Struck by lightning on the Aiguille du Chardonnet - 12546ft (3824m) | ||||||||||||
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Introduction | ||||||||||||
-An early start | ||||||||||||
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Beep, beep, beep, beep. I was woken by the alarm on my watch. I'd not been asleep for very long. It was about one or two am and freezing cold. Still tired from the slog to the hut and pleasantly warm inside my down bag, I did not want to get up. I peered up at the sky to see if it was worth rising. Through the cold, clear mountain air I could see a huge number of stars, more stars than I would ever see at home. Bugger, no excuses, we should make a start. Feeling half zombie, I slowly sat up and grabbed my nearby headtorch. I pushed my sleeping bag down to my chest. The nasty rush of deep freeze air had me pulling on all my warm tops and a woollen hat pretty quickly. JC was doing likewise. I've always found the dark and freezing 'alpine start' a fairly grim affair. Conversation was predictably monosyllabic. We got a stove going to make tea. Having filled our water bag at the hut the day before we were able to prepare breakfast without moving. I had my usual muesli in tepid water with a large mug of tea. I drank my tea slowly, it helped put off the moment when I needed to leave the soft cocoon of my sleeping bag. Despite the horribly early hour and the freezing temperature we were both in reasonably good spirits. We did look set for a good day out. Eventually breakfast was over and we could delay our departure no more. We got out of our bags, into the freezing night and quickly stashed all of our sleeping and cooking gear into the bivi bags. We had no use for this gear on the mountain and we didn't want to waste time hiding it all. We simply weighted the full bivi bags down with rocks just to make sure they stayed put. Climbing gear packed, we shouldered our bags and by the light of our headtorches headed for the nearby edge of the Tour glacier. | ||||||||||||
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