Fresh from our success on the Matterhorn, despite a severe lack of altitude acclimatisation, Mike and I were now feeling good. A day summer skiing above Zermatt netted us a ski ascent of the Zermatt Breithorn at 4164m, so we had now acquired at least a bit of altitude fitness. Accordingly, we headed up from the valley to the Weisshorn Hutte, noting with a bit of concern the thunderstorm rolling round the Mischabel chain on the opposite side. Although the rainbow was pretty (and did indicate that the sun was shining from a clear sky behind us) we were hoping this didn’t indicate fresh snow on the tops for the morrow.

Being less popular than the Matterhorn, and in particular, there being fewer guided groups, the hut wasn’t quite such a chaotic mass of people milling about, so we got a good start. Feeling fitter, and over mostly easier ground, we were moving quite a bit faster this time, and were high on the ridge as the weather gave us a glorious day of sunshine with extensive views, especially towards the frontier ridge and our previous ascents.

We found the east ridge fairly straightforward, moving together O.G.Jones style, crossing the rope over between gendarmes and rocks to provide some protection. So much so that we had no difficulty whatsoever in getting back to the hut in good time, and were soon romping back down towards the fleshpots below. 10,000 feet of descent was a bit wearing on the ankles and knees, particularly as we hadn’t bothered to bring light footwear and stomped on down in plastic boots the whole way. The weather held and we were celebrating success by late afternoon on the campsite.

We’d left the UK overnight on the 5/6th August to drive to Randa (one cannot drive further up the Zermatt valley than this, as a tourist, and there is a decent campsite here), arriving on the 8th. As the weather was good and promising not to remain so for too long, several of us headed up to the Hörnli on the 9th. Bernard Smith and his mate had been here for a while and were acclimatised, but obviously we were being a bit optimistic heading for a very high peak so soon. We reccied the first part of the route above the hut in the evening, as we would be on this in the dark first thing. Parties with guides would be dragged up very fast, so we saw no point in trying to get ahead of them – we would just get trampled. But we got a fairly good start and made our way slowly and inefficiently up. We were quite high when we met Bernard on his way back down – he looked at us, looked at the time and reckoned we would make it up and off in daylight – just. I had imagined that the fixed ropes on the top steep section would be the sort of thing you could clip an ascender to, for protection, but in fact this was a huge thick gymnasium-type rope, useful as a hand-hold but no good for clipping. We weren’t fast up that, but at least we weren’t getting a lot of traffic coming the other way, which would have made it a lot harder. We made it to the top, unlike the third NPC group who were slower and did get impeded by descending traffic – when they met Bernard he reckoned they were not going to have time, and ought to retrreat before the top if they wanted to get off the mountain by nightfall.

Andy on the summit, depressingly late in the day. Photo: Mike Thomas

Going down was much easier, but it’s high and exposed, and we were not in good condition so could not afford to rush and make mistakes. This meant, however, that we were running out of time and could see that we would have to bivouac in the emergency hut on the way down. We didn’t really have food and drink for this, so it was a pretty miserable night (we were by no means the only folk to be in this state). We set off down after letting the upward-bound crowds pass, calling in at the Hörnli for some refreshment before the long plod down to Zermatt and the train back to Randa, where we met up with Kev and the other group, who were sufficiently grumpy that we immediately felt much better.

Having acclimatised with a week at Saas Grund on my own, and a week at Arolla with various NPC/TSG (more blog posts will appear, but scanning dusty old slides is a bit time-consuming), Steve and I moved over to Chamonix to meet up with various other NPC folk who, having seen Mont Blanc from the top of the Midi the previous year, had decided they were going to climb it in 1983. Chamonix being quite a bit lower than Arolla, we immediately started to lose some of our acclimatisation, so were keen to get high as soon as possible, but the sight of spin drift blowing off the tops when we arrived deterred us for a while. However, on August 4th, Steve and I decided we had to go for it, so got the first stage of the Télépherique up to the Plan d’Aiguille and headed out across the glacier. This was a bit of a revelation – we’d not been anywhere remotely as crevassed as this before, so were glad we’d started early enough to reach the Grands Mulets hut with plenty of daylight.

Heading up towards Grand Mulets approaching the heavily crevassed area

Plenty of tracks on the narrow ways between crevasses – some led to dead ends

This was probably the crux, once past it got easier quite quickly

Relaxing at the hut, we were surrounded by heavily crevassed glacier, and watched an almost continuous stream of climbers descending off Mont Blanc, most tramping straight on past the hut heading for the valley. The weather was now looking settled, and the Aiguille du Midi towered above us.

Looking back to the Midi from the hut

The climbers we had watched descending had also by now trodden down the fresh snow to leave a well-defined track which we hoped would not involve us in any trail-breaking in the morning. We opted for the “give your food to the warden and he will cook it” option, which backfired somewhat on Steve, as the warden seemed to think his instant mash was for making soup ! However, as dehydration is always an issue, it probably did no harm at all – just made for a rather odd meal. We were somewhat surprised to see yet more climbers still arriving from the valley as the sun set over the layer of cloud below us – the hut was already overfull, with extra mattresses being pulled out of the attic to accommodate the crowds.

The Chamonix valley was full of cloud at sunset

2 am saw the usual frantic but rather woozy rush to get something eaten and drunk and get outside, roped up for the first section where it was still very crevassed. We had made reasonable progress by the time the sun started to colour the sky, but were clearly not going to be anywhere near the first up the mountain.

Quite a way up the mountain as it started to get light

Above the crevassed section is a very steep pull where we felt we no longer needed the rope, and really preferred not to be carrying it. We made a cache and left it to collect later, which aided our progress somewhat, but we were both feeling the altitude quite badly already. Eventually, as we crested the ridge, Steve pulled ahead as I slowed down even more and we reached the summit separately.

The top (of western Europe)

Descent was much easier, and fairly quick, reunited not far below the top, though we failed to relocate the rope (not a particularly new one, but a bit annoying nonetheless). We paused only briefly at the hut to pick up the gear we’d not needed on the mountain, then plodded on down the glacier – not really missing the rope, as the deep trail led over very few scary snow bridges (it was easier to see the best route in descent, too). I’m afraid we got really quite grumpy in the long queue for the ‘frique down, but having ice axes and crampons strapped on the outside of the rucksacks did make it easy to accidentally hurt bolshy Italian youths trying to queue jump, which we found quite a satisfactory result…

The ridge was much quicker in descent

Back in the valley, the NPC contingent never did make it up the mountain, as the weather came in again and time eventually ran out – though not without incident, as they managed to drop Jim Birkett into a crevasse on the Bossons Glacier whilst practicing technique – fortunately he landed on a snow bridge not far down.