Training for Alpine Climbing

Anders Sandholm, Martin Hutle and Giles Monnickendam joined me for a week with the brief to learn as much as possible about alpine climbing so they could go off and do it by them selves. We spent the first day on the Mer de Glace learning everything there is to mo know about ice climbing. We then spent the next day learning about climbing snow - snow belays and Ice axe arrest.
On our third day we attempetd to climb the Aiguille de Marbre but were thwarted by too much deep snow. On our fourth day we did the traverses of the aiguille du Crochues and on the fifth we climbed the Cosmique arrete on the Aiguille du Midi in perfect weather but we got caught in a que of Italians who had no idea about anything other than talking a lot.