Climbing, Riding, Sightseeing Midnight on Mont Blanc July 2, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Motel, Museum, Restaurant, Round The World , trackbackDepression lurked over me like a Lakeland storm-sky: oppressive, inevitable and apparently unending. “What you need,” said Bernie over the top of his beer, “is to take your mind off it; get out onto the hill. Let’s go and climb Mont Blanc. We can drive down on your bike.”
The suggestion seemed suitably absurd — neither of us had done any serious climbing for a decade and I had never done any work on snow and ice. So we went. Friends took the heavy gear in a car. (I had failed to accommodate two full sets of climbing equipment, a tent, books and spare clothes in the panniers of my new BMW and felt slightly cheated.) On the open roads, the apparently deserted French péages, I relished the lack of baggage and flew south.
We stopped at service stations for coffee and short rests in the sun, parking among the admiring summer super-bikers. I quickly fell into old habits as the cameraderie of the motorcycle fraternity reasserted itself — a quick flash of the headlamp as you pass at high speed, a full wave to the rider of another BMW, the critically admiring glances over the ranks of other machines, the knowledgeable chatter ofperformance figures, and the bullshit of personal near misses and friends lost.
Chamonix, when we arrived, was hot, expensive and distractingly full of beautiful women. We drank beer and listened to tales of the good old days when our boys fought the French climbers in the streets, and won. Beside the bar, Maurice counted the takings, his blind eyes having seen it all. We took to the hills.
“I know an easy route to do as an introduction, ” said Mick, “the Traverse de Domes des Miage.” We conferred and studied maps. To my untutored eye the route looked long but straightforward, and I nonchalantly agreed. After a sleepless night in the dormitory of an alpine but we set out at 3am. The fresh pre-dawn air was a luxury in comparison with the foetid heat of the bunks, and the stars were brilliant in the black, black sky. As we walked up to the glacier I felt, for the first time in months, glad to be alive.
I felt worse, later. The route took fourteen hours and wrecked my feet. For most of the way it was a long plod up the glacier, an interminable slope of ice and snow. My borrowed crampons fell to pieces and my new boots were too large. The clear night sky gave way to a perfect day and Bernie, who had forgotten a hat, nearly died of sunstroke. At the highest point we rested and ate a snack. I looked around at the peaks and across at the bulk of Mont
Blanc, looming above us. “It’ll be easy,” said Mick, following my gaze. “We’ll do the standard route; get the train out of the valley and walk up to the Gautier but for a sleep, then get up at midnight and be on the summit for dawn. Mind you,” he added as he effortlessly set off down the slope, “it may be crowded. This year is the two-hundredth anniversary of its first ascent.”
I finished my chocolate and followed him, my crampons, blisters and fear making me hesitant. Below me the snow slope steepened, a long seductive white arc ending abruptly in . . . My mind wandered. I imagined a slip and the gathering speed, the futile inexperienced attempts to stop myself with the axe, a moment’s despair and then capitulation to fate as I hurtled over the edge into an unbroken, terminally exhilarating, one-way flight to the glacier 4,000 feet below.
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