Summit Mont Blanc

“But what rubbish! Fifteen minutes along the summit ridge and I found myself on the broad summit Mont Blanc and feeling about as happy as I’d ever felt about anything. The view was unbelievable, the sharp peaks and ‘aiguilles’ of the Mont Blanc massif rising out of a sea of low cloud that obscured the lower valley’s and plains. I couldn’t stop smiling, and shook hands with the other climbers coming up behind me, even though we had never spoken before.”

“After the refuge there are several humps to cross, where I passed a lot of tiring groups, before reaching the small ridge to the summit. As summit ridges go, it was still a fairly generous size, but as to be expected for the highest mountain on this part of the continent, the drop off on either side of the ridge went a very, very long way down through crevasses, bluffs and other death traps. Not for the first time in my climbing career, I found myself regretting the decisions that had put me in that place at that time, and promising that if I got through it all alive, I would be happy to call an end to my alpine career.”

“It is a pretty daunting moment, getting out of your tent at 1 am, by yourself, to climb an unfamiliar mountain in a foreign country. It was helped by the fact that more than a hundred climbers and guides were walking past my tent in small groups on their own ascents. I simply fell in behind the next party to pass, and joined the train of climbers.”