Today was the day. After an almost sleepless night at the Gouter hut, we stood up at 1.30, packed our staff and ate breakfast. Through the window we could see the lights of Chamonix 2600 meters below us. As Friederike commented, such a view you normally have from an airplane. At 3 AM we left for the Mont Blanc summit attempt.

It was a clear full moon night. After I had two bad days in the beginning and Friederike a difficult day on the way up to the Gouter hut, everybody was in perfect shape and ready for the challenge today. Friederike went together with Julian. Philipp and I followed a few meters behind led by Aldo. In a zig zag pattern we ascended the mountain and gained meter after meter – in total we had about 1000 m altitude difference ahead of us.

We walked in a fairly slow pace, except the one time when I had to ask Aldo to please not take any more shortcuts from the zig zag course to take over other rope teams, because this walking straight up the steep mountain in deep snow and increased speed was killing me…

The scenery this night was spectacular. Snow covered mountains in the moonlight and an amazing view – we actually saw Geneva in the distance. Shortly after 5 AM the sun appeared on the horizon so that we now had the sun on the one side and the full moon on the other side.

At 6.30, well before what we had expected, we reached the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps at 4810 meters. We took a short break to rest, drink, take photos and enjoy the great 360 degrees view over many peaks in the Western Alps.

Now we “only” had to descend the 2700 meters to the point where we could take the cable car back to Chamonix. At 4 PM we were back at the hotel and took a well-deserved shower and a nap. Now we’re celebrating the summit success and the great day we had with dinner and panaché (beer with sprite).