Saturday, July 27, 2013

Perfect Conditions for an ascent of Mt Blanc via the Cosmiques

Its never great when you go to bed and then have to get up the same day. We were in our beds at 8.30 pm then up at 12.50pm, breakfast at 1.00am and away from the Cosmiques at 1.40am.
The reason for the super early start was that it was the freezing level was due to rise to 4500m and traveling at night is the safest option. Plus there was virtually a full moon.

The clients were super psyched and had gambled that traveling all the way from Austin, Texas just to climb Mt Blanc would be worth it. Brian Roark was on my rope and his very good friend David O Chambers was on the rope of Hannah Burrows Smith, the other Guide I had asked to join us.

Brian and reached the top in a fast time of 5 and half hours, the other two were about 40 mins behind us. The track and conditions were perfect. The only issue was the summit of Mt Blanc was in cloud, and so the summit shots were a little under whelming . Yet a couple of hundred meters below I got this fantastic sunrise.

We choose to go the same way back and again due to perfect conditions we were back at he Aiguille du Midi at 11.30am.

Which just goes to show the saying " You never regret getting up early" is true.

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