Frendo II

'On the heights of truth one never climbs in vain.' - WH Murray.

Lying on my back as comfortably as possible on the gently inclined granite pebbles of the bivouac ledge, the warm bivvy bag drawn tight around my face, I watched the crystal stars that hung still and silent above the Aiguilles like a frozen magic spell. Occasionally, in the recesses of space, a shooting star punctuated this astronomer's canvas with a flying trail of sparks. Far below us, beneath the pale sweep of the furrowed ice slopes and the invisible glacier of the Plan, the sodium lights of the Chamonix Valley glowed like coals in some great winter hearth.

The day before, which now seemed a world away, we had climbed the south face of the Aiguille du Midi via the short Gaston Rebuffat route on the Eperon des Cosmiques (TD, 120m), finishing up a deserted Arete des Cosmiques (AD). I had suggested this to Rob over the summer, mainly because of my wish to start climbing Rebuffat's routes, and my desire to finally sample some famous Chamonix granite for real, after over-absorbing so many articles, and seeing so many images - always with the Tacul in the background and the sparkling brown rock rearing up against a flawless deep blue skyline. Overcrowded in the summer months, the Midi's south face is only partially frustrating in September as the alpine clubs persist in taking first-timers for their first ever 'space walk' along the exposed but easy snow ridge that rolls gently out from the Midi telepherique station like a living-room carpet, the only problem being the unobstructed view down to Chamonix some three vertical kilometres below (but what a view it is!).

1. Bivouacs, I thought, couldn't get any better than this!

On my second alpine climb in Turkey, three years ago, I had endured a terrible October night below the east face of Mount Erciyes (3,916m), shivering in a tent with Mehmet and Mehmet of the Elbistan Dagcilik Kulubu (http://www.edaku.com/) in the same temperatures, wearing only summer hiking clothes, but with the additional factor that Mehmet (not Mehmet), having fallen asleep immediately upon hitting the karrimat, snored incessantly and loudly for the entire night. From the other tent Hakan, who last year summited Peak Lenin (7,134m) wearing my famous 'puffer', started to throw stones onto our tent canvas. Mehmet's snoring immediately ceased as the first missiles struck, and this was followed by incredulous laughter from the neighbouring tent. Hakan's 'Nasil uyuyorlar abi?' ('How can they sleep?') drifted across the campsite, followed by 'valla bilmiyorum' ('God only knows') from Nedim (being canny mountaineers, they had mastered the sleeping arrangements in the car park hours ago); to which I practically shouted 'Ben uyamiyorumki!' ('I can't sleep!') and then the whole campsite exploded with laughter that echoed around the huge volcanic crater. Seconds later, an untroubled Mehmet began to snore again with added ferocity to my left. For a while Hakan continued to throw stones, then gave up as the beastly noises resumed. I shivered in my thin sleeping bag and at the crack of dawn around 5am, lunged desperately out of the tent to gear up into crampons, only to find that Hakan had decided to have a lie in until seven and wait for the snow to soften.

In comparison to Erciyes, our night on the Frendo passed in a cold tranquility. Rob, who was awake for a while melting more industrial quantities of snow and swapping layers of clothing, claimed to have seen a hooded figure roaming the ledge during the night, but I slept untroubled by such apparitions, in the warm sarcophagus of my bags like an alpine Tutankamun.

To be continued……

Frendo Spur (D+ / III 4 1200m) North Face Aiguille du Midi

John at the Plan en route to the Midi North Face

Early section of the Frendo Spur

Aiguille du Midi North Face