So much for our rest day on sunday! After finishing the blog, we decided to hurry up and make our way to a hut high on the Argentiere glacier. We quickly gathered our things and caught a bus ride to the Grand Montets cable car, which delivered us to a high pass below the Petite Aiguille Verte. We then had about a 2 hour long approach to the beautiful mountain hut at the foot of the Aiguille d' Argentiere. We had a wonderful hut experience with a great three course meal! We tried to get some sleep before our 3:00am wake up and 4:00am alpine start. This was difficult as we had a snoring man next to us and forgot our earplugs!
Our objective was the Aiguille d' Argentiere via the normal route, which is an ice and snow climb that ascends about 1200 meters to the summit. The guidebook called for a 4 hour ascent and we made it in just over 4 hours, landing on the summit at about 8:10am. It was an amazing experience ascending the Glacier Milieu in the dark with headlamps. We had some route finding trouble with the massive crevasses across our path. By the time the sun began to rise, we were about 2/3 the way up the route and about to start the steep slopes to the summit.
The descent was very long and arduous and took about 5 hours. 9 hours of climbing really takes it out of you! We made it back to the apartment exhausted in the afternoon and took a long nap before re-fueling and going back to sleep again!
That brings us to today, which really has been the rest day. Rain again and laundry to do. Looking forward to the good weather again on wednesday.
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| Leaping a typical flooded crevasse atop the glacier |
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| Approaching the Argentiere Hut |
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| Sunrise on Les Droits and the Aiguille Verte 2/3 of the way up the route. Note the SLOWER party behind us who started before us :) |
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| Dad on the summit of the Aiguille d' Argentiere |
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