The Yorkshire three peaks

Richard had been threatening to organise a walk round the Yorkshire three peaks for some time but boy was he organised when he finally got round to it. He picked thirteen of us up in Oxford and Milton Keynes and drove us up the M6 (via the horrors of Pizza Hut) to Bolton Le Sands where we stayed at his aunt’s cottage and (for the overspill) The Blue Anchor.

Bright and early and each carrying a packed lunch lovingly crafted by the Jones’s we registered at the Penyghent café and ‘kerchinged’ our cards in the machine about 08:15. The registration thing is half safety and half marketing but it does help to build a sense of occasion.

I think it is fairly normal to start with Penyghent but it is something of a shock to the system as the walk in is short and boggy and the climb gets quite steep towards the top. Gravity was also augmented by a strong easterly wind. The rock on this upper section has a lovely graphite colour and a heavily layer texture. Sadly it also featured a lighter grey excrescence by the name of G Prior. The Poet/Accountant had been charging along merrily until arrested by the increasing gradient, a history of fags and booze and the onset of an asthma attack. At one point I thought we might be doing the no peaks and a funeral challenge but once nursed to the top he rallied considerably.

Penyghent is only steep at one side and the walk off the back was billed as long and taxing. It was certainly long but I think it gave everyone chance to get their breath back, get the blood pumping and admire the flora and fauna (including a whole lot of spawn much to Julia’s concern). It also proved to be an excellent place to fall into bogs and streams. Laura and I were both sporting fairly muddy patches by the time we reached the magnificent Ribblehead viaduct where we stopped to indulge in our packed lunches.

One of the good things about this walk is the ease of navigation. We could see the second and tallest peak (Whernside) for most of the walk from Penyghent. One of the bad things is that it seems never to get closer. Indeed it was some time after crawling out of our shelter by the viaduct that we started to see the detail of rock and crag in the great flank of Whernside.

Passing alongside a railway rewarded by the Princess Royal for its dry stone walls and over Blea Moor we began to weave up the mountain’s approaches before emerging onto the great fin of Whernside itself. By now the wind, which had been a considerable obstacle on Penyghent, was starting to attempt seriously to blow us into the next valley.

Nina just about maintained contact with terra firma but lost her hat in the process while Richard and Iended up throwing snowball (boomerang fashion) at ourselves. The sheer effort of making progress into the wind burned the face, taxed the sinew and left Gareth with a gait not unlike Heir Flick of the Gestapo. Eventually however we dragged ourselves to the top and spent a couple of minutes looking smug before pressing on down the long descent to the valley.

Another good thing about the route is the number of bailout points and the valley after Whernside is where a good number of us had planned to stop. Those of a more sensible bent retired to the pub on the B6255 while John, Verity, Richard, Jackie, Julia B, Julia W, Gareth (who was now proving to been a man of steel) and I pressed on across the boggy open ground towards Ingleborough’s apparently sheer side.

It was only when we closed within a few hundred meters of the face that we saw the zigzag path ascending it. This was the steepest and windiest part of the walk and almost qualified as scrambling. At the top John and Ms. Whippy almost graduated from walking to flying as they leaned at 45 degrees into the wind atop the summit cairn.

Jackie and Richard led the troops from the summit and down to the Promised Land and I followed with Gareth who was still dressed in the pink pulsating brain mujahedeen pie hat.

We finally ‘kerchinged’ our cards with some time to spare and returned to the pub for a heroes’ welcome. Actually, the two peak posse just pointed and laughed and exclaimed that ‘you look like wurzel gummage’. Hmmm…

Caingorms by sleeper train

Richard and I had a brilliant weekend. Things at home have been rather fraught so I was looking forward to a change of scenery, some good hard exercise and some physical problem solving.

We ate at Diwana Bhel Poori House on Drummond street near Euston, had a couple of pints and boarded the Caledonian Sleeper. The service really is excellent with a proper buffet car, nice little twin rooms with clean sheets and very helpful staff. I was rocked to sleep by the gentle swaying of the train and awoke just as we trundled into Glasgow station. We changed and continued to Aviemore by a local service; arriving at 9:30am.

Aviemore was like Christmas Land with the streets and trees festooned with snow. We had an excellent breakfast at the Cairngorm Hotel and struck out for the mountains by taxi and then on foot (where the snow began to swallow the road).

We hiked up to the ski station and then set off across country through the drifting snow. The view was breathtakingly beautiful with a pale blue sky looking down on the rolling white landscape. Ahead, the mountains were covered in white clouds and, when it parted, we could see plumes of spindrift coming off the tops.

We almost fell over a Ptarmigan as we entered the open side of a cwm. The temperature dropped and the visibility closed in as we made our way through thigh-deep drifts to the base of the cliff. On either side rock walls with chutes and chimneys rose up and ahead was a steep mixed face of ice, snow and rock. This was our route.

We fixed crampons and began to ascend. At first we walked but soon found ourselves climbing on points and axes. The face grew steeper and the snow conditions less favourable towards the top. A fresh fall of snow lay over a hard icy layer and I had to clear the powder away and cut steps on the last 15m. It was an exhilarating climb.

Once on the top we consulted the map and the watch and worked out that we had time to make the summit of Cairn Gorm before dark. As is always the case it was further than it looked but we eventually topped the rock strewn summit and reached the weather station in freezing conditions. We stayed long enough to have a quick drink and make some kit adjustments then headed down to find a place to bivouac.

We lost about 300m in increasingly poor visibility before finding somewhere to camp on a slight dip in the col. We excavated a small pit and fought with the wildly whipping tent until we had it pegged down. The result was actually rather pleasing and my new thermarest was a revelation. We soon had dinner on the go and produced a creditable pasta affair and a nice cuppa. It was probably about 7:30 when we finished the lip-burning single malt and turned in.

We actually slept pretty well despite the snow gradually reducing the length of the tent as it drifted several feet deep. Richard had a strange sounding dream about being hunted by a herd of pink pigs in a wood. I don't know if this has any significance. In the morning the wind was so strong that taking the tent down was very tricky but, fortified with porridge, we managed it.

Climbing up the col into the wind and snow it quickly became clear that we needed to lose height. At one point the visibility was so bad and the snow so thick that the only think I could see was my own body. Everything up, down and to each side was white. Using the GPS and Richard's amazing sense of direction we identified the edge we had followed on Saturday and an hour later we reached it.

We were blown drunkenly off our feet several times but eventually saw the upper parts of the ski lifts. Following these we finally dragged ourselves into the cafe for hot chocolate, carbohydrates and beer.

We caught the bus down to Aviemore and checked into the Cairngorm Hotel. The food and the service were excellent and I have never see so many antlers in my life. We spent Monday walking up on the moors before hitting the journey back - which was also excellent.

All in all we saw Roe Deer, Red Deer, Ptarmigan, Red Grouse and Snow Bunting - as well as this odd fungus...

Ben Nevis

Bright and early on a Friday morning, we all gathered at various points around Oxford waiting to catch the Bus to Heathrow. I say all, but two of us were missing - Duncan (our driver once we got to Scotland) had, in a moment of inspired genius realised that car hire companies tend to insist you have a driving licence with you to show them, rather than to just take your word you had one so had gone home to collect his. Gary was just late and came jogging over the horizon mere seconds before the bus appeared.

The journey to Heathrow itself was uneventful, so after piling off the bus we made our way to the wrong check in queue where we waited patiently (patiently? Matt?) in line for a flight that wasn't ours before being pointed in the direction of the right queue for us to stand patiently in. As we headed for the baggage check we discovered we were behind none other than Mr Bob Geldof, who showed what a true professional he is by remaining oblivious to our pointing, staring and childish giggling.

After a flight which lived up to none of my expectations of ending early in a ball of flames or terror filled plummet, we arrived at Glasgow. Despatching Duncan and Sarah to see if their charm could get our car early proved not to be the strategic success we hoped for so with an hour to kill we headed for Starbucks and invested a not inconsiderable sum in large skinny steamed milk lattes with hazlenut syrup.

Duncan clambered into the driving seat of his formula one car and the rest of settled into the back of the people carrier we had hired as our transport to Fort William. The journey took us through beautiful scenery, an experience which closet phone geek Gary was kind enough to share with others via text message. Eventually our participation in Duncan's race driver fantasies came to an end and we arrived at our hostel in one piece. A quick wash, a quick change, a quick announcement from Duncan that he was leaving Blackwells and we were out the door and in the pub for 'grub and grog'. At around six thirty pm (ok, so maybe a bit later….) Sarah and Emily decided it was past their bedtime and headed back to the hostel where the rest of us joined them later for some Sex in the City. (Steady this is a family website. Ed.)

We awoke to find that Emily had been eaten by her duvet during the night! After a dramatic rescue, we all headed off for some food of our own and sought out a full Scottish Breakfast an apparently easy task that turned out to be a lot harder than expected - but eventually we found a hotel to load up on grease in. This done we drove - after a heated debate lead by the Pedestrian faction of our group against this decision - to the foot of Ben Nevis. (After the complicated manoeuvres required to extricate our vehicle from the tiny hotel car park…).

The weather gods were once again smiling on us, and despite all the dire warnings we had received predicting atrocious Scottish weather, the sun was almost out, the air was cool, not a rain cloud in sight…Perfect walking weather in fact. Our progress was good and we all made it up in reasonable time - I even managed it without medical assistance, which was a bonus. At the top, we admired the view - what there was of it - and ate our packed lunches as we shivered in the snow. To a chorus of mobile phone rings - damn them all - we began our descent.

It was at this point that we spotted the escapee from the local loony bin. A man with exceedingly leathery skin running (yes, running!) his way up the mountain, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and a smile. Something for us all to strive towards…

The last hour of the journey was painful to say the least, but the sense of achievement and pride kept us going. (Well, that and the thought of all the beer that was waiting at the bottom.)

After showers and a change of clothes, we walked, limped, hobbled and very nearly crawled to The Ben Nevis for celebratory drinks and food. For some reason we seemed to amuse the locals (who I think thought the boys were gay) that shared the bar with us as we celebrated for as long as we could manage before dragging ourselves back to the hotel and the joy of Gary's tight white pant's. (That is your last warning. Ed.)

Rachel 'has anyone seen my new car' Chandler

Alps season two

The 2003 trip was to start with small climbs such as the Aiguille du Tour (Graded F) and work up to the SE ridge of the Tour Ronde (PD), possibly a longer traverse from the Torino refuge and perhaps Jungfrau (Graded PD+). The team was varying combinations of me, Matthew, James and Carl (Carl and James were doing a course with Icicle Mountaineering during the first week).

Sadly, most of our plans were undone by nature. The attempt on the Aiguille de Argentiere started off promisingly enough with an 8km morning walk along the valley from Chamonix and lunch in a sort of rock bar. The aim was to spend the afternoon gaining a couple of thousand metres and, if possible, to reach the Argentiere hut by nightfall. Initially we made pretty good progress although Matt, who had been very spritely in the morning, began to slow up a bit. We cleared the tree line and the ski lodges and things started to get a bit more wild.

The glacier had retreated and the route was totally unmarked in places. I wasted a little time on climbing an unprotected route before Matt spotted a marker going in a totally different direction. He "didn't think [the route I had been climbing] was that steep" largely because he wasn't the one climbing it. However, he was the one dodging the enormous rock which, I dislodged and which squashed my rucksack, snapped my ice axe in half and sprayed a rather good scotch all over the place.

Sadly for us night fell early because of a heavy bank of thick cloud coming in from Italy and we were forced to break out the bivvy bags about 2km short of the hut. This was the first time we had used the bags and we were not impressed. By dawn we were soaked and and freezing. What was worse, the weather showed no sign of lifting, and reluctantly I agreed to turn back. Alps one - us nil.

The Tour Noir and Mont Blanc du Tacul were out of condition because of the damage caused by a hot year with little snow and the final assault on Tour Ronde was stopped in its tracks by a 100kph wind coming in from Italy. Apart from a few minor, fairly untaxing, routes the two weeks were a bit of a wash out.

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.

MOUNT BLANC DAYS TWO AND THREE: "DON'T MIND US MR GUIDE"

Prima facie Day Two was spoiled by a late start and the bad ice conditions that go with a warm day. However, I suspect that it was more of a question of guts - or lack of them. Neither of us was feeling particularly confident to start with and taking a short fall down a polished ice slope certainly didn't do my confidence any good ("thanks for the arrest Nick"). Consequently, after failing to find a way past the séracs from the valley below we climbed back to the hut and announced that we would be staying for a further evening. We used the warm summer sun to get some washing done and allow our various wounds to dry out. I had sustained a quite hideous bruise to my hip that traversed all the colours of the rainbow but favoured blackish blues and blood-tinged purples. Both Nick and I fairly cut up hands although I suspect that his out-did mine for sheer bloodiness.
During the evening we surveyed out fellow climbers and came up with a dastardly plan. A Chamonix mountain guide was leading a family party of two teenage children and four adults up the mountain. We figured that a) we could keep up with and then lose a slow party such as this and b) if we waited for them to leave we could use our unpaid-for guide to show us the unmarked way across the lateral moraine. This is deeply unethical behaviour but, safety being our new maxim, we woke early we loitered suspiciously over our rye bread.
NB It might be noted at this point that Harris has never been known as an early riser. Indeed he is little more that a brown hair's breadth from being known as Cadaverously-Brown. He may claim that his sleep is the "sleep of the just" but I know from personal experience that his snoring sounds suspiciously like the moaning of souls crossing the Styx on the Birkenhead Ferry. He may sleep through the hooting braying and wailing, but only the deaf and the distant may join him. It is relevant to note that I had thus far chosen to sleep without ear-protection in order that I might hear my alarm and get us moving at the required time.
DAY THREE
Allowing the guided party a discreet lead we followed them down the steep path from the Refuge. We crossed the moraine and descended towards a distant point where a white patch of new snow snaked between the rocks to our right and the field of séracs to our left. It looked fairly straightforward but as we came closer we began to realise the size of the features we had seen from over a kilometre away. Tiny cracks resolved themselves into enormous crevasses and a patch of bare ice gradually became a long smooth convex saucer of ice set at about 50° and emptying, at its bottom lip, into a large black hole where two ice-sheets met. The guided party had a significant advantage here. They could belay a climber from top and bottom while we, being a party of two, would have little chance of arresting a fall from below if the leader fell high on the bulge. We watched the guide cut small steps then skilfully (if not cheerfully) pick his way up. When he reached the top of the smooth ice he fitted a double ice-screw anchor and shouted his party past him one by one. He then removed the anchor and followed them over the brow of the hill and onto the snowfield above. After a short time they were gone and we were once again alone. There was nothing left to do but to follow the guide's line with as much caution as possible. Moving off over the ice I attempted to ignore the gaping black maw of the crevasse and to focus on the ice in front of me. Being basically unprotected (I would have vanished 30ft into the hole before running out of rope) I began by cutting fairly large (OK they were huge) steps and kicking the front points of my crampons hard into the ice. As I got a rhythm going I began to cut smaller and more efficient steps and to move more fluidly. One firm downward stroke, followed by a sweep with the adze, to remove the ice debris, created a passable step. Reaching the top I planted my axe as far into the ice as I could and wrapping the rope round the axe head I took a belay stance for Nick. Before long he joined me and we walked up the rise towards the snowfield above.
Having lost an element of confidence in Nick's navigation skills I had spent several hours the evening before taking careful compass and distance readings and I determined to put my knowledge into effect. As it happened the 8.5 kilometres from the top of the séracs to the Cosmique Refuge (which give an increase in altitude of 1000m) were not very challenging. The landscape was however, quite beautiful. The sky was a piercing blue and the white peaks all around were truly stunning. We stopped for photographs in the valley leading towards the Cosmique and by 11:30 we were removing our crampons at the door. On arrival we were told that Chris had phoned to tell us that he was OK but would not be joining us, by 12:30 we were both fast asleep. At 6pm we were served an excellent meal of soup, lamb kebabs and chocolate mousse. The view from our dining room was however a little sobering. To my right was the Aiguilles de Midi, to my left was the blank white face of Mont Blanc du Tacul. From where we were it looked little less than vertical with a sickening looking snow bulge about three quarters of the way up.

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!

The Mont Blanc Traverse

Mont Blanc is popularly regarded as the highest mountain in Europe.In actual fact it is actually only the highest mountain in Western Europe (Elbrus in the former USSR being in fact the biggest). It was this degree of fame that attracted us to climb it. I don't recall whose idea it was to have a go at it but no doubt the origins of the idea lie in the bottom of some long forgotten beer glass somewhere.
The plan for the ascent had gone through several variations, which ranged from the fanciful to the mundane. I had been in favour of some insane route, which, in retrospect, I wouldn't have had a cat in hell's chance of pulling off. Nick was in favour of the ordinary snow route via the Gouter hut. We compromised on a training climb on Gran Paradiso (the highest mountain within Italy) and the Mont Blanc Traverse. This route, took in Mont Blanc du Tacul and Mont Maudit as well as the main Mont Blanc summit and was to be completed in a purist way. In other words we would walk all the way from the valley rather that catching a cable car all the way to the Cosmique hut. The day-by-day account of the climb shows how this decision nearly proved very costly.