“11:30 pm… Shit you have got to be kidding me!”

Visions of death and nagging demons were keeping me awake.

It was the night of our summit push on Mt. Blanc du Tacul. This was bad. Not only am I not sleeping before our 3am alpine start but I didn’t sleep more than a couple hours the night before. “Why” you ask? Well, I have been curious of my “acclimation speed” because I was fine the previous year in Wyoming. The difference being I had started out with Diamox. Was it the drugs or my body that acclimated quickly? That was my question. So No drugs on this trip and lets see how I feel. At 11,000+ feet I had a slight headache that was annoying the hell out of me. I also wondered if it was not due partly to a lack of caffeine. So I had a bowl of coffee. Yes a bowl, that is what the French served us in our “mountain refuge.”

The mountain refuges dot the landscape everywhere in the alps. These are typically inhabited with “climbers”, skiers and snow boarders. However for this time of year there were only “climbers.” And yes I have quotation marks on purpose. Most climbers in the Alps have guides and are probably a couple steps below even a weekend warrior. The refuges made great 3 course meals for dinner and a very un-American breakfast. Toast alone a breakfast does not one make! Anyways, my internal clock was still on U.S. time and I unwittingly drank my bowl of coffee at 8pm… I did however fall asleep around 3am. So, a day and a half of acclimation and less than 6 hours sleep over 2 days.

What a summit push this will be. After dinner the night of our summit push I was paying our bill. The care taker asked me what time I wanted breakfast. “Oh, we are getting up at 3 am for a summit push.” “Oui! Time for Breakfast” was his reply in French accented broken English. “Ok, ah, I guess 3:30am. Mercy!” Wow! Breakfast for a summit push! I am coming back to the Alps! That was my parting thought. How cool is that? Another quick glance at my watch and it was 1am… “Damn it, how can she sleep?” This was my thoughts watching my new wife sleep in peace. I am envisioning the swift and quick death that we are going to incur in the next couple hours and she is there so damn peaceful… What the hell gives? The afternoon earlier we were walking on the glacier just checking things out. I was a bit concerned about the snow conditions due to the unusual warming Europe was having. It was 70 degrees F on the glacier. Nice but dangerous. At 10 am the afternoon prior, we were relaxing in the snow because we were over heating a bit. I could scoop out about 8” of snow… “Damn Jen, nothing is bonding here. There aren’t even any layers to this snow.” The flakes were more like ball bearings. In 10 days prior the temperatures only dipped below freezing once. Not good! While we relaxed I heard a strange sound that resembling machinery? “What the hell… Ah avalanche.” Too late. Behind us on the mountain we were to climb that night began to avalanche. 15 minutes later, avalanche number 2… “Hey Jen, it is only 10:00 and it is already avalanching.” “I think if we do this, we should be off the mountain by 9am.” No argument from Jen. This is what brought on the demons.

“Shit! 1:45am.

I might as well get up and get my gear ready.”

By 2:50 am I thought it was close enough. “Jen, wake up, it’s time.” I went to get my gear together and get breakfast. I can’t say enough about starting a summit push after a hot bowl of coffee…

We were awake with two or three other groups. We noticed guys that were basically saying good luck to one another as they were leaving but not to each person in each party. “Those must be the guides and those others are the clients.” Hmm, those are the ones that have given us strange looks while we have been staying here. I got the impression that we were not appreciated for coming up on the mountain with out hiring a guide. Too bad.

Once outside Jen and I were tying up our kiwi coils and adding prussic knots for self rescue out of a crevasse should we fall in. While clipping one of my tiblocs to the rope I noticed one of the guides gesture my way. He had a somewhat whisper saying something in French. They laughed and walked away. I don’t know for sure but it seemed that he thought it was amusing that I had a prussic on my rope. Hmm… If that was the case and they are so brave, they ought to try leaving their security blanket cell phones at the refuge.

Why?

For 3 days we witnessed 2 rescues and possibly 2 others, we didn’t actually see a bodies on the last two. This seems to be the true norm in the Alps. Be reckless and we’ll save your sorry asses. Insurance is roughly $3.00 per day. You have to buy 2, 4 or 12 insurance bundles (one bundle consisting of a grouping of those numbers). This all disgusted me so I didn’t even want my radio. You may think this is a bad decision but it is one I made. I don’t want to do things that reinforce sloppy behavior.

Although I can’t ignore a quote from Jack Tackle though, “It is amazing how self-righteous one can be when it is not our ass on the line.”

Well, I still stand behind that decision. I am always a little nervous until that first couple steps in the snow. Then something takes over and I have this monkey take over on the controls. “Ok, let’s make this happen.” I think to myself.

We begin traversing up a very steep slope. We were going to try this the day before to get a feel for it but the snow was already too soft to even attempt this. It was roughly the width of a boot and traversed up and left for about 30 to 40 feet. This was not too bad because the fall would have been somewhat of a slide… At the top of the traverse we then had to do a short snow climb. This would prove to be the steepest climb but we did not know that and it was still the beginning of the ascent. We had to plunge our axes to the hilt before taking a step. We would take a step or two, get our balance, pull out the axe and replace it a bit further ahead for the next couple steps. A process we repeated till we ascended a 50 foot section of steep snow.

At the top we found ourselves at the beginning of the crevasse field. The crevasses were wide and deep. You could fit a small house in one of the crevasses. Most of the walking was on “snow fins” about 4 to 5 feet wide with very very deep crevasses on each side. This didn’t bother us much and we kept it in mind to not stand too close to the edge. You never know how the edge may cut underneath. My problem was that I didn’t know how to navigate a field like this. Many of the fins stretched out for a while and then tapered into a point. I wondered, “Did people walk to these points and jump to the next fin?”

“Nah, I am missing something…” There was a recent avalanche from the cornice above us that had debris covering some of the route. I did not believe that other parties were jumping crevasses and moving through that avalanche zone. So we kept looking. Eventually we found a small route where some people had jump down into a giant sink hole. You could fit a house into this hole. I looked to Jen and said, “I am sorry, I will not go into that.”

“This mountain is not worth our lives.” Jen started to tear up and was becoming very disappointed. I started thinking about those fins again and decided to walk down one of them. The fins got to almost two boot widths and presto. A somewhat snow bridge. It was more of a chunk of ice that had fallen into the crevasse. Although it was nice and wedge each end looked to be in bad shape. I decided that is too dangerous and we’d be better off jumping the crevasse. I could just barely get my axe stuck on the other side, took slack into my hand for the toss, looked at Jen’s boot axe belay one more time and went for it.

I used the stuck axe to help pull me “up hill.” Although the jump was no more than 4 feet (I think that is right) I was worried about the possibility that on the other side of the fin could collapse under a person jumping onto it. We were jumping up hill as well. I made it, obviously, I am writing this.

Our next obstacle was to walk through the avalanche debris that covered much of our route. Once across it was easy to see the route. Here, we met two English guys coming down. We were out from under the cornice that produced the avalanche debris so we stopped to talk. All the common pleasantries of mountain climbing. You know, like, “how much further? Does this let up any time soon?” Blah blah blah. After departing, the two English gents decided to stop for lunch underneath the cornice… I pointed that out to Jen, kind of laughed and kept climbing. It is a crazy world.

Near the ridge of the mountain we came upon our most dangerous part of the climb. We had to skirt a long a cornice with the path only the width of a boot. We had to stick our axe picks in the cornice walls and our fingers of the other hand in the old axe pick holes. This was something else. I can’t describe how crazy that was being thousands of feet up and having a boot width of snow under your feet and nothing more. I’ll assume that you can visualize that. Once up on the ridge the going got much easier. It would still be about 30 minutes to the summit but easy walking is always welcomed.

Once at the summit we began a hairy scramble. I mean, climbing with a glacier axe on black ice. This was a blast and slightly frightening. We had no pro with us and I never knew what to expect. Non-technical my ass. I think they mean if you don’t go to the summit or don’t have a brain. Who knows what the French mean.

Up until now I probably haven’t told you that we have been incased in a cloud the whole time. We couldn’t see the sky at all. I was only using wind speed to tell if we should bail. This was the scariest thing about the whole climb. Not knowing what was really going on. We knew that there was a storm coming in that morning. The question was, “Is it coming early?” Again, I’ll use the wind speed and keep moving forward. On summit we couldn’t see a thing. We snapped two quick pictures and got off the summit. 30 minutes later we would learn that we had a beautiful sky around us and only a cloud around the summit. Too bad. But sometimes you never know on a mountain. Better to be safe than sorry. Heading down was the next objective. I love doing that. Just don’t tell anyone. We took a slightly weird path on the ridge. I had noticed that the route was cutting deep into the cornice that we had to walk on so that was slightly bothering some that we just walked on that. The cornice was breaking apart. We headed back to hug the cornice on the North side to return down the face. This is where I think Jen really had something snap inside of her mind. Not in a bad way. More of a rights of passage. She handles this cornice like it was no big deal and a slip or a bit of snow giving way would not have been the end of us. It is better to be calm and concentrate on moving. In my opinion.

We headed down at a great rate of speed. I was moving so fast that I was almost falling forward. It was coming up on 9:00 am and we knew that we had to be down. This was beginning to hurt my knees. Crap, but I can’t slow down now. We jumped our crevasses again. Pause here When you jump a crevasse going down hill don’t take up so much slack that you keep falling forward once you’re across. Especially if you have to stop on a fin and have another crevasse in front of you.

Ok back to the story.

We finally get to the base of our climb. Well, sort of, the last part we begin seeing other climbers. Not going down, coming up. They are beginning their summit push at 9:30 am! Nice alpine start numb nuts! And you wonder why so many accidents occur in the Alps.

A great trip, a great mountain. I love the Alps. Probably the best benefit of all is being able to wake up and climb or walk a different route every day with virtual no approach time.