Mont Blanc

July 2018

After having climbed the Matterhorn I set my mind to the other famous mountain of the Alps. The one and only Mont Blanc. I did the climb as a preparation for my trek in the Karakoram in Pakistan, so that My sister, her friend Jamie and I could get to know one another and Jamie could get used to walking over glaciers.

I decided to climb the Mont Blanc via a relatively easy, but less frequented italian normal route and descend via the usual Gouter route. The fact that we could traverse the Mont Blanc massif from Italy into France really added an extra dimension to the climb.

We had parked the car in Chamonix and taken the bus through the Mont Blanc tunnel. Once on the Italian side we started our hike. We followed the sealed road for about 2 hours till we met the trail head. the hike to the Gonella hut was already quite impressive. Across the glacier and at the end some relatively serious rock.

The Gonella hut itself is very cozy and scenically located overlooking the mountains south. Jamie was not feeling all to well, but we hoped that would pass soon.

Breakfast would be at midnight, even by Alpine standards that is pretty ridiculous, my sister could not stop laughing and complaining about it. Whatever our opinion on the matter we rose at midnight and ate our breakfast in silence.

The first part of the climb went across a heavily crevassed glacier towards the rocky ridge north of us. There were a couple of steeper sections and in the dark it was by times hard to find the best way up.

Once we were almost at the ridge Jamie felt too ill to press on. She felt like she had a bad hangover. There was no mistake, the altitude had gotten to her. My sister brought her back to the Gonella hut and I, encouraged by a couple of Italians, climbed further alone. The rest of the climb would be either over rock or gentle glacier so I should be able to pull it off myself.

A steep climb over snow brought me to the ridge. I needed to follow this ridge all the way to Dome de Gouter from where I would follow the normal route to the top of Mont Blanc. This ridge was the most beautiful part of the climb. Technically it was not that interesting, it was one of the easiest ridges I have ever been on.

From Dome du Gouter it was a rather boring climb over a large track to the summit. I had climbed up from sealevel n just 24 hours and after Dome de Gouter the lack of oxygen really started to get to me. I could only walk a few steps where after I had to stop to catch breath.

The weather was amazing and I had the best view I could have wished for. Most striking were of course the Matterhorn and Grand Paradiso.

On the way back down to the Gouter hut my sister called that she wanted to try and climb mont Blanc the next day. I climbed back to Dome the Gouter and descended to the Gonella hut again. Traversing the glacier alone in the afternoon was very dangarous, but I made it to the hut OK.

Next day I climbed with my sister to Dome du Gouter, she went to the summit alone and I went to the Gouter hut where we would rendez vous. I spent several hours in the Gouter hut, it was a big contrast with the small Gonella hut. The Gouter hut is enormous and ran like a hotel.  The weather was poor and I worried a little about my sister, but around 1 pm she returned safely. It had snowed heavily on the top and she even doubted for a while whether she had been on the top, but she had had fun climbing up regardless of the weather.

From the Gouter hut an endless descent into France began.