This trip began in Saint Gervais where we took the tramway up to the Nid d’Aigle at 2,380m (almost 1500m lower than where the cable car had dropped us last time). This meant a really hard first day climbing to our bivouac spot, which we decided would be somewhere above the Gouter refuge (where we would stop for a bowl of hot chocolate).
The tram was very civilised; it’s the highest rack and pinion train in France and travels up the steepest track. Work began on it in 1904 with the intention of building a terminus at the top of Mont Blanc!
Without the luxury of staying in the refuge we had the extra weight of our bivouac kit, stove and food. This meant carrying almost 15kgs more than last time. Not nice! At 2,380m there is no snow, the first 1000 vertical metres would mostly be a scree and rock scramble, ideal to do in trainers not so much fun wearing your plastic climbing boots. As we were keeping weight to a minimum though we didn’t have our trainers, it was plastic boots all the way.
A few hours in and roughly half way up to the Gouter refuge, just after crossing a glacier, the route got very steep. The final 800 vertical metres were not going to be easy. I was really surprised. I had no idea that it was going to be so steep and such a climb. It was literally vertical and you needed both hands and feet to get up the rock face. I was feeling quite venerable there was the obvious worry that this was steep and difficult - one foot misplaced and you were off the rock and added to this there was the danger of rock fall. We had our helmets on because huge rocks and boulders just come crashing down the face with no or little warning.
We reached the hut in just over five hours which was a very respectable time and we were both feeling great. We took an hour to rest and drink hot chocolate (I can’t tell you how good that was!) and then headed out to find our bivouac spot. We had intended to camp out just near the hut but as we were feeling so good we thought we’d climb a little higher. We were now walking in snow and it was getting dark. Roped together and wearing crampons we navigated our way around several crevasses and decided we should stop sooner rather than later. As it began to snow and get even darker we really needed to find a flat and safe place to camp. It was 9pm and 4,300m by the time we actually reached the next suitable place. It was minus 25’c but because we had been walking we hadn’t felt the cold, my hair was actually frozen!
Using our ice axes we dug a shallow hole to lay our bivouac bags in. Bivouac is a very simple concept and quite a groovy thing to do. You take a Thermarest or a mat, your sleeping bag, put them inside a bivouac bag and get in! It’s quite restricting and can feel a little bit claustrophobic but it keeps you warm and dry. I was getting cold so I was in my bag in record time.
Irwyn put the stove on and made a cup of tea accompanied by fruit cake; it was heavenly! We had pasta for dinner which would have been delicious had we not forgotten the pesto to go with it. I tried to be creative but with the choice of sauce being condensed milk, fruit cake or toothpaste there was little to be creative with. Plain pasta it was followed by chocolate and more tea!
It was now 11pm. I had come from sea-level that morning to 4,300m, had just had a huge intake of sugar and was outside in a restricting bag on snow and ice at -25’c of course I couldn’t sleep!
Irwyn had much the same problem and as we lay there, wide awake, looking at the bright stars in the clear sky we both knew that everything was looking good for a summit attempt and possibly, if the wind stayed light, we would make the flight from the top too. I was very quietly very excited.
I did get some sleep but accompanied by sleep apnea it wasn’t very pleasant. I kept waking up desperately gasping for air with my heart racing. One of the many joys of high altitude! It wasn’t a long night though. We were up at 3am making breakfast (more hot tea and waffle biscuits). The sky was still perfectly clear, there was no wind and it was looking perfect.
In the time it took for me to get out of my sleeping bag and put some extra clothes on, clouds appeared and suddenly the bright stars and clear sky were no more. This wasn’t good. However we knew that as quickly as the bad weather comes in it can go again.
We set off for the summit around 4am. It was dark and cold and there were no tracks as it had been snowing. In the distance behind us people were coming up from the hut. Having climbed 2000 vertical metres the day before, having had very little sleep outside at such high altitude and now trying to climb in bad weather I was beginning to feel the strain. We were on a steep face, the snow had settled and beneath it was hard ice. Roped together, with our crampons on and using our ice axes we were making good progress upwards until I slipped. As I fell down the mountain I didn’t panic. I was thinking “I’ve just fallen off, I need to arrest myself and stop” (this means digging my ice axe into the ice and stopping the fall). I managed to stop myself but unfortunately I also managed to pull Irwyn off too. He was on the other end of the rope so as I had fallen, even though Irwyn had had the presence of mind to stab his axe into the ice and wrap the rope around it, the force of my fall had pulled the axe out of the ground and also Irwyn off the mountain backwards. So even though I had stopped Irwyn falling past me at speed pulled me off again. It’s times like this I do believe that somebody is smiling down on me. As we both fell down towards a huge great crevasse below we both managed to stop ourselves.
The next few moments were quite surreal. I just lay face down in the snow, my ice axe dug into the ice, my heart racing, breathing quite rapidly and said to Irwyn “sorry about that!”.
He was amazing. He very calmly said, ”let’s wait a while until it gets lighter and then move on slowly”. By now the people behind us were catching up and the route was becoming clearer. There was no change in the weather though it was getting worse. Several teams were turning around abandoning their summit attempt and at 4,500m I’d had enough too. It was possible that we would make the summit but there was no way it was flyable. Sometimes on mountains the best thing to do is turn around. It’s often not easy when you’re so close to the top but Irwyn and I agreed that it was the safest thing to do and actually, all things considered, we’d done very well indeed and getting down safely was a priority. This was the second time I’ve turned back on a mountain from a summit attempt.
Going down was just as hard as going up; it was still very steep, we were still on snow and ice, there were still crevasses to navigate and the weather was still bad. I was less than impressed! As I stumbled towards the Gouter hut I was thinking “Why do I do this? I’m so tired and cold and I don’t want to put one foot in front of the other anymore, I want to be down off this mountain and in a warm shower. I’m not coming back up here.”
Arriving at the hut and getting a warm bowl of tea made me feel a lot happier though the thought of the climb down from the hut filled me with dread. Every cloud has a silver lining though! We were now 1000m lower, the weather was improving and it was looking like we could fly down from the hut. This was excellent news. Not only would I get another practice flight on snow at altitude, it would only take 25mins to get down instead of 5hrs. This was good but I was still terrified! As I laid my wing out on the edge of the mountain I was so desperate for this whole ordeal to be over. For now though I needed to focus. I had to launch my wing, fly down, land safely and then I could relax.
Thankfully I had a good take off. As I flew out over Chamonix and around the mountain in the direction of Saint Gervais I began to get worried about the landing.
It would be my second landing in crampons but in a place I had never landed before. I had hoped that Irwyn would get down before me and I could follow his landing path but it wasn’t to be. The Ozone Ultralight wing that I was on is wonderful especially at coming down; I would be landing first. As I came into land having assessed the conditions, like which direction to land in and all the other things to take into consideration (motorway, river, power lines), I was horrified that the air became very bumpy. At about 50ft above the ground the wind was in a totally different direction to the wind I had come flying down through. So despite thinking it would be a good landing I landed closer to the edge of the field than I had planned, at high speed, yet again stopping dead as my crampons hit the floor! However, I wasn’t on the motorway, in the river or attached to a power line and I was absolutely fine…. Phew.
Irwyn landed minutes after me and he had the same problem ; the change in direction of wind lower to the ground caught him out slightly as well, although he managed a more stylish landing!
It wasn’t until then that the reality of that day hit home. Hours earlier I’d fallen off the side of Mont Blanc and I’d pulled Irwyn off too. I could have killed myself. I could have killed Irwyn. It was a sobering few minutes.
Not wanting to dwell though, we laughed about it and decided that next time we wouldn’t camp at such a high altitude and we’d remember to bring sauce for the pasta.
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