| Mont Blanc by full moon Trip Report |
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| Mont Blanc by full moon   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Haute-Savoie/Aosta (Mont Blanc), France/Italy, Europe Lat/Lon: 45.83270°N / 6.86430°E Date Climbed/Hiked: Jul 20, 2003 | Page By: tor Created/Edited: Apr 2, 2003 / Object ID: 168877 Hits: 2196 Loading... Page Score: 83.95% - 3 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
Mnt. Blanc (4807m) -- Traverse via Tacul and Mnt. Maudit
PD -- about 1600m from Mer de Glace -- 6 to 7 hrs estimated
7/20 -- 7/21/97 Susan & Tor
We had been told that one of the greatest routes a co-worker at CERN had done was Mnt. Blanc by full moon. It had the advantage of hard ice/snow, few people, and stark beauty. Sounded good -- we didn’t really want to join the 300 plus people reported to head up the regular route every day. The timing looked good to try it first thing on our two week vacation in July -- the full moon was Saturday. Unfortunately, the weather did not look like it was going to cooperate -- the forecast for the weekend was poor -- and both of us still had work to finish before leaving. We ended up working all day Saturday and then left Sunday around noon for Chamonix.
We wandered around Chamonix looking for another deadman but could not find one anywhere! Instead we ate ice cream and went to Patagonia. Finally, took the 4pm telepherique up to the Aig. du Midi which was in the clouds. We set off for the Cosmique hut following the obvious trail down the ridge and through the snow but could not see more than 30 feet in the fog. The hut dude actually complimented us on our french -- wow, I think that was first! Actually, he must have remembered us from our Mnt. Blanc du Tacul trip where we were so tired we could barely speak english much less french! We had dinner next to a British couple planning to climb Aig. du Midi the next day and the traverse to Aig. de Plan the day after. I think they thought us a little nuts when we explained that we were only staying for dinner and wanted to climb Mnt. Blanc by moonlight -- the hut dude seemed to echo that thought and wished us “bon courage” when we left at 8pm.
There was still plenty of light when we left but we could only see about 30 feet in the fog. We followed a trail through the snow that headed towards Mnt. Blanc du Tacul (we thought). It did -- the clouds lifted briefly as we started up the shoulder of Tacul so that we could see the North Triangle face. As we continued up towards the shoulder, we broke through the clouds and could see the Aig. du Midi drifting in and out of them while the top of Mnt. Blanc du Tacul was lit up with the alpenglow -- took lots of pictures of the sunset.
We got up to the shoulder of Tacul (roughly 4100m) at about 10pm. The sun was down but there was still plenty of light and we could see the moon rising next to the rock cap of Tacul. After Susan peed, we started down towards the base of Mnt Maudit. By this time the wind was pretty strong. All of the previous tracks had been blown in but the route down was pretty obvious. Unfortunately, it was not obvious how to get up Maudit -- Tor though he saw tracks and a reasonable route on the left edge -- thank god we did not follow his suggestion!
The ascent of Maudit was supposed to cross under the seracs of the north face and then head up. We headed across occasionally stumbling across some old tracks -- the climbing was straight-forward but the wind was strong and cold and the visibility was not so great because the moon was hidden by the peak. In addition, the old tracks had been filled in with snow, making trail trail breaking slow and exhasting. We continued up to the Col de Maudit -- some ice but mostly snow at most 50 degrees -- arriving at around 12:30am. From the col we could see the whole expanse of Mnt. Blanc -- it was beautiful with spindrift flying off the ridges in the moonlight.
After eating and drinking we started down to the Col de Brenva. Here the wind was fierce and really cold. We were getting plastered with spindrift and we pretty tired and were getting afraid about frostbite that we could not see in the moonlight. We continued up looking for a place that might be more sheltered. We climbed the Mur de la Cote to about 4400m looking for crevasses or cornices that we could hide behind. The wind had really filled in most reasonable places that seemed safe. Finally, we found some avalanche debris on the shoulder of Mnt. Blanc -- probably at around 4500m at 2:30am. We piled some chunks up to form a windbreak and dug a trench behind it, lay our packs down and then tried to fit the two of us into our single bivi sac. This was something that worked just fine on our living room floor but didn’t work so well up there. Oh well! After a few tries, first sitting, then enlarging the trench to lie down, we got reasonably protected and comfortable and got a few hours sleep. We started moving again after sunrise (hoping erroneously that it would provide warmth) at around 6am and after an hours climb were on the summit!
When we started after the bivi, we could see people starting to come through the Col du Maudit -- we learned later that some had started at midnight and were climbing all night ugh! When we got to the top at 7am (after about 7 hours climbing) the wind was actually less than on the shoulder. We started down the standard route and saw an almost continuous line of people headed up. Susan was leading and it was a little annoying that the people climbing never yielded the trail. The ridge was wide enough to pass on either side, not very steep and in many places level, but many of the groups were large and led by a guide and very focused on their (slow) ascent to the top.
We had been planning to descend the Grand Mulets route to go back to the Aig. du Midi telepherique but the snow was warm and nobody had been down towards the hut since the last snow four or five days earlier. The guide warns that the route passes under some dangerous seracs and across some potential avalanche slopes so we opted against that route. Tor wanted to descend the north ridge of the Gouter dome to the Mulets hut which was described as slightly more difficult but objectively safe but Susan voted for descending the Gouter route and then taking a bus back to Chamonix -- mistake!! Of course, Susan’s vote won and we continued down -- ugh!
We had passed probably 100 people coming up while we descended but it had been easy to go around them. We got down to the Gouter hut around 10am, but, unfortunately, after passing the Gouter hut, the trail descends a rock spur that has a series of fixed cables for protection. People both descending and ascending were frequently roped together and sometimes clipped into the cables -- it was very difficult to pass and a complete bloody nightmare. Finally, we cut right onto some steep snow and front-pointed down -- it was a little exciting as the snow was poor and not very deep over the rocks -- in retrospect, we probably should have roped up for that! Unfortunately it did not really save us any time and some fat people started yelling at us for some unknown reason. We finally got down to the Nid d’Aigle train station at 2400m at about 2:30pm. It was about an 8000 foot descent but it had taken us 7:30 hours -- never again on the Gouter route!! Too many bloody people!
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