For the first time in over a year, I strapped on a pair of crampons and crunched out in the higher alpine world of snow and ice. We'd not planned to 'go high' this summer, but couldn't turn down the opportunity when it arose. After getting such great views of the Mt Blanc massif from camp the night before, it was a real treat to be able to spend a day with a friend in amongst the grandeur and magic of the high alpine peaks.
An early start from Chamonix, soon saw Stu and I transported with ease to the spectacular position of coasting above the Glacier Blanc on our way to Italy. So much better than taking the tunnel!
On the ride across, I was amazed to see how dry, crevassed and cracked the glacier was. Only two summers ago, Barney and I had walked down this glacier to access the pyramid of rock on the left of the photo below, but the crevasses now looked too wide and deep to entertain such a journey!
It's also a classic ski route that we have done before, but there's going to have to be a lot of snow filling in those gaps before it gets skied again.
The journey was magnificent and I was glued to the window the entire way, before arriving in the snazzy new Italian high point. An elevator took us down to a long tunnel that led out to the glacier and the start of our adventures. The whole thing is astonishing engineering.
Before getting our crampons on though, we popped into the famous Torino Hut - somewhere I'd heard lots about, but never stayed.
It's the usual basic alpinist's accommodation, but given that we were in Italy, we thought it worth stopping in for a delicious cappuccino. It might be basic accommodation, but they have a fine coffee machine up there at 3500m!
It was an excellent start to the day and set us up well for getting into harnesses and all the glacier travel set-up.
We hiked across the Glacier du Geant, stepping over and jumping many crevasses on our way over to the cliffs.
The scenery was fantastic and it felt like I'd been teleported there. All rather surreal.
Instead of climbing peaks and as well as just admiring the views, this little jaunt had another objective.
The receding glaciers have been exposing cliffs that have been buried for tens of thousands of years.
We wanted to see if any treasures had been exposed.
After a few investigations, that yielded some modest results, we climbed a pitch across some steeper ice to access some interesting looking geology.
And our perseverance paid off...
We abseiled lower down the ice slope to see what else we could find...
The while hanging off the rope and a rock belay, we were able to look inside various fissures and cracks to see what we could find...
There were no huge chunks of kryptonite, but lots of small quartz crystal souvenirs.
To get back to the glacier, we had to made a couple of abseils using some 'v' thread anchors, which we made using an ice screw and then threading an old sling though.
Back on flatter ground, we investigated a few more areas...
Some crystals were too big to move, so we just had to marvel at them instead.
Only the higher reaches of the glacier have had any fresh snow this summer, so the rest of the ice looked very dirty and brown from the dust of many rockfalls.
On the cable car back to France, the sun was casting a good light on the labyrinth of crevasses below...
Back at the Chalet, we emptied our packs to clean up and check out what we'd found. In the display cabinet at the top of the tourist lift, you could buy a genuine Mt Blanc crystal for about one hundred euros! At that price, we'd done pretty well, but in reality, we'd picked a few good personal mementos for the mantel piece, of a great day in the higher mountains.
However, feel free to make me an offer!
After cleaning up, Clare came and met me and we went for a wonderful meal as the sunset at a nearby restaurant, before meet Dave and some other friends at a BBQ, turning it into a very long and social day!
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