In July 2012 I went on another mountaineering trip in the Alps. This time the goals were the highest peaks in Italy, Gran Paradiso (4061 m), and the highest peak of France and the Alps, Mont Blanc (4810 m). The trip was a high-altitude mountaineering training arranged by the DAV Summit Club – comparable to the one we had at Großglockner in 2011. With me in the group were Friederike and Philipp who were also part of the team at Großglockner.

On Friday, 29^th of June, I flew to Milan where I rented a car and continued to Villeneuve in the Aosta valley, close to the border to France, where I met Friederike, Philipp and our Peruvian guide Aldo. Also with me was Mr. Nansen, a polar bear I had met a couple of weeks earlier. Mr. Nansen wanted to try out some mountaineering, so we decided to go on this trip together. After a brief introduction we sorted our equipment, packed a daypack and took a taxi to Pont at 1950 m and started to walk to our first base, Rifugio Vittorio Emmanuele (2735 m) at the foot of Gran Paradiso. We were lucky to get a room for ourselves which is complete luxury in an overcrowded mountain hut like this.That night we went to bed early because at 3.30 AM our alarm went off and at 4.30 we were already ascending towards Italy’s highest mountain with headlamps on – together with around 180 other mountaineers this day.

It was an unusually warm night, and we soon started sweating under our many layers of clothes. After one hour we reached the glacier, so we took our crampons and climbing harnesses on. The next hours were demanding for me – not acclimatised to the high altitude and approaching a 4-thousander on my second day in the Alps that year, but I somehow forced myself to continue.

Shortly after 7 AM we reached the only technically difficult passage at Gran Paradiso (2nd degree climbing), just below the summit. We had to wait at this bottleneck for at least 20 minutes. There were many climbers in front of us on their way up and others returning from the summit. I enjoyed those minutes as they helped me to pick up and bring down my heart-rate. At 7.45 we reached the top of Italy at 4061 m, gathering around a madonna statue for the summit photo.

After our return we stayed for another night at the Refugio before we returned to Villeneuve the next day. From there we took a bus to Courmayeur and another one to Entrèves at 1370 m. Here a lift took us to the Torino Hut (Rifugio Torino) on 3371 m – 2000 m altitude difference in 15 minutes!

Up there we were supposed to do some exercises on the glacier, but it started to rain so we stayed in the hut for some theory, playing chess and hoping for better weather the next day to climb to Tête d’Entrèves at 3551 m. We were not that lucky though. When we woke up the next morning at 5 AM, we met thick fog, rain and strong wind outside the Torino Hut. So instead of climbing the Tête d’Entrèves as planned, we took the first lift down to Entrèves again and then the bus via Courmayeur to Chamonix, our base for the ascent to Mont Blanc.

Here we bought some more equipment for our Mont Blanc climb, and we met our second guide: Julian from Argentina, making the South American dream team complete. There was not much more to do that day since it was raining all day (meaning lots of new snow above 4000 m). Fortunately, the weather forecast said we would have a window with clear sky for our summit attempt during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.

The route we were going to take is called the “Voie Des Cristalliers”, “Voie Royale” or simply the normal route. This route first goes from the tramway stop Nid d’Aigle (Eagle’s nest, 2372 m) to the Goûter cabin (3017 m) where we were going to spend the night. Then very early the next morning we would break up towards the summit via Dôme du Goûter, the Vallot cabin and L’arrête des Bosses.

So at 8.30 the next day we left Chamonix – still cloudy and grey, but above 2000 meters the sun was shining. We saw several ibex (steinbock) and chamois very close by on our way up. After three or four hours we reached one key point of the climb: le Grand Couloir – a funnel shaped passage with constant risk of rockfall. After crossing the couloir, we continued a not too difficult climb towards the Gouter cabin. Julian and I reached the cabin at 5 PM, Aldo, Friederike and Philipp about half an hour later.

The cabin was pretty overcrowded, but the weather forecast for the night was excellent: clear sky and full moon! After an almost sleepless night, 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 started our Mont Blanc summit attempt.

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 good shape and spirit. 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, a bit earlier than 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. Later we celebrated our summit success and the great day we had had with a nice dinner and some panaché (beer with sprite). Also Mr. Nansen was very pleased after his first mountaineering trip.