backcountry journal
April 06
Once we dropped over the reverse side of Mont Maudit we hit a steep traverse with patches of rock all above a crevassed face. We started the traverse with the familiar method of Neil lead-belaying Steve and I. As we departed to the next belay point we would unclip from and remove the previous ice screw belay fixture. I was not in anyway scared, I just felt uneasy with the surface we were on. There was ice over rock and often my attempt to lodge the ice axe in the surface would result in plates of ice smashing off like shattering glass. About half way along Neil told us not to come over to his position, rather to make our way down to the ledge of snow below us. Getting there required a big bridging/plunging step down over what I suspected was a poorly covered crevasse. We waded the rest of the traverse in powder along the ridge of the crevasse. Neil knows the terrain very well, but I still wanted to get off that area. I could tell we were walking over crevasses and in my headache condition really didn't want to break through and fall in. I was glad when the traverse was over and we were onto col de la Brenva at the base of the Mont Blanc summit where we attempted to have lunch.
We were at 4300m and had been above 4000m for over 7 hours. Altitude sickness was starting to really get me down. Some of the guys just sat down and rested their thumping heads in their hands. I tried to eat some nuts and chocolate but almost threw up. Washing it down with half frozen water wasn't good for the moral either. My pack weighed almost 10kgs thanks to the three litres of water I was carrying but barely able to drink. I felt quite queasy and to be honest suffering from weak bowls. Thankfully no unfortunate even resulted from this weakness, but it haunted me for hours. Apparently one's digestive system is negatively influenced at altitude. There is nothing nice about altitude sickness. But the view from the col was great with awesome high mountain cornices and near vertical faces of snow and ice plunging away on the Italian side of the ridge. My camera battery was for the most useless due to the cold and I really regret not capturing the sights in this area.
For the entire trek so far a group of two skier mountaineers were slowly closing in behind us. They were lugging their skis on their packs just like we carried our boards yet seemed to be going a lot faster. I guess they were fitter and better able to climb independently in a team of two. I noted that for most of the way up Mont Maudit they were not belaying each other which would have saved a lot of time and effort. They passed us whilst we had lunch.
Up until now things had been tough. We looked up the big round dome of the final summit and went on our way, estimating that it would take us about 3 hours to reach the top. A 3 hour hike on any day is tiring. The trek up the summit peak is an exercise in becoming progressively closer to death, or so you feel. For the most it was not steep, perhaps maximum 45 degrees, a little over in places. We took what appeared to be a shorter more direct but steeper route and for a while really struggled. Our two guides went up a rock hard icy face about 30 meters above us and then as parallel teams we all climbed up to their belay point. But the very first step was a few feet up and over a crevasse that was partially bridged with snow. As usual, it was not wide but still, the effort to get up over that void in the snow was immense. I made it and then Steve, but that left a selfishly broken hole for the others to work with. They understandably struggled and one guy (Loz) ended up dangling partially in the crevasse. This caused his rope to slide across the icy face to my rope, making it really hard to climb and not hit his very taught rope with our crampon spikes. From beneath the appalling weight of mountain sickness Steve and I managed a few half yelled swear words at this totally unwanted complication and the first signs of emotional deterioration due to altitude appeared. Just to reach this steep and rock hard pitch required a similar effort only 15 minutes earlier. It seemed like we were taking the hardest route and I felt a bit pissed off about it. The truth was, the summit of Mont Blanc looked easy. Technically it was easy from our lunch spot in the col. Physically it was mildly demanding. But in our condition it was frustratingly hard. At that stage we realised that there was no use getting frustrated at our physical state. Steve and I agreed to finish this little hard bit, we put our heads down and charged up without stopping. It was only about 20 meters to reach the belay point but without a doubt it was the hardest most trying episode so far. I felt sick, my head was absolutely thumping and I thought I was going to fall asleep. My pack felt heavy and my legs hurt like hell. It was very hard!
Thankfully that was the end of the steeper more exhausting parts. The remainder of the climb was a long slow 40 degree walk up the dome. This was the hardest part and personally a very special hour or so that I'm glad to have experienced. We had been working very hard above 4000m for 9 hours and were pushing ahead above 4600m. It is likely that I have already over emphasised how bad our condition was on Mont Maudit, so I don't know what more to say about just how shitty I felt at this point. Ascending the actual domed peak of Mont Blanc was unbearably tedious. I had no reliable sense of how far we had to go or how far we had climbed on the dome. Looking back down the dome made what was very difficult look very easy and looking up the dome made what I knew was very hard look like a stroll. It was quite deceptive and I can't convey how out of whack my sense of scale and perspective was. The final stretch was a genuine test of determination, mind over matter. It sounds dramatic, but we were exhausted and somewhat flogged by altitude sickness as we moved closer to 4800m. It sometimes took 3 seconds to take one pathetic step and we took a little rest every few minutes. At times Neil would take another step and I simply wouldn't move, making the rope go tight and tiring his energy. He would turn around and give me a look and I would respond with a look of 'ok, you know I'm going to take the next step, but just give me a moment'. Behind me Steve was bent over and I'm sure he didn't mind if I slowed down a bit. Over the last hurdles it seemed as one of us weakened, the other strengthened. I really benefited from Steve's strength when I was passing through a weak stage.
Many times I was on the verge of vomiting and or feinting. My head was about to explode, my heart was racing, I couldn't get the air my body wanted and my legs wouldn't move properly. I can't explain today how hard it was, how emotionally crushing it felt. I looked around and we all had our heads down and backs bent. The other rope in our team had stopped 50m below us, you should have seen their expressions! We must have looked exactly the same. I tried to yell out to them that what we were feeling was no worse than an almighty hangover and tiredness. It is pretty accurate to say that altitude sickness feels like the worst hangover you have ever had, plus a bit more headache and muscular weakness. You literally feel like crawling up in a ball and going to sleep. Every fibre in your body wants to sleep. Your muscles simply do not work due to reduced atmospheric pressure and the subsequent lack of oxygen. No matter how much you want to physically act like you normally do, your body just doesn't respond. On the contrary, you can feel bodily non-essentials starting to be phased out of operation as the body gives sparsely oxygenated blood only to the vital parts. In the meantime, trying to distribute oxygen, your heart in pumping at an unhealthy rate that is almost audible.
And on the plodding went. I got to the stage where I couldn't comfortably lift my head, my neck was cramped and I was getting irritated looking at the snow and the thousands of little frozen ice fingers pointing at where the wind had been blowing. Things were getting unpleasant and if this had been a longer expedition we would medically have been advised to stop there and return to lower ground to acclimatise some more. Steve quite understandably mumbled that he wanted to stop for a break and Neil yanked on the rope and yelled "NO!". Like an executive command from an Army drill sergeant, it worked. Afterwards he explained how many times people have stopped in the last 200 meters of vertical, just to turn back and never reach the summit. If you took a break now, you would risk never making it. And turning back was just as hard as maintaining the original route. There is no way Stevo wanted to turn back, but like all of us he wanted to breath. I think if I took off my pack and sat down at that time I would have struggled to get going again.
As the final hour passed I was incapable of reconciling in my mind how hard it was just to walk. It was only a big white hill, what was the fuss about? The struggle really annoyed me, but the more I thought, the more nauseous I felt. When I almost vomited I decided to stop thinking and pretended that nothing else existed besides the next step that I had to take. I wasn't there, the mountain wasn't there. There was nothing but the next step. I managed to refine the effort into a series of isolated one foot steps. It sounds ridiculous now, but it made sense at the time. We had since re-passed the two ski mountaineers that had passed us earlier during our nauseous lunch break. They looked really bad lower down the slope; one was bent over on his knees and I guessed that their journey was over. When we had earlier passed them they anxiously asked how much further it was to the summit. You couldn't see the actual destination due to the convex shape of the slope. That made it harder.
Our footsteps were comically slow. As I placed one of my feet down on the snow I noticed a little crack encircle my foot and a plate of crusty snow dropped down about 3 inches. In our frustrating slow motion movement, just as I weighted my foot for the next step, my leg punched through the snow, then my other leg, then the snow fell away and I was up to my waist in a narrow crevasse. In a millisecond I just about vomited my heart right out of my mouth. Luckily I was too fatigued to feel much fear, but it took valuable reserves of energy to crawl out of this black crack. Besides arresting my little fall, Steve and Neil were surprisingly not much assistance at all, saying something unhelpful like "what are you doing? Get out of there". The effort of crawling out, although short, almost beat me. For the next half hour I had to force myself to breath between steps and told myself not to vomit of feint.
The last endless 15 minutes or so were ridiculous, we were so slow. I just kept mumbling quietly out loud "win, never give up, win, never give up, win, never give up….". I am not going to bother trying to put into words how hard it was to take another step. As the summit came into view it didn't get any easier. The third last step, second last and last step were just as hard as the hardest step 300 meters ago. Knowing that you only had one more step to go didn't make it easier to take that isolated step.
But the last hard step came and then we just stopped. We had made it to the summit of Mont Blanc. After standing still for a few minutes our hearts slowed and headaches eased, as was the way each time we paused for rest. Watching the other group of three crawl up the last 50m was dreadfully painful. I really felt so sorry for them and knew exactly what they were feeling. The looks on their faces as they approached said it all. I was sitting on my back pack in disbelief at how chronically hard it had been. I was also really proud of each of us in the team for making it. Those guys never gave up. We were always going to make it, the effort was not that extreme it was just complicated by altitude and that sensation was totally unexpected hence difficult to deal with. It was not enough to stop us, but enough to make us suffer. Mont Blanc was in charge.
We were at 4300m and had been above 4000m for over 7 hours. Altitude sickness was starting to really get me down. Some of the guys just sat down and rested their thumping heads in their hands. I tried to eat some nuts and chocolate but almost threw up. Washing it down with half frozen water wasn't good for the moral either. My pack weighed almost 10kgs thanks to the three litres of water I was carrying but barely able to drink. I felt quite queasy and to be honest suffering from weak bowls. Thankfully no unfortunate even resulted from this weakness, but it haunted me for hours. Apparently one's digestive system is negatively influenced at altitude. There is nothing nice about altitude sickness. But the view from the col was great with awesome high mountain cornices and near vertical faces of snow and ice plunging away on the Italian side of the ridge. My camera battery was for the most useless due to the cold and I really regret not capturing the sights in this area.
For the entire trek so far a group of two skier mountaineers were slowly closing in behind us. They were lugging their skis on their packs just like we carried our boards yet seemed to be going a lot faster. I guess they were fitter and better able to climb independently in a team of two. I noted that for most of the way up Mont Maudit they were not belaying each other which would have saved a lot of time and effort. They passed us whilst we had lunch.
Up until now things had been tough. We looked up the big round dome of the final summit and went on our way, estimating that it would take us about 3 hours to reach the top. A 3 hour hike on any day is tiring. The trek up the summit peak is an exercise in becoming progressively closer to death, or so you feel. For the most it was not steep, perhaps maximum 45 degrees, a little over in places. We took what appeared to be a shorter more direct but steeper route and for a while really struggled. Our two guides went up a rock hard icy face about 30 meters above us and then as parallel teams we all climbed up to their belay point. But the very first step was a few feet up and over a crevasse that was partially bridged with snow. As usual, it was not wide but still, the effort to get up over that void in the snow was immense. I made it and then Steve, but that left a selfishly broken hole for the others to work with. They understandably struggled and one guy (Loz) ended up dangling partially in the crevasse. This caused his rope to slide across the icy face to my rope, making it really hard to climb and not hit his very taught rope with our crampon spikes. From beneath the appalling weight of mountain sickness Steve and I managed a few half yelled swear words at this totally unwanted complication and the first signs of emotional deterioration due to altitude appeared. Just to reach this steep and rock hard pitch required a similar effort only 15 minutes earlier. It seemed like we were taking the hardest route and I felt a bit pissed off about it. The truth was, the summit of Mont Blanc looked easy. Technically it was easy from our lunch spot in the col. Physically it was mildly demanding. But in our condition it was frustratingly hard. At that stage we realised that there was no use getting frustrated at our physical state. Steve and I agreed to finish this little hard bit, we put our heads down and charged up without stopping. It was only about 20 meters to reach the belay point but without a doubt it was the hardest most trying episode so far. I felt sick, my head was absolutely thumping and I thought I was going to fall asleep. My pack felt heavy and my legs hurt like hell. It was very hard!
Thankfully that was the end of the steeper more exhausting parts. The remainder of the climb was a long slow 40 degree walk up the dome. This was the hardest part and personally a very special hour or so that I'm glad to have experienced. We had been working very hard above 4000m for 9 hours and were pushing ahead above 4600m. It is likely that I have already over emphasised how bad our condition was on Mont Maudit, so I don't know what more to say about just how shitty I felt at this point. Ascending the actual domed peak of Mont Blanc was unbearably tedious. I had no reliable sense of how far we had to go or how far we had climbed on the dome. Looking back down the dome made what was very difficult look very easy and looking up the dome made what I knew was very hard look like a stroll. It was quite deceptive and I can't convey how out of whack my sense of scale and perspective was. The final stretch was a genuine test of determination, mind over matter. It sounds dramatic, but we were exhausted and somewhat flogged by altitude sickness as we moved closer to 4800m. It sometimes took 3 seconds to take one pathetic step and we took a little rest every few minutes. At times Neil would take another step and I simply wouldn't move, making the rope go tight and tiring his energy. He would turn around and give me a look and I would respond with a look of 'ok, you know I'm going to take the next step, but just give me a moment'. Behind me Steve was bent over and I'm sure he didn't mind if I slowed down a bit. Over the last hurdles it seemed as one of us weakened, the other strengthened. I really benefited from Steve's strength when I was passing through a weak stage.
Many times I was on the verge of vomiting and or feinting. My head was about to explode, my heart was racing, I couldn't get the air my body wanted and my legs wouldn't move properly. I can't explain today how hard it was, how emotionally crushing it felt. I looked around and we all had our heads down and backs bent. The other rope in our team had stopped 50m below us, you should have seen their expressions! We must have looked exactly the same. I tried to yell out to them that what we were feeling was no worse than an almighty hangover and tiredness. It is pretty accurate to say that altitude sickness feels like the worst hangover you have ever had, plus a bit more headache and muscular weakness. You literally feel like crawling up in a ball and going to sleep. Every fibre in your body wants to sleep. Your muscles simply do not work due to reduced atmospheric pressure and the subsequent lack of oxygen. No matter how much you want to physically act like you normally do, your body just doesn't respond. On the contrary, you can feel bodily non-essentials starting to be phased out of operation as the body gives sparsely oxygenated blood only to the vital parts. In the meantime, trying to distribute oxygen, your heart in pumping at an unhealthy rate that is almost audible.
And on the plodding went. I got to the stage where I couldn't comfortably lift my head, my neck was cramped and I was getting irritated looking at the snow and the thousands of little frozen ice fingers pointing at where the wind had been blowing. Things were getting unpleasant and if this had been a longer expedition we would medically have been advised to stop there and return to lower ground to acclimatise some more. Steve quite understandably mumbled that he wanted to stop for a break and Neil yanked on the rope and yelled "NO!". Like an executive command from an Army drill sergeant, it worked. Afterwards he explained how many times people have stopped in the last 200 meters of vertical, just to turn back and never reach the summit. If you took a break now, you would risk never making it. And turning back was just as hard as maintaining the original route. There is no way Stevo wanted to turn back, but like all of us he wanted to breath. I think if I took off my pack and sat down at that time I would have struggled to get going again.
As the final hour passed I was incapable of reconciling in my mind how hard it was just to walk. It was only a big white hill, what was the fuss about? The struggle really annoyed me, but the more I thought, the more nauseous I felt. When I almost vomited I decided to stop thinking and pretended that nothing else existed besides the next step that I had to take. I wasn't there, the mountain wasn't there. There was nothing but the next step. I managed to refine the effort into a series of isolated one foot steps. It sounds ridiculous now, but it made sense at the time. We had since re-passed the two ski mountaineers that had passed us earlier during our nauseous lunch break. They looked really bad lower down the slope; one was bent over on his knees and I guessed that their journey was over. When we had earlier passed them they anxiously asked how much further it was to the summit. You couldn't see the actual destination due to the convex shape of the slope. That made it harder.
Our footsteps were comically slow. As I placed one of my feet down on the snow I noticed a little crack encircle my foot and a plate of crusty snow dropped down about 3 inches. In our frustrating slow motion movement, just as I weighted my foot for the next step, my leg punched through the snow, then my other leg, then the snow fell away and I was up to my waist in a narrow crevasse. In a millisecond I just about vomited my heart right out of my mouth. Luckily I was too fatigued to feel much fear, but it took valuable reserves of energy to crawl out of this black crack. Besides arresting my little fall, Steve and Neil were surprisingly not much assistance at all, saying something unhelpful like "what are you doing? Get out of there". The effort of crawling out, although short, almost beat me. For the next half hour I had to force myself to breath between steps and told myself not to vomit of feint.
The last endless 15 minutes or so were ridiculous, we were so slow. I just kept mumbling quietly out loud "win, never give up, win, never give up, win, never give up….". I am not going to bother trying to put into words how hard it was to take another step. As the summit came into view it didn't get any easier. The third last step, second last and last step were just as hard as the hardest step 300 meters ago. Knowing that you only had one more step to go didn't make it easier to take that isolated step.
But the last hard step came and then we just stopped. We had made it to the summit of Mont Blanc. After standing still for a few minutes our hearts slowed and headaches eased, as was the way each time we paused for rest. Watching the other group of three crawl up the last 50m was dreadfully painful. I really felt so sorry for them and knew exactly what they were feeling. The looks on their faces as they approached said it all. I was sitting on my back pack in disbelief at how chronically hard it had been. I was also really proud of each of us in the team for making it. Those guys never gave up. We were always going to make it, the effort was not that extreme it was just complicated by altitude and that sensation was totally unexpected hence difficult to deal with. It was not enough to stop us, but enough to make us suffer. Mont Blanc was in charge.
Moments after we arrived. I am seated and muttering 'fucking hell, that was hard'. Stevo the strong Scot is standing whilst Loz, RedBull and Mark make the last painful steps to the summit. This was no walk in the park
It took 11 hours but we made it.
Neil (blue) is a professional mountaineer. I am a beginner.
Feeling pretty unwell but managing to smile. I can still feel the headache today. When we started our descent I painfully put my helmet on. I am sure my skull had expanded.
continued on the next page