MONT BLANC DAY FOUR: "GOODNESS ME, THAT IS A LONG WAY DOWN"

At this point my note on Harris's snoring becomes relevant. We retired to bed soon after dinner with the aim of being on the face by 01:30. Having slept so little the previous three evenings I left the business of waking to Harris. I placed by watch (with the alarm set) about 20cm from Mr Harris's head. Then, stuffing my ears with damp tissue paper I retired to bed. Sadly, I had neglected to invest in the 21-gun salute version of my Timex sports watch and he failed to rise at the appointed hour. We eventually woke as the last denizens of our dorm were leaving and had to rush to make breakfast by 01:30. It was probably 02:40 by the time we had reached the bottom of the face and a long line of head-torch lights were already pinpricking the mountainside. They looked for all the world like a group of aspirant celestial bodies climbing to reach the magnificent black heavens that spread, star-studded, above us.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly from where we were, the little lights inched across the terrible white space. The trail was reassuringly clear (there must have been at least 50 people above us) but the passage of so many boots has seriously degraded the snow and ice. However, by 04:30 we stood on the shoulder of the summit of Mont Blanc du Tacul and, silently passing off the summit as an indulgence we could not afford, we pressed on down into the col and up to the slopes of Mont Maudit. This was another frightening prospect. As we snaked up the steep face we, and the Scandinavian party to our front, became stuck behind a party of young Brits. We could hear, although not see, at least a couple of young men trying to belay and coax a couple of scared young women through the very steep snow chute which formed part of the last 100m of the ascent. An impatient Franco-Italian finally broke ranks from behind us and went up alongside. Ten minutes of chaos were finally relieved when we reached a section of fixed rope pitoned into the rock and followed them to the summit.
Mont Maudit had sapped a lot of energy but as we crossed its shoulder the unmistakable dome of Mont Blanc came into view. The Plough was still visible in the eastern sky as we descended into the col and an ember-red line on the horizon signalled the approach of dawn. The contours of the massif became clearer and our head torches became unnecessary. The descent involved an exposed leftward traverse across a 70° slope, which fell away several hundred metres into a crevassed valley. Nick proved less than enthusiastic and was particularly cautious where small ribs of rock, running perpendicular to the path, had to be negotiated. By the time the col was reached Mont Blanc was a warm pink on its eastern side and a grey-white on its west. From the Mur de la Cote the summit appeared to be a 100m away at most but we had come to know and distrust these impressions. Indeed the map shows that we were a horizontal kilometre away from, and over 400 vertical metres below the summit.
Our progress was getting slower despite the easier terrain. At over 4000m above sea level limbs become heavy and breathing more difficult. As our summit clothing testifies it was now also intensely cold. The summit dome was overcome slowly with sometimes as few as 40 paces between pauses. Every turn seemed to promise an end to the ascent and to disappoint by presenting yet another twist in the path. However, at 09:15, with some climbers already beginning to retrace their route to the Cosmique, we stood on the broad summit and looked around us. Only here, where nothing overlooks you, can you fully appreciate the height of the mountain and the grandeur of the scenery. We were almost four vertical kilometres above the valley floor we had left four days before and 4807m above sea level. This is the highest point in Western Europe. Above us the sky blackened in a way it never does at lower altitudes and to all sides the snow-capped peaks were spread before us. Away in the distance we could see Gran Paradiso (our training climb) and below us Cormiour and Chamonix were invisibly small in the seemingly tiny folds of the valley. We took some photographs, ate an inadequate lunch and started down the precipitous Bosses Ridge, which marks the end of the ordinary route. Harris, once more displaying his dislike for exposed positions, proved slower than me on this section. However, once we reached the Dôme de Gouter and turned right towards the Grand Mullet hut he became a tower of strength (while I became a slightly sulky dead weight). Indeed, I had to be eased and cajoled down the seemingly endless and increasingly wet snow slope of the glacier.
Our crampons began to ball-up and a slip seemed to come every five minutes. The scale of the mountains continued to play its tricks and frustration increased as the hours slipped by. After what seemed like an eternity we reached the Grand mullet hut high on its seemingly impossible rock. We considered a night there but decided to press on across the smaller glaciers that flow down the mountainside parallel with the Grand Mulet. Reaching the first of these we stopped and looked at each other. This looked scarily like a trap we had walked into before. The twisted and scattered towers of ice tumbled upon each other showing no obvious path. We sat down for dried fruit and a conference and saw, in the middle distance, a figure striding towards us. The figure finally resolved itself into a young local man who offered to lead us across. This he did at a frightening pace. We virtually ran, with full packs and crampons, across two glacial streams. When we were in sight of the cable car station he seemed simply to disappear like some kind of willo-the-wisp. Staggering up the medial moraine of a long dead glacier we stumbled into the Plan de Midi station just in time to catch the last car down to Chamonix. We stood amongst the clean tidy holidaymakers and cable car alpinists and realised that we probably stank. However, as we swung away from the station and Chamonix came closer I got a warm sense of achievement and elation. Although we had made some terrible mistakes we had done something that felt good.