The Mont Blanc massif, surrounded by borders with France, Italy and Switzerland, contains eleven major independent summits, each over 4,000 metres. The Mont Blanc summit itself stands at 4,808 metres, and is the highest mountain in the Alps and Western Europe.
The climbing history of Mont Blanc was started by the fascination of a Genevan aristocrat, scientist and Alpine explorer called Horace Bénédict de Saussure. Prior to his travels into the Chamonix valley, British tourists had been drawn to the area in the mid 18th century, inspired by descriptions in academic journals by two English travellers, Windham and Pococke, but no one had ventured much above the snow line. Saussure changed that by starting to explore the icy slopes, and was largely responsible for turning mountaineering into a sport and Chamonix into what is now the adventure capital of Europe by offering a reward for the first successful summit of Mont Blanc. Saussure attempted the mountain himself a few times, unsuccessfully, before it was summited, including via Courmayeur (now in Italy) and via the Aiguille du Goûter. The prize for the first summit was claimed by Jacques Balmat, a mountain guide, and Michel-Gabriel Paccard, a doctor, on 8th August 1786, via the Grands Mulets route (see bottom of this page), with Saussure becoming the third summiteer a year later.
These days Mont Blanc is also one of the World’s deadliest mountains, due to factors such as rockfall, avalanches, overcrowding and the inexperience of large numbers of novice climbers attempting the mountain each year.
I tried to climb Mont Blanc back in August, 2002. I shouldn’t really have been anywhere near the mountain, with my only climbing experience in the Alps undertaken a few days before on Gran Paradiso as a client of an adventure company in Chamonix that I had joined for a week’s mountaineering course.
We acquainted ourselves with crampons, ropes and ice axes amongst the crevasses on the Mer de Glace for a couple of days before our summit attempt.
We headed up the mountain via the standard Goûter route. In the picture below you can see the Grand couloir in the centre, otherwise known as “Death Gully“. It can behave like a bowling alley, with large rocks regularly shooting down it, so it is a heart-stopping 30 seconds when you have to traverse the couloir about half way up.
A large rock the size of a microwave oven went hurtling down just after I had crossed. Rockfall can get very busy in the Grand couloir, which this video illustrates.
This is a view down to the Chamonix valley from the top of the Grand couloir (looking towards Les Houches):
At the top of the Aiguille du Goûter, the welcome relief and shelter of the Goûter Hut suddenly appears (3,835m). It has been completely rebuilt since I was there in 2002, presumably to accomodate even more climbers.
We enjoyed a beautiful sunset from the hut, above the clouds, then hunkered down for a short night.
It wasn’t certain that we would be making a summit bid the next day, our only window of opportunity, as there was a storm during the night. We were, however, woken at about 4 am, after very little sleep (the hut housed a dormitory containing about 50 noisy, restless climbers), and we set off climbing higher as dawn broke. The wind was still blowing strongly, but the views opened up spectacularly. This one is looking across the Glacier de Bionnassay:
Further up, as we reached the top of the Dôme du Goûter (4,303m), the summit appeared in view. It was enticingly close, but the wind was blowing strongly, and other climbers around us began to struggle and turn back.
Here you can see climbers making their way up to the Valot Hut on the rocky outcrop on the left, which leads up to the Grand Bosse, with the Mont Blanc summit behind:
The top of La Grand Bosse was our highpoint (4,513m), and we had to turn around due to the high winds. We weren’t aware of anyone summiting that day, and there wasn’t an opportunity for us to wait out the weather and try again the next day due to lack of availability of sleeping space in the Goûter Hut. This is my highest photo, not long before we turned around:
So, I made it up as far as the Bosses ridge (see the picture I took the following day, below, for perspective), and it feels like unfinished business, an itch that I still want to scratch. Summiting isn’t everything, but maybe one day I will try again – it is not technically difficult, but still a challenging and dangerous mountain given its height and hazards. If Balmat, Paccard and Saussure could climb it 215 years previously, in hobnail boots and woolen clothes, via the more direct and possibly harder Grands Mulets route (see the extensive icefall area leading upwards below the Dôme du Goûter in the photo below), I don’t see why I shouldn’t be capable too. If I ever have another go, I’ll be more experienced and will ensure that I have more than one day’s window of opportunity.
