting sick on the railing of the stairs that snakes down to the jacks. Piss on the snow it is then. Feel better after this and drink more water before lying back down and trying for more sleep. Mac later tells me I snored like a beast so I have must have slept some.

Next >> Ascent Day 2 - Up