The year was 2010, and a work colleague of a friend of mine had tried to reach the summit the year before together with his father, but the old man developed irregular sinus rhythm on the way up so they had to descend. By the next year it was certain that his mountaineering days, at least at high altitude, were done for, so the son asked my friend if he was game. The friend asked me and some other friends and we all took some time off between the last week of July and first week of August and started planning.
We decided to first head to Monte Rosa for acclimatisation because there are 3 Refuges there ranging from 3200-4500m in altitude with easy glacier terrain in between, which makes for ideal conditions. I won’t go into the preparation tour too much as that deserves it’s own post (we had a couple of real pucker moments there with a snow cornice breaking and on a different occasion, whiteout).
After 3 nights with some of the worst headache in my life, we descended down to Alagna, packed our stuff, checked the weather forecast and drove over the great St. Bernhard Pass to Bourg-Saint-Pierre, where we camped for one night, then went on via Martigny to Saint-Gervais-les-Bains. The forecast was that the day after our arrival, a heavy thunderstorm front was going to pass through in the evening. Since our form required us to take about 1 1/2 days, and none of us were keen on riding out a thunderstorm in a tent on the shoulder of Dome du Gouter at 3200m, summiting the day after next day was off the table. The prognosis was that after the thunderstorm, there would be just short of 2 days of good weather, with overcast and a bit of precipitation on the afternoon of the 2nd day.
In the end we decided to ride the cablecar up to Aiguille du Midi, sleep one night in the Vallee Blanche below Refuge de Cosmiques to improve our acclimatisation some more, then ride the cablecar back down, and sit the thunderstorm out in St. Gervais, then use the 2 day window to make the summit.
Minor anecdote, while waiting for the cablecar, a wasp flew into my collar and out the bottom of my shirt. For some reason it didn’t enjoy the tour and stung me in the chest, the little fokker.
Cablecar impressions
The tunnel leading out of the Telepherique station to the glacier
Refuge des Cosmiques
Aiguille du Midi
Mont Blanc du Tacul, the ceracs on the right are one of the most dangerous obstacles if you’re doing the Mont Blanc Massiv traverse.
Waiting for the front to pass turned out to be a good decision, as even in the valley the thunderstorm was brutal. I don’t want to imagine what this must have been like up on the mountain.
The next day we packed up early and rode the Tramway du Mont Blanc to Col du Mont Lachat (for some reason I can’t remember, TMB didn’t ride to Nid d’Aigle at that time). From there it was just a standard hike up to Refuge du Tête Rousse, where the fun part begins. After a short ascent from Tête Rousse you have to cross the Grand Couloir, which is the most dangerous part of the standard ascent. There’s very frequent rock falls and unfortunately, lot’s of accidents.
View from Nid d’Aigle up towards Grand Couloir
Téte Rousse
View of the Grand Couloir, if you look closely, you can see Refuge du Goûter on top of the ridge
I remember that as we came to the traverse, there was an old man before me who was a bit slow. I didn’t want to spend any more time in the traverse than necessary, so I waited a good while for that guy to cross and when he was about half way, I followed. Problem was, after he had made it to the middle, he was pretty much out of air and just stood there wheezing, in the bloody middle of the ravine which is the most dangerous place on the entire standard ascent. I had quickly caught up to him and was less than amused, shouting “Allez, allez Monsieur!” at him at the top of my lungs, for some reason I thought that might help. I had to half push, half carry that old geezer the rest of the traverse to safety (it’s very narrow, so you can’t get past another person quickly as well as safely), muttering everything the Austrian curse word dictionary (very colorful, believe me) has to offer. To this day I’m still not sure what this guy was doing on the mountain, as he clearly was not in any kind of shape.
A but not the traverse, no pics of that part, as you have other things to worry about at that point
I imagine nowadays in the summer it’s much worse than even in 2010, courtesy of the progressing climate change. In our sheer dumb luck, the front from the previous evening lead to rather cool weather, which in turn reduced the frequency of rock falls on our ascent. It also deposited a fair amount of snow and ice so we needed crampons for the climb.
The last few metres under Refuge Goûter are a via ferrata
The climb in and off itself is very easy (UIAA 2-3 IIRC) though. Once you make it to the top of Grand Couloir, the rest is rather easy snow/glacier terrain. We wanted to save ourselved the hassle of reserving beds (and the astronomical prices for the food) at Refuge du Goûter, so we put up our tents on the ridge above the Refuge. This was common practice back then but I recently read that it is now forbidden.
Arrival at Refuge du Goûter
Probably one of the more scenic places I have camped. Also a place where people don’t stray far to go for a pee, due to fall hazards behind the ridge. Lets just say I was really grateful for the fresh snow.
Tentsite with Dome du Goûter in the background
After hauling all that gear up 1500m in elevation, I remember that digging a tent space was quite exhausting and took us a while. Finally we cooked some food, ate and went to bed, since the night was not going to be long.
The next day we got up at 3AM, packed what we needed for the summit and left everything else in the tents. I don’t remember much from the night until dawn except that it took me ages to get warm after gearing up and preparing to leave, on account of us walking a glacial but very steady pace. After you leave Refuge du Goûter, it’s about 400m in elevation to the Col du Dôme du Goûter, after which you pass the Vallot Bivvy and then you’re already on the Bosses ridge leading to the summit (about another 500m elevation change).
Nothing to see here
Vallot Bivouac
Col du Dome
Bosses ridge
Summit
Back on the descent, this looks like below Dome du Goûter
Back at the tentsite, we had a sweet power nap inside the warm tents for 2h, which I remember to this day, as I was pretty spent. Luckily due to our good acclimatisation, as we got lower, we all started feeling progressively better, so we packed our stuff and hauled *** all the way down to the TMB.
Descent through the Couloir
Probably Aguille de Bionassay with the Glacier de Bionnassay below
WOW!! 
Thank you.
That’s an incredible re-telling… Amazing.
that calls for an ice cold stella or two 
Glorious. Thanks for sharing 
If it were easy it wouldn’t be any fun 
Finally found time to read the entire post (kids are sleeping).
Nothing short of amaizing.
Thank you for taking the time to write it up for us 
Going through all the pics was a really sweet trip down memory lane, good times were had on that holiday.
