Trip Members.

Alan ( myself ), Shaun, Karl, Paul, Ben, Graham and last but not least the Mad Kiwi, Shane from Wellington.

Guides.

Nicolas and John, local French guys ( very good and very, very funny !) who were with us all week.

Alan and "Cube", English and Scotch respectively who joined us for the Friday and Saturday section of the trip.

Main Base.

Hotel Richemond, 228 Rue Docteur Paccard, 74400 Chamonix.

Mountain Refuges.

Refuge Albert Premier, Alt. 2702 Mts. ( used ).

Cabane du Trient, Alt.3170 Mts ( used ).

Refuge des Cosmiques Alt.3613Mts ( not used ).

Airlines.

Swiss Airways. ..Scheduled flights Manchester - Zurich - Geneva, Geneva - Basle - Manchester.

TRIP REPORT.

Day 1. ( Sunday )

Sunday 4th August, all set for the off, Myself , Shaun and Karl met at Manchester airport at 04:30, nice and early for check-in and our flight at 06:25 bound for Geneva via Zurich. The flight over to Zurich was, as you can imagine, pretty straight-forward as you would imagine, however a funny thing happened at Zurich ( did I say funny ? ) as we were waiting to depart the plane I was watching the baggage being unloaded, was my kit bag there ?, surely it was, I probably just didnt see it. We transferred to the Geneva flight and carried on with our onward journey. On arrival at Geneva ( still with an uneasy feeling ) we went to the baggage carousel to collect our kit. Shaun and Karls kit came around pretty quickly, whilst I stood there humming that famous Diana Ross song "And I'm still waiting ", after 20 mins or so my worst fears were confirmed, no kit.

..............................................................Manchester, you suck !

I must admit to feeling a tad angry at this point, anyway I reported the loss to the Swiss baggage office, fortunately the guy dealing with my report had the good grace not to smile as I explained that all my climbing kit had gone astray ( I feel ( at the time ) that if he had smiled I would probably have ended up being deported and shipped out on the next available plane ! ).

Gripe over and on with the story.

We met up with the Heathrow flight members, Paul and Ben ( who we have spent time with in the Cairngorms ) and Graham joined us as we waited for our transfer to arrive to take us to our hotel in Chamonix where we met the last team member, Shane.

At the hotel the trip organiser Sandy Allan and our main guide for the week Nicolas met us to talk us through our itinerary, after telling Sandy of my predicament concerning my kit situation he very kindly lent me enough of his own gear to get me through till my own stuff arrived ( bear in mind all I had was what I was stood up in ), I must add at this point that tracking down my kit was pretty fast and efficient, it arrived at the hotel on Thursday 8th Aug, not bad eh ?.

Day 2. ( Monday )

After a hearty breakfast and a good nights sleep we all set off to join Nicolas and John for the ride on the Montenvers rack and pinion railway train ( 13 Euros return ) that would take us up the mountain to the Mer de Glace, a 20 minute ride away. The "Mer de Glace" is the largest glacier in France, it has an estimated surface area of 40 Sq.Kms is 7Km long and is 200Mts thick. On arrival at the top station we headed off down the path to the ladders that would lead us down to the glacier, for anyone who has never seen these ladders please clear your minds of 2 and 3 section aluminium type things, these ladders are steel, set into the rock and descend for 150 feet !. At the bottom we crossed from the rock to the ice and put on our crampons and headed on up the glacier ( our playground for the rest of the day ). We had a little walk around getting used to the crampons again on varying degrees of slope, crossing some of the smaller crevasses and making our way along inside the crevasses with our feet on either wall ( never done this in Scotland ! ). Once Nicolas and John were happy that we were comfortable moving on the ice we had a spot of lunch, the baguette style sandwiches were excellent and really hit the mark. After lunch we used the ice screws and ropes to asbseil down into some of the larger crevasses and had some fun ice climbing, sometimes with the technical axes and other times using just one walking type axe, using the one axe really tested your balance on the ice walls as when you removed the axe ready for another placement the only thing defying gravity and quick trip to the bottom were the front points of the crampons embedded into the ice. I feel I should mention at this point the french sense of humour, especially Johns, twice whilst I was being lowered into a crevasse by John the rest of the group were chatting and he would stop my descent leaving me hanging about on the end of the rope while he seemed to be listening to the conversation, after lulling me into a false sense of security and I started to look around the crevasse he would suddenly release an inch or so of rope, the first time he did it bicycle clips were nearly called for ( for anyone not familiar with this phrase, I nearly S**t myself ) when I looked up he was grinning from ear to ear, forewarned is forearmed so they say and the next time he did it I simply grinned back up at him, brave or what !. On another occasion I was descending when Nicolas shouted down to me " Alan, I hold your life in my teeth ", sure enough the French humour had surfaced again, on looking up Nicolas had the rope holding me between his teeth, I shouted back " Don't chew ! ". If any of this sounds dangerous don't worry, everyone one of us had complete faith in both of them, we even found ourselves splitting our sides laughing at one of Nicolas jokes, it was really funny. Afterwards I asked around if anyone actually understood the joke he told, no-one had a clue what he was talking about but said it was funny anyway, weird. After a cracking day on the glacier we headed back to the ladders for our ascent back to the station and our return trip to the hotel in Chamonix.

Day 3. ( Tuesday )

This was the start of our three day circuit to aid our acclimatization ready for an attempt on the Mont Blanc, it had been snowing overnight at around 2,500 mts, and the forecast was not looking good for our time in the mountains. We left the hotel and caught the bus to La Tour, if you have a Carte D'hote card from your hotel bus travel is free in the valley. On arrival at the telepherique we were met by Nicolas who started to distribute amongst us the food supplies we would need for the next three days. Loaded with our rations we set off via the cable car and the ski lift on route to the refuge, Albert Premier hut. As we disembarked from the ski lift we walked a short distance to a large slab of flat rock and had a huge picnic before starting to follow the trail to the hut. Walking along the trail we rounded a corner and marvelled at the Seracs on the edge of the Glacier du Tour, not being used to walking in this type of terrain the sight was truly awesome. The views around us were somewhat limited due to the weather but even now we were beginning to understand the scale and magnitude of our surroundings, were we up to the undertaking we had set ourselves, we were about to find out. After about a 1 hour 45 min walk we arrived at the mountain hut, after removing our boots and changing into hut shoes that are provided we then put our sacks into the lockers downstairs. The plan had been to get here and make ourselves a brew then go out onto the glacier and practice moving around on the glacier whilst roped up, the snow outside put paid to that idea so we spent a couple of hours practicing tying knots, eyes open and eyes shut, and Nicolas and John explained the best distances for roping together and the reasons for this, later in the week we would see some people walking with extraordinary lengths of rope between them, personal preference I suppose but I think I will stick with the advice given by our trusty guides. After our evening meal and a discussion about the kick off time in the morning, 06:00 was time set for dragging ourselves out of our beds, we all retired to our bunks for the night and wondered what tommorrows weather would bring, not to mention a a bit of apprehension about crossing the glaciers.

Day 4. ( Wednesday )

A strange thing happened this morning, most of the group didn't manage much sleep and were awake when someone ( who we presumed was Nicolas ) entered the dorm, shone a headlamp along our row of bunks, informed us that it was 05:00 and then dissapeared. We thought the plan had changed, dove out of our bunks pulling our gear on with the aid of our headlamps, at the same time trying not to disturb anyone else in the room, and made our way to the dining area for breakfast. No sign of Nicolas or John ?, strange we thought, where were they ?, with nothing else to do we sat about until Nicolas finally showed up rubbing his eyes at around 05:55, he asked why we were all up so early, we all looked at each other and said that he had been in our room and awakened us, hadn't he ?, Non, non, non, not me he said, we never found out who the mystery man was !.

We left the hut after breakfast and were greeted by snow and poor visibility once again, the plan was to cross the glacier heading for the Col Superior du Tour and then attempt a climb on the Tete Blanch, we would have to see how the weather conditions were at the col, it wasn't looking too promising at the moment. We put on our crampons and roped up at the edge of the glacier and started to make our way across, we had only gone a couple of hundred yards when Nicolas left us with John, saying he would be back with us in a minute or so, with the visibility as it was he soon dissapeared from view. Shortly afterwards I heard laughing coming from behind, just as I was about to turn around Nicolas passed me shouting "Bonjuer", he had taken an umbrella from his pack and was walking along with a big smile on his face !. It put me in mind of Nicholas Crane and his travels, he goes everywhere with his trusty umbrella, but it was the last thing I expected to see on this trip !.

After a long pretty much uneventful climb skirting the larger crevasses and crossing the smaller ones via snow bridges we arrived at the Col Superior where we stopped for a chocolate bar and drink of water. New plans were made, the weather was making an attempt on the Tete Blanch unwise, for the safety of the group the guides decided to take us exploring a crevasse instead, I remember thinking at the time, " crevasse, big crack in ice, pretty deep, what the hell where they smiling about ????". We set off downhill onto the Plateau du Trient in our two groups, mine consisted of John in the lead followed by Paul, myself and Shane bringing up the rear, we walked along gradually levelling out somewhat with John in his own style of English shouting out periodically " TIGHT ROPE , TIGHT ROPE !", we were soon to discover why he was so anxious that we obeyed his instructions, another call of "Tight rope" was promptly followed by John almost dissapearing from view as he crashed through a thin snow bridge into a crevasse, as this was the first of many occasions this day it brought us all to a heightened sense of alertness. Paul, Shane and myself came to the conclusion quite individually that if we stepped in each others tracks we would be OK, big mistake, as our cries of alarm were to bear witness, even walking in single file in each others footsteps we would drop through alternately , always dropping through at various depths, some times just one leg, sometimes both, other times just managing to throw out our arms and axes in time to avoid falling inside. Its weird but after our initial cries of panic you sort of get used to it and just get on with the job of hauling yourself out, keeping the rope tight and marching on as if nothing had just happened, God us mountain men ( and women, before anyone mails me accusing me of being sexist ) are tough !!!!!!!!!.

We arrived at the crevasse in question and had to agree that it was worth the small diversion, it was spectacular, very wide and very deep, we stood about 3 metres from the edge looking down into it as best we could, fearing to go any closer in case a cornice gave way, safe here we thought, yes, we thought !. we were about to discover the reason for the big smiles at the Col, Nicolas led his group of Ben, Karl and Shaun closer to the edge and then descended a ramp of snow and ice into the crevasse, closely followed by our group, we then descended even deeper into the crevasse, it was spectacular, awe inspiring and many other things you could think to describe it, looking around with the ice walls towering above you, you would be forgiven for thinking " if this collapsed right now, in the blink of an eye you would be gone, the only trace left would be the tracks we left leading into the chasm, and then not for long as the snow was still falling steadily and would soon be obliterated", I have always had a healthy respect for my safety in the mountains and this experience just put everything into perspective, by this time our trust in the guides Nicolas and John was unquestionable we had total faith in them. We started to head back up to the top of the crevasse when Nicolas took a different route to the one we came down, passing through a small tunnel in the ice we emerged at the opposite end of the crevasse, looming in front of us was a large opening in the ice, John enquired if anyone wanted to abseil down deeper into the crevasse, as if we were not deep enough already !. Shane jumped at the chance and I must admit I seized the opportunity with relish, as Nicolas put the ice screws into the ice wall John set up the belay and then Tally Ho ! down went Shane, would the mad Kiwi ever be seen again ? he reappeared with a huge smile on his face, my turn next, down I went, everything I had seen up to present was pale in comparison, the underground cavern was huge and very, very deep. I could probably write a hundred words to describe the experience and the emotions I felt looking around that awesome place but the best thing I could possibly say is " Go do it yourselves, have an adventure, I sure was". Sorry, got carried away a bit there, but that was the sort of place it was, Shaun and Ben had their turns next.

As we left the crevasse the snow stopped falling and the cloud base lifted, we could see the Cabane du Trient waiting for us in the distance, with the promise of a hot drink we made good headway to the hut. While we had our brew the weather turned for the worse once more, cloud base lowered, snow came, we made more tea and ate biscuits. Around 5 O,clock Nicola gathered us all together saying we were going to make the short ascent of Pnte D'Orny at the rear of the refuge, we grabbed our axes and set off scrambling up the rock to the summit at 3269 mts, where we were greeted with glorious sunshine and views in all directions, after some while soaking up the heat of the sun we downclimbed onto a large snowslope and glissaded down. Time for the evening meal and some sleep, another early start in the morning.

Day 5. ( Thursday ).

At last, a beautiful, dry, clear morning. Todays plan had been governed by the weather forecast for the next few days, a depression was forecast for Friday afternoon closely followed by another on Saturday, Mont Blanc was now looking doubtful. We left the Trient hut after breakfast, and started to traverse the plateau, our main objective for the day being the Aiguille du Tour at 3544 mts ( 11,627 ft ) the views today were stunning, the sun had not risen at this stage, yet the surrounding peaks were clearly visible and drew your eyes like magnets, the Tete Blanche was tempting but we stuck to our plan and headed directly over the plateau toward the Aiguille du Tour. As we stopped at one point to put our glacier glasses on, we saw the sun light up the Aiguille, turning around the sun was just climbing over the mountains on the horizon, where we had just seen the outline of the Matterhorn, we now saw a big orange ball rising and lighting the plateau, the snow crystals sparkling like diamonds. It was a short trek to the base of the Aiguille and there were already a number of parties getting ready to climb the mixed, rock, snow and ice approach to the summit. We dumped our sacks and started to make our way up the snow slope to the base of the rock, from here it is a straight-forward scramble to the summit, where we joined about 2 dozen others having their photos taken and just sitting anywhere they could soaking up the views. Time to leave the summit to the other climbers approaching, we descended fairly rapidly had a quick bite and a drink back at the sacks. From here we headed off toward the Col du Midi des Grands, where we made good headway on our descent onto the Glacier du Tour once more, this time we would bypass the Albert hut by staying on the glacier and traversing down until we were below the hut, once below we simply joined the main track and retraced our steps back to the ski lift. Shortly afterwards we were back at the hotel, I was longing for a hot bath, as I had used the same T-shirt for 4 days and was feeling a bit grimy to say the least. As we entered the hotel I couldn't believe my eyes, at last, my kit bag had arrived, fresh clothes and my own equipment, bliss. The lady at the counter said that the bag had arrived that very morning. The bath had still to wait, Nicolas had gone off to get the latest forecast and told us to meet in the hotel lobby in 10 minutes. He came back with bad news, the depression for Friday was deepening and Saturdays was far worse, on top of that it had put 60 / 70 cms of snow down over the last 4 days and the danger of wind slab avalanches was high, on top of that we couldn't change our booking in the Cosmiques hut from Friday to Thursday, one of our options had been to get some sleep this afternoon and go up in the telepherique to the hut tonight in the last car of the day, hopefully get a bit more sleep, some final acclimatization and make a dash for it at 01:00 Friday morning. This being ruled out left us with the only other option, that of an early start in the morning, so we arranged to be at the cable car station at 05:45 in the morning, fingers crossed that the weather would hold off longer than forecast. After Nicolas left we all headed off to our rooms and had steaming hot baths, luxury !. After the food in the huts, which was surprisingly good by the way, not what I expected at all, it was nice to sit at the table and be served excellent food and relax for a while. We all had an early night ready for the morning.

Day 6. ( Friday ).

We had arranged a 05:00 breakfast with the helpful staff at the hotel, with our kit already on, we shovelled as much food down as we could and dashed off to meet Nicolas and John, the other two guides were there waiting as well, Nicolas introduced them as Alan and "Cube", knowing Nicolas humour we were dubious of calling him "Cube" at first, fearing it may be a practical joke, but as it turned out that was hs nickname and he was quite happy with it. It started to rain as we made the introductions, it wasn't looking good. Then the announcement board lit up announcing that the first car would be delayed due to 10cms of snow having fallen. We finally got in the car at 07.20 and made our way up. In the ice tunnel that leads to the Col du Midi we had decisions to make, it was decided that it would be foolhardy to try for the Mont Blanc under the conditions, it seemed that the weather was closing in faster than forecast. We decided to split into our groups and try the Cosmiques ridge, then Karl asked a pertinent question, " How difficult is the ridge ? ", to which the reply was "Its about a grade 3 scottish winter climb, nothing to it ", at this point everyone seemed to look at each other, the time of truth, just how good were we ?. Never having done anything harder than a grade 3 scramble in the UK myself I was a bit unsettled and opted for the walking option. Nicolas would have none of it, he told me I had excellent balance and would be OK, oh heck, what was I getting myself into. Karl and Paul decided to go for a walk and Cube roped them to himself, John took Shaun and Myself, Nicolas took Ben and Shane and Alan took Graham. At this point I must mention that I had been feeling strong all week with no warning of what was about to happen to me.

We left the tunnel and headed down onto the Col, miraculously as we descended the weather started to clear and the views started to appear, we were once again above the clouds with clear blue skies all around, it was beautiful, a quick discussion and we revised our plans, we would all head for Mont Blanc du Tacul 4248 mts (13,937 ft ), way to go, lets move. Nicola and John upped the pace, I'm still feeling strong, we cross the col at 3532 mts and start to rise on the steep slopes, I start to think something isnt quite right when after about 50mts of ascent I start to weaken, it happens, I will get my second wind soon I think to myself, no such luck, I push as hard as I can but seem to be getting weaker, If you havent been in this situation it will probably be hard to understand, you know in your own mind that at home you could blast this slope off with energy to spare, but try as I might I am slowing down and robbing Shaun of any possible chance of Mont Blanc if the weather holds, time for a descision of my own, I know Graham is coming up at a slower pace with Alan so I tell John that I am going to rope in with Alan and Graham if that is OK. Roped into Alans party the pace is slower and we take short breaks which seem to help, about halfway to the summit the weather starts to turn, the cloud is rising rapidly from the valley and I develope a headache, thinking nothing of it I am concentrating on nothing else other than the summit, digging deeper than I have ever done before I finally make the summit, its snowing, no views, but with Alan,s coaxing I got here 13, 937 feet, I shake Alan,s hand and he takes a swift couple of pictures, we really need to get off the mountain, the weather is worsening all the time, for the next ten minutes or so I am on a high and we make pretty good time dropping down to the Col. Pretty soon I start to notice that the headache is getting worse and I cannot believe how bad I am feeling, my hearbeat has now moved, instead of being in my chest, it is pounding in my forehead, the last climb back to the tunnel nearly finished me off, only for Alan I would have gladly just sat down, but he kept urging, I kept digging, and finally there was the tunnel. I collapsed into the tunnel with relief, I didnt realise at that point, but Karl and Paul had hung around waiting to make sure Myself and Graham were OK, even though Paul had apparently suffered to some degree as well, and "Cube" had hung around to make sure his pal Alan got back safely, cameraderie, I should say so. Within 45 minutes of leaving the mountain I was back to normal, head clear and feeling strong again, unbelievable.

On the way down in the cable car Karl suddenly announced that he had forgotten to open his birthday card that his parents had given to him to open at the summit of Mont Blanc, due to the rush to get off the mountain it had completely slipped his mind. At dinner that night in the hotel, just as we finished our desert, all the lights went out plunging all the diners into darkness, the doors opened behind us and the waiter pushed a trolley in with a birthday cake, complete with candles, all the other diners joined in while we sang Happy Birthday ( various languages were heard!) and the owner of the hotel took a snapshot. Karl was gobsmacked, he did his best to figure out who had arranged it but couldn't, he was very pleased nonetheless. As we were settling in for the night Karl suddenly announced that he had got his dates wrong, it was his birthday tommorrow, Saturday, which made who had provided the cake even more puzzling. It turned out that it was Paul who had arranged it, he had overheard Karl mention his birthday in the cable car and thought it would be a good idea to celebrate it, what a gentleman.

We hadn't done the Mont Blanc that we set out to do at the beginning of the week but I was immensley proud of what I did acheive, I did things this week that a lot of people can only dream of doing, I am going home safely to my family and my grand-daughter and grandson, ready to train harder for another go soon, hopefully.

I think Karl and Shaun will echo these sentiments, I know Karl did things he didn't believe he was capable of, the "leap of faith" ( private joke ) being one, Shaun was possibly the most dissapointed of the three of us as he is the strongest member of our merry band and for a five minute period during a break in the clouds he thought the Mont Blanc was on and was prepared to give it a go, only to be turned back by the weather.

As "Churchill" said, " We will return "....................Hopefully without experiencing the extreme fatigue and headache of this trip !!!!!!!!!.

Day 7 ( Saturday )

After plenty of food the night before and a good nights sleep we go down to breakfast and chat about Fridays endeavours, as we are finishing breakfast Nicolas and " Cube " arrive to chat about what we want to do today, Shane is making tracks back to his base, Paul and Graham decide to have a relaxing day, Ben, Karl and Shaun opt for the climbing wall in Les Houches, that just left me, so I opted to go to the climbing wall to make the numbers even. The rain is bucketing down outside so as you can imagine the wall is positively heaving, I have a couple of climbs but my heart isnt really in it so I opt to belay Shaun for a while, Karl and Ben are belaying each other when we notice that Ben seems to be a natural on the wall, Nicolas decides to set up a hard route for Ben to tackle, which involves a straight climb at 6a ( I think ) then a traverse across the wall near the roof, Ben manages this with ease and Nicolas is videoing it for his Dad ( Paul ). Not a lot to say after we leave the wall, just ambling around Chamonix doing our shopping, gathering presents and chilling.

Day 8. ( Sunday ).

Having said all our farewells and exchanging addresses, e-mails and so on all thats left is to head to the airport and make our way home. Time to start planning our winter trip to the Cairngorms in February, don't forget Paul, we want another member to make the numbers even, you are more than welcome to join us.

And Finally.

On behalf of Myself, Shaun and Karl, we would like to thank Sandy, Nicolas, John, Cube and Alan for looking after us and making the holiday so enjoyable, we didn't make the Mont Blanc but who gives a S###, it is going nowhere, and we hope to meet you all again soon.

If anyone fancies the trip for themselves, check out the Mont Blanc Ascent on the Exodus website.

.........................................................www.exodus.co.uk...........................................................