We arrived in Chamonix late afternoon and, much to Mike's annoyance, we didn't have time for a coffee before heading straight up the Aiguille du Midi lift. This was pretty keen as it wasn't the best weather. Eventually we got a bed at the Tornio Hut and walked out in to even worse weather the next morning. In a short clearing in the cloud and snow we nipped up to the non-existent Trident Bivvi Hut. Slightly disgruntled at the advice we had received from the Mountain Office in Chamonix, that this hut existed, we came up with a plan B as the hut was definitely not there anymore! Descending down to the Brenva Glacier we then climbed back to the Col de la Fourche Hut. Because of its amazing situation and strategic placement for number of big committing routes on the Italian side of Mont Blanc this hut can be a real bun fight. Not today though - the advantage of climbing in bad weather is that there are no queues!

Next morning we climbed the easy & pleasant north face of the Tour Ronde which took no time at all with perfect snow ice. The next part of our proposed 'enchainement' however proved an entirely different level of challenge. Attempting to traverse the Trident Ridge directly back to the Hut proved fairly epic and a massive drain on energy resources with much descent and re-ascent on a hot day. We should have descended the Gervasutti Couloir and climbed back up to the Hut that way but hindsight is an alpinist’s luxury.

Mont Maudit's Frontier Ridge behind the Col de la Fourch Bivouac Hut, Chamonix

We finally arrived back at the hut like a couple of de-hydrated zombies and spent two and a half hours slowly melting snow and sipping tepid water with the only sound being the vaguely comforting dull roar of the stove. I eventually broke the peace by announcing that I felt almost human again.

The meteo for the next day included ‘orages’. We weren’t quite sure what that meant but we’d had enough schlapping about in bad weather and got up so early and moved so fast on the Frontier Ridge that we nearly beat the dawn to the summit of Mont Maudit.

After a day off monging and chatting up the Dutch girls on the campsite in Argentiere we returned up the Midi and climbed the Contamine Mazeau on the Triangle du Tacul. More good ice and we were romping up to the summit of the Tacul and back in the valley early for planning the next route.

An overly leisurely start next morning saw us starting up the steep rock of the Gervasutti Pillar. Superb granite rock climbing. At the top of the pillar proper the route deviates off right and onto the north face (well, that’s the way we went anyway).

‘Awful, wet, snowy, icy mixed ground...climbed in rock boots!’

Eventually we donned winter climbing gear and actually enjoyed an icy mixed chimney before the loose and unpleasant exit via the upper Supercouloir. Here it starts getting dark; then dark and misty; then dark, misty, windy and snowy and at around midnight we finally find a ledge to sit down on for the night. Getting our bivvi gear out doesn’t take long as we only have one orange plastic bivvi sac between us. The shivering is broken intermittently by chuckling at our ineffective attempts to get 4 plastic boots, 4 legs and, ideally, 2 bums in to the rapidly disintegrating sweaty plastic bag.

Gervasutti Pillar, 800m,TD. East Face Mont Blanc du Tacul, Chamonix

Determined not to watch the clock all night we were a bit nonplussed to see, through a brief swirling clearance in the cloud, a procession of head torches leaving the Cosmiques Hut. This told us that, far from dawn it would be more like 0130 and a good 4 hours or so of solid shivering remained until dawn. It is definitely just before dawn that the screws are turned on the alpine bivvi team and as a gesture of defiance to the increasingly prolific shivering we belted out some tuneless but resounding songs.

Dawn heard us creaking in to action and after 2 pitches of easy mixed ground it started snowing heavily. Fairly concerned about the rock pitch of V still to come we pressed on now with the feeling of ‘escaping up the route’. Fortunately the now snowed up rock pitch was well cracked and reminded us of our many tough winter forays in to the Northern Corries of the Cairngorms (Scottish Highlands).

The summit of Mt Blanc du Tacul arrived in a blast of snow, clag and wind and we groped to find a track to negotiate the descent route. Just as we started failing to do this an apparition of a troop of Polish army soldiers arrived looking for the summit. We briefly looked at each other probably all thinking that the others were mental before diving in to each other’s tracks and blasting off before they blew in.

The last one and a half days of the trip came with a decent forecast and wanting to make the most of our final alpine fling before a summer of rain and midges in the Scottish Highlands we took part in the traditional alpinist ritual of laying our kit out on the grassy slopes of Argentiere’s ‘Les Chosalet’ campsite.

Partly based on the campsite grapevine, partly on guess work and mainly because the gorgeous Dutch girls would be there, we headed up to the Albert Premier Hut. After tea and craic with some British Mountain Guides running a Jonathan Conville course we crossed the Col du Tour and settled in to a bothy bag for dinner under the North Face of the Aiguille d’Argentiere.

We planned to climb the Messner Route and by 2330 we started shivering again so, despite the glacier not being frozen, we started climbing just to warm up. Moving together up a quite steep couloir Mike reached the base of an icy runnel we had spied from below. We hoped it was the right one as there were many similar features but only one linked to the main ice field above.

Mike committed to the runnel and seemed to me to be taking ages. I shouted something unhelpful up through the dark and then, when I reached the same spot, marvelled at how hard it was and actually how swift he had been. Not for the first time I re-learnt that letting Mike get on with things was usually the best policy and restraining my tendency to interfere was generally a good thing. It was the right runnel but conditions were poor with steep aerated snow and no runners. We swung leads teetering up this before the relative relief of the main ice fields arrived. These led to the summit ridge which led strenuously and hot and botheredly to the fine, deserted, cold and windy summit of the Argentiere.

We chuckled at the mantra of the alpinist.....’It’s too hot, too cold....this is brutal, well dodgy....this is brilliant!’

After a hot schlapp back to the Argentiere campsite we persuaded the Dutch Girls to come to the Stone Bar with us. To our surprise they actually did and we stayed out and celebrated our tough alpine holiday. Returning late in the night in monsoon alpine rain we realised that we’d left out down jackets, the stereos and all the guide books. My copy of Gaston Rebuffat’s ‘100 finest routes in the Mont Blanc massif’ has never been the same again, but at least I had a few more entries in it.

Next day we started the long drive North in the pouring rain.

Sunset over Les Drus and the Chamonix Valley

Chamonix Mountaineering Gallery

Gavin enjoying the snowy Mixed conditions on the Cosmiques Arete, Chamonix

Dent du Geant Abseil

Les Drus North Face

Mountaineering in Chamonix

Chamonix. The capital of world mountaineering. 'The Valley of Dreams'. A mecca for climbers and mountaineers who come from all over the world to sample the quality and variety of alpine mountainering available... more>