Mont Blanc

Success! Yesterday for my birthday I completed the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in western Europe, standing at 4810 meters (15781 feet). My legs currently are very sore. Before I get into the account of the climb I'll give a bit of a summary of the rest of the week.

Tuesday was probably the most stressful/scary day of the entire course. Our entire group was under the impression that we would be having sort of an easy acclimatization day just going up the cable car walking around a bit, having a snack, maybe reading a bit, then heading down by dinner. This was hardly the case. Instead we spent the entire day participating in scenes straight out of Cliffhanger. I met my guide for the rest of the week Luca, an Italian, and began our hike down a pencil thin snow ridge with thousands of feet drops on either side. We got to what is called the Cosmiques Route. It was rock scrambling, climbing and rappeling for 3 hours at elevation. The entire time there was a huge drop leaving our entire group at wits end. We were told that there would be nothing as technical or scary on Mont Blanc so seeing that we finished this climb we were well on our way to climbing Mont Blanc.

Wednesday was a easy day. We spent the morning rock climbing and improving our scrambling techniques. By 1 we were done for the day having lunch and preparing our kits for the Thursday/Friday Mont Blanc climb. We were told to rest up and be ready to go by 7am on Thursday morning.

The next morning group began our ascent of Mont Blanc. We started at 9 in the morning hiking up to the Gouter Hut at 3800 meters. In all it was a 6 hour hike where we ascended almost 2000 vertical meters. There was one dangerous section called the couloir du Gouter where rocks come bouncing down the mountain side. Basically, we had to look up the couloir to check for rocks and listen to make sure all was clear. Then we ran across the gully which was about 100 yards to the other side. It is the most dangerous part of the entire climb.

The Gouter Hut was an experience in itself. We had dinner and then tried going to sleep at 8 pm in a room of 40 people sleeping side by side most of whom were snoring. It was pretty much impossible to fall asleep at this point. The entire night I maybe slept 1 hour until everyone started stirring for breakfast at 2am.

I began climbing with Luca at roughly 2:30 am in the pitch black in full winter gear and only a head lamp to lead the way. Looking up all I could see was a zig-zag of head lamps showing how high I had to climb. For the next three hours basically all I focused on was one step at a time and the back of Luca's shoes. As the sun started to rise I started getting a pretty bad headache, a bit nauseous and dizzy from the elevation. I started having some doubts about whether I should keep climbing. The wind started picking up as we got higher on the mountain. Finally, by 6:15 am I reached the summit at the same time as my two other group members. It was a great feeling, but it was cold, windy and short lived. We took some pictures for 5 minutes and then started back down.

Following the summit we descended 3000 meters over the next 7 hours which was not very fun at all. Going up was enjoyable, but that's the thing with mountaineering I guess you have to go down. By the time I reached the bottom it was 3 in the afternoon having maybe slept for 1 hour in the past 36 or so. At the end of the hike I was happy to have done it, but I don't know that I ever wanted to do something like that again. I guess I'll have to give it a few weeks.

Below is Mont Blanc on our way down at 7:30am. If you look closely you can see people ascending on the ridge in the top right corner.