August 4th: rest day. My notes say "All of us are feeling well used let us say esp feet and faces and misc scrapes so not intent to do anything" and it is hard to recall what that feels like from the comfort of my living room but I do know what I mean. Lunch in the Hotel Isabelle which is named after Pointe Isabelle, or rather after the woman. Seemed good; might be a place to stay in future. Saw a cyborg.
August 5th: to Cosmiques. After a rest day - I'm pretty sure we spent a night in the Hotel Chamonix again; and some frantic packing - head up the Telepherique du Midi which has been tarted up since I last visited, err, 30 years ago. There's usually a queue... probably best to book the day before or so, if you can. It takes us a while to work out the queues, too; I forget now but you need to get tokens for a given carriage, after which you can, like us, sit in a nearby cafe and wait for your carriage's boarding time. We weren't early; perhaps we got the 1 pm carriage. More queues; don't leave your pointy bits hanging out; and then we're off (oh, funny trivia: they look in all small bags; but they don't look in any big rucksacs). It's dramatic; this I think is the view just setting off from the halfway station, with Midi enveloped in cloud.
Our plan, in case you're interested, is Mont Blanc via the Trois Monts route. In some ways this was the "backup" plan in case "Gouter" failed. But since Gouter has succeeded... well, we're not so pressed now.
Once you get to the top you ignore the tourist bits, ignore the warning signs, kit up and leave via the magic door:
The weather was far from perfect and conditions were a bit melted out (see-also; note that isn't dried grass it is, for some odd reason, straw),
The ridge down is easy enough; as you see, we didn't rope up. Gradually the cloud thins and we get glimpses across to the refuge.
Inside: cards-n-coffee. We've sensibly brought up some fresh bread and rations.
Eclairage continues and the face shines out in glory. It looks... quite steep. Can you believe I walked down this, easily, thirty years ago? It was the trade route in those days, because the Grand couloir had a fearsome reputation for killing people.
Indeed there's a whole wide basin to see from the terrace. But it's cold out.
And so to sunset:
August 6th: to base of Tacul slope; retreat; switch to rif Torino (GPS) and back (GPS. From which you see it is a out 4 km across, about 1:20, quasi- but by no means entirely- flat. Anyway, look at the traces if you find the text confusing). We're up... well perhaps not desperately early. Here we are out, and dawn is appearing behind the rather attractive Dent du Geant... a party had come in at 8 pm last night having climbed it. Another moody pic from later in the day.
And here we are, at about where we got stuck.
I have a number of excuses for why we retreated, which I'll record for posterity. The bergschrund is bigger than it looks there; see here. It is more overhanging and higher than it looks (does this help?). And - I think I recall this correctly, and it's why we're somewhat late - we've already discussed backing off the route and going for a trek instead, so we've already half failed in our minds. And of course we've already climbed Mt Blanc. Lastly, though in retrospect I rather regret not trying to get up even if we weren't intending to continue the the route, it did seem a bit pointless at the time. The next day - if my fallible memory serves me right - while waiting for the much delayed cable down we talked to some Americans who had got over this bit, but who had retreated from higher up; so maybe it was just as well.
And this giant snow/ice boulder, whilst fun to play on - I climbed it - was somewhat disconcerting, too.
So there's a sentier across to... here we're at some rocks after X, admiring the Dent du Geant.
Here's a pano from the rocks across towards Torino where we're headed.
Towards Torino. Look closely and you can see two blobs of something suspended on cables; and three bods on the path.
The way across is almost safe without rope... but not quite. At a push I would solo it, but carefully and timourously.
And back towards Midi.
Rif Torino was nice. We were a bit tired, but had coffee-n-stuff and played some cards.
It is a bit odd, because as well as a proper refuge it has all the fluff from being the Italian equivalent of Midi, complete with giant cable car stuff disappearing into cloud so we didn't get the full effect. And there's a bit of exposed ice slope where you can play. And so, back to Midi, suitably tired.
August 7th: down. We'd planned to do the infamous Cosmiques arete, but I once again evaded this tourist trap. The weather was not perfect, and the infants were not keen; so we just walked back. Here we say farewell to the Cosmiques, and you get a sample of the wx.
Back at Midi, they remind you that they really really don't want you to camp up there. And, a view down the arete from Midi; perhaps it was just as well not to do it. Or then again, maybe we should have.
Due to high winds we got to sit around for about 3 hours before they decided it was OK to run the cable car downwards. There were some exciting bits where we went down a bit, stopped, went back up a bit; and so on. And then... we were down, and that was it, bar the travelling home.
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