The Mont Blanc Traverse (Day One)

We arose at 3am to find the sky clear and the air sharp with frost. Chris's feet had troubled him since climbing Gran Paradiso (a 4,000m peak in Italy) several days earlier and there was a general uncertainty about whether he was fit to climb. However, swathedin bandages from the ankle downwards he lifted his bag and set off with Nick and I along the valley road past sleeping Chamonix. The moon was high and Cassiopeia shone brightly as we ascended through the black Casper David Frederick style pines, over boulders and along the well-worn path to the observation point above the Mer de Glace. Until we reached it we had seen nobody, but now a steady stream of bad tempered walkers and climbers were making their way down from the funicular railway station onto the dirty grey ice. We let them pass and followed on at a distance. Chris's feet didn't allow for swift movement but he progressed with a quiet determination. The crevasses grew steadily larger and more numerous and the surface whiter and less saturated with grit and boulders.
On our right we passed a large building high on the hill, which we identified as the Refuge d'Envers des Aiguilles. Consulting the map Nick indicated the ski route that led to the left then tracked back right. Following this course we began to ascend an unexpectedly steep and crevassing slope. We knew we were in trouble when, forced to the extreme right of the valley we found ourselves faced with a delicate passage across a large crevasse followed by a steep rock climb. I followed Harris across a snow bridge and, weakened by his elephantine weight, it gave way under me. One of my legs stuck through the bridge while the other hung over into the icy blackness below. Fortunately instinct had cut in and, raising my head, I found that I had planted the pick of my axe hard into the ice beyond. Winded, I got slowly to my feet on the forward side of the chasm.
The unstable material on which we stood made loitering unwise and Harris and I began to climb. We moved rightwards, up a steep pitch of mixed ice and rock overhung by a large boulder. Harris led and I followed (removing my crampons and cleaning the rock before ascending. I then led first to the right and then made a rising traverse to the left, coming to a halt at the base of a climbable but very exposed slab with a shallow gully. Nick moved further to the right and, gaining an important 20m was able to traverse left and set up a belay using a sling and a large boulder. I joined him and cutting steps up a small ice-slope I emerged at a point above the glacier. Chris had not been prepared to risk the climb and, looking for an alternative route across the crevasses had become disorientated in the maze.
Shouting our communication through cupped hands we guided Chris back to safer ground and agreed that he would see if a route might be worked out around the far side of the icefall. We agreed to wait above the icefall until evening and if Chris had not met us, to rendezvous at the Cosmique Refuge (which he could reach by cable car from the valley). He disappeared for some time and then reappeared retreating down the valley towards Chamonix. Confident that Chris was as safe as possible Harris and I continued to traverse the valley wall and settled down to wait for the heat of the day to cool. By 5pm we had prepared a meal, repacked and roped for glacier travel. Following what we believed to be the correct course towards the Requin Hut we became steadily sucked into a nightmare field of crevasses and séracs. Only too late did we realise that we had made a small but potentially lethal navigational error. The hut we had seen hours before was not the Refuge d'Envers des Aiguilles but the Refuge de Requin. We had gone too far and strayed into the notorious Sérac du Géant. These highly unstable towers and ramparts of ice made direction finding impossible and as dusk fell we were still engaged in a life-threatening struggle to cross (and later to retreat from) the sérac field. Nick and I both undertook levels of climbing we had not previously expected and several moves were, at best, calculated risks. During the afternoon we had heard the moaning and rumbling of the decaying towers of ice and now we could see them at close quarters. On climbing past a huge hole that looked into a gallery the size of an English parish church we were peppered with thousands of ice fragments as part of the architecture below collapsed in on the aisle beneath. Perhaps the most perilous was a down-climb in an unstable area of snow and rotten ice at the opening to an apparently bottomless crevasse. Nick belayed me from the snow bollard but I was very keen not to fall and very relived to reach a solid stance to return the favour of the belay.
By 9.30pm it was becoming increasingly clear that we were going to have to spend the night on the séracs and retreating as far as we dared by head-torch light we stopped atop a large sérac to discuss a bivouac. Navigationally we had made a serious error but we had packed well. We had no tent but we carried four-season sleeping bags, food, cooking equipment and survival bags - we were not however to need them. As we stood discussing bedding-down for the evening we saw a piercing white light winding its way up the starlit valley. Moving like a dragonfly it first visited a group of climbers on one of the steep faces to the North (probably to Aiguilles de Tacul) then satisfied with their condition it moved towards us. The wind was blowing from the south so we heard little of the helicopter until it was directly above us. The downdraft was awesome and combined with the bright searchlight it was like an alien visitation. We raised our arms and a short burley Frenchman appeared at my side. 'Take off ze rope" he shouted above the roar of the military helicopter's engines. I unclipped my rope he replaced it with the winch cable - a second later I was airborne. We were already scudding the 750m to the Requin hut by the time I was shoved into the helicopter. A minute later I was running across the helipad bent double under the whirling rotors. Harris joined me five minutes later and the helicopter pilot, saying nothing, spun his aircraft and dropped it spectacularly over the edge of the cliff into the valley below.
Exhausted and bloody we found ourselves the object of a senior guide's bile. This was 'ze most dangerous place in ze local Alps' he told us and despite being about eight inches taller than him I felt very small indeed. We had performed well once we had got ourselves into trouble but we had made errors that could have cost us our lives. That night I lay awake replaying the events of the day in my head and thinking with a mixture of relief and embarrassment of the day's events.
Some further thoughts on the first part of the route (courtesy of Nicholas Strangely-Browne-Harris)…
They say that a week is a long time in politics, meaning that circumstances can change quickly. In our case, this was certainly true. The transition from being alone and facing a cold, uncomfortable night out on the glacier, to being in a warm refuge, surrounded by people, drinking cups of hot, sweet tea (and, in my's case, having Madame la gardienne rubbing ointment into my lacerated hands) took just 10 minutes.
It is well know that experience is the sum of past mistakes (and also that navigation is not a science but an art). However, that doesn't make me feel much better about my map reading error that day. The difference between winter hill-walking, in say, Scotland, and mountaineering in the Alps is scale: the peaks are higher, the risks are greater and the consequences of any given mistake are potentially much more serious. With that wonderful 20/20 vision that is hindsight, I feel that my worst mistake was not made on the Mer de Glace, but in Chamonix the day before. Armed with Richard Goedeke's 'The Alpine 4,000m Peaks by the Classic Routes', I had detailed information concerning the summit climb from the Cosmiques refuge to the top of Mont Blanc. Goedeke assumes (correctly) that most climbers use the Aiguille du Midi téléphérique and so has no notes on a hut climb that we were making for acclimatisation purposes. I had made only a cursory hunt for a suitable book on the Mer de Glace (it had been a glorious afternoon and lounging in the sun seemed a pleasanter prospect) and so we set off without sufficient knowledge of the first part of our route. I have read since that experienced Alpinists know the hut climb is often a harder prospect than the summit route. No shit!