(all pictures are low res, for high res click here)
As we left Wengen and the Jungfrau we
headed towards the climbing town of Chamonix,
the birthplace of
mountaineering. During our beautiful drive, we stopped in the upperclass ski
resort town of Gstaad.
.
After that we made our way thru the curved roads of
Aigle - a very cool wine town in southern
Switzerland.
. Finally, we made it to
Chamonix,
where they were having a
guides festival
. However, as you've probably
already noticed in the pictures, the weather was still deteriorating. So,
Lansing and I spent the rest of the afternoon drinking wine (and basically
getting drunk)
. The next day was raining
still, so we went to a
climbing
gym in Les Houches...but we still
had time to kill, so we decided to drive thru the
tunnel at the
base of Mont Blanc and go to Courmayeur,
Italy
.
In Courmayeur,
we went to the Alpine
Museum
where we got to see artifacts
from the Duke of Abruzzi's
climb up K2 and Bay
of Tapliz Polar expedition.
. After viewing some cool stuff
at the museum, we went out to dinner, where I had my first experience with
truffles. The
restaurant we went to just got some truffles in and they offered us a
simple dish of a truffle grated over pasta for
€35.
Yes, it was expensive, but it was heavenly. If you are ever given the chance to
try a fresh truffle, I highly recommend it. Following dinner, we spent 90
minutes getting to Chamonix because the line to go thru the tunnel was really
long.
The next day the weather still
sucked, but we figured we had to give Mont Blanc a shot. It was either climb
Mont Blanc or spend the rest of the trip
rock climbing over by the
Mediterranean Sea in southern France. We decided to head up the telepheric,
to Aiguille du Midi which is very
similar to the Jungfraujoch in Switzerland. Once there,
we walked around the tunnels and glacier carvings, to the entrance to the
glacier. We hopped onto the glacier, and headed over a very steep knife ridge in
a whiteout to get to our hut (Refuge
des Cosmiques)- which would be our home for a couple days. This was a newer
hut built in 1987 and it included some amazing detail to decor.
... and the food prices were a little bit more reasonable.
The next morning the weather was still crappy, but by noon, it had cleared
enough for us to poke around the glacier a little bit. At this point, we had our
first views of this beautiful
massif.
Here are a couple pictures of the Aiguille du Midi
, and an adjacent mountain in
Italy (one of my favorite pictures from the trip!)
. As we crossed the glacier, we
decided to hit a couple rock walls and do some ice climbing and easy rock
climbing. As we go to the top, the views were spectacular (and the wind was
blowing really hard!)
(Lansing)
(me). When we returned to the hut, we found out that the weather report for
tomorrow looked good, so we quickly ate some chow and went to bed. The next
morning we woke up at 1 for a 2am departure up Mont Blanc. As we headed out
things looked good -- we had a Japanese team and a Swedish team breaking trail
for us, so we felt strong for most of the morning.
. We headed up
Mont Blanc du Tacul , the first of 3 summits we had to reach. At this
resting point (i.e. the 1st summit)
I was really cold, so I whipped out my
parka and as I pulled
the parka I accidentally yanked out
my climbing
helmet too. The helmet hit the snow and slowly rolled into a crevasse -- boy
was I bummed. Oh well, we carried on
, and I was climbing, I
accidentally slipped once and fell. Paul and Lansing
arrested
my fall. We kept at it
, and then all of the sudden
our guide became
uncomfortable with the route (at least that is what he claims). We were
1/3 of the way up to the 2nd summit.
He didn't feel we were climbing
fast enough, nor did he feel comfortable going higher on the route, as we had
some vertical ice climbing ahead of us. Lansing and I begged him to
set up a belay station, but he didn't want to. I have no idea what was going
thru our guide's mind, but I got the feeling he just didn't feel like climbing
that day. The route we were supposed to climb is pretty well defined in
the next picture (I highly recommend looking at the high res version), and as
you can see others were climbing without issue.
Our 2nd team of
Vince (the non-IMG
guide who is UIAGM
qualified), Bill and Steve had no problems. Vince belayed Bill and Steve thru
both parts without incident. (Here's my plug for Vince. If you need a good guide
for the Alps, contact Vince as he is the most
experienced American Alps guide I know. And he's a great guy to boot!)
Dejected, we turned around and
headed back to Aiguille du Midi. And again, we had to maneuver over the knife
ridge 
with its 5,000 ft exposure to the city of Chamonix (again, this scared the crap
out of me)
Even though it was a gorgeous
day 
,
I was really pissed and tired
. The whole way back to Chamonix
, I
was upset at Paul and wondering what was our next climb in
Zermatt going to be like?