Day 5
The promise of an easy day after yeasterday's eight hours brought us up the cable car from Chamonix to l'Aiguille du Midi, which offered spectacular views of the side of Mont Blanc that was hit with the huge avalanche a few weeks back. Still though, our guides informed us that avalanches are quite predictable and that big one came as no real surprise to them.
Did a lot of technical climbing work, the details of which I won't bore you with. Suffice to say that I didn't feel particularly comfortable being stuck on a 50* ice slope with nothing bar my own cramponed feet, an iceaxe and a rope tied to three other guys keeping me from plummeting into a crevasse 50m below.
On the cable car back, I got stuck with a very odd French guy who spoke no English but a little German. He was alone and all dressed in leather. He knew the heights of most of the peaks around us, to the metre, and spent a long time pointing them all out to me.
Suddenly he stopped lecturing and started scribbling frantically on a scrap of paper pulled from his rucksack. His name, address and phone number. Shit. I knew what was coming next. So when he asked, I gave him the address of where I used to live with my ex. I wonder if she still has my name on the postbox and will he actually write like he promised? Or will he just show up at the door, all in leather?
He followed me to the next cablecars, thankfully significantly bigger than the two-seater we had just been in, positioning himself beside me each time. Double shit. He actually stepped on the strap of my rucksack to try and stop me from moving away. Triple shit.
Returned to the safety of my group back down in Chamonix, where our guides hit us with the news that due to the weather forecast predicting a storm on Thursday afternoon or evening, our chances of being able to climb Mont Blanc were around 5%. Decision time for us - we had to individually decide whether to take that 5% and risk being stranded in a hut for two days, or to stay in the valley and maybe hit some smaller peaks.
For me, it didn't really require much thought. The fact that I had struggled with today's activities and that there are so many other wonderful trails to sample made me decide not to go. To be honest, I'm not hugely disappointed. I know I'll do it at some point in my life and frankly, I don't feel quite ready for it now. Physically it wouldn't be problem, but I am not psychologically ready for the responsibility one has to accept to be roped to two others at 4000m, where one wrong move can have very serious consequences for all concerned.
Still though, four of the ten of us will be heading up on Thursday morning in the hope that the storm will come early and allow them to ascend very early on Friday morning.
Best of luck to them.
