A climber ascends the Mont Blanc Massif in the French Alps. Photograph © Thomas J. Abercrombie

Extreme Mont Blanc
By Brian Wimer

Summitting this Alpine icon is a popular summertime quest—but it's a bear of a climb.

"Red is dead," Mike the guide reminded me in the finger-numbing chill of 2 a.m. as he checked my harness at 12,421 feet. Alpine gear has a red thread that, if worn properly, you won't see. I couldn't even get my gaiters straight, and now I was seeing red. It was day four of our expedition to ascend Mont Blanc, Western Europe's highest peak. I had altitude sickness, and we still had 3,000 vertical feet to climb in darkness, on ice, in five-pound climbing boots. It was an ideal moment to reflect on my misconceptions about tackling this 15,771-foot-high pinnacle of Alpinism.

Frankly, I hadn't expected much of a climb. Eighteenth-century women in hoop skirts reached the summit, as did an elderly astronomer who had himself toted up by sedan chair. Heck, an Italian sprinted from Chamonix up to the top and back in just 5 ½ hours. I would have packed sneakers, if not for the fact that over the years Mont Blanc has claimed more than its share of lives.

No one considered mountaineering for sport until two locals from Chamonix, Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat, summitted Mont Blanc in 1786. Today, the valley crawls with climbers eager to try this icon. Most come for the challenge and the views, some for vanity.

For safety's sake, I would make my ascent under the expert care of Mike Powers of the American Alpine Institute, one of the very few U.S. guides with international certification. Joining me would be a veteran of Kilimanjaro, photographer Dan Westergren.

Even with frostbite and avalanches, the greatest danger for recreational climbers is failure to acclimatize to altitude. Note: don't say "acclimatization" to the French—it means you want to "refrigerate" yourself. The word is acclimatation, as in: "Attention! Bivouaquer dans ce refuge sans acclimatation à l'altitude peut mettre votre vie en danger!" ("Overnighting in this hut without acclimatization could put your life in danger!"). In July 1999, a storm forced 40 people to overnight in Refuge Vallot, an emergency hut just shy of Mont Blanc's summit. One never woke up.

So on our first day we primed our lungs with a ride up the téléphérique (gondola) from Chamonix to Grands Montets, the launching point for the famous Haute Route trail that links Chamonix to Zermatt. We'd tackle a wee 11,500-foot peak just north of Mont Blanc, the Petite Aiguille Verte.

The gondola system is one reason to climb from Chamonix. For a stack of francs, a bubble on a cable whizzes you up, parting the clouds, giving you God's view of the valley, and plopping you right at the foot of your ascent.

Mike planned a leisurely climb to give our bodies time to recalibrate to the altitudes, and, he might have added, to the temperatures. Our short gondola ride took us from a geranium-blooming September day in Chamonix to full-blown winter. We were also about to have the perfect Alpine primer—all the hazards of Mont Blanc, but at lower heights.

Bundled in layers of fleece and rip-stop nylon, we made our way out of the gondola station into a budding blizzard. As we strapped crampons to our boots, Mike roped us together: himself, me, Dan. I cinched up my triple-compartment high-altitude mittens—and the climb began. Inauspiciously. We hadn't gone ten steps up the snowfield when we came upon a guide pulling a woman from a crevasse: Beneath this thin veil of snow was a well-fissured glacier. Years back, Mike told us, a guide lost a French client into one such hole. Throwing a line, he reeled in, instead, a Japanese tourist.

Hence the ropes. Theoretically, if one of us fell, the other two would "save" him. Putting faith in that interdependence, I stomped over snow and up rock faces, feeling for footholds, trying not to tangle the rope or impale my calf with the three-inch spikes sticking from my boots. The pants of experienced climbers, I noticed, are well-perforated. I expected my catalog-fresh pair to look like Swiss cheese after four hours of rock scrambling on icy terra firma.

We reached the narrow peak of Petite Aiguille Verte by lunchtime with breath to spare. Exchanging pleasantries with French climbers, we took in the craggy horizon with large bites of fromage and brioches. This alpinism is a piece of cake, I briefly thought, nibbling a fruit tart.

Descending a peak is trickier, I was soon to find out, because the footholds are hard to find, but it's faster: Gravity likes momentum. We almost lost the gondola station in a snowstorm, but made it back to the valley in time for foie gras.

Day two we rose spanking early to catch the first gondola up 9,000 feet to Chamonix's favorite Kodak moment, Aiguille du Midi. From here we'd up our altitude and learn about "exposure," when only air separates you from the jagged rocks far below.

We emerged on a snow ridge, wedged between 20 other climbing parties, their baguettes poking from their packs. We roped into single file and began crossing the Vallée Blanche. That's "White Valley." So white that you need glacier glasses to not go snow blind. As snow trailed into rock, upward we endeavored, leaping chasms, shuffling along narrow rock ledges, and hitting walls of vertical stone.

Rock climbing, I was discovering, is a groove thing. You find a foothold with your boot, push up, feel out a nook or knob for a handhold, then pull up to find another foothold. Pacing is meticulous, a rhythm of foot, push, hand, foot, push.

We got stuck once, midway up the knife-like ridge named Aretes des Cosmiques, on a sheer 20-foot-high face with nothing but a crack to climb. For a grip, Mike told me to slide in my open hand and make a fist. Footholds consisted of rope nooses hammered in on pitons, into which you could snag a crampon. Mike made it look easy. I eventually managed.

At the end of the day, more acclimatized, we zipped back to town to get our fill of the valley—wine, fromage, and patisseries—because we wouldn't see Chamonix's cobblestones again for two days. Come morning we'd attempt Mont Blanc: one day to the Refuge de Goûter, where we'd spend the night, and another day to attempt the peak and descend.

At sunrise we flew 2,300 feet up the gondola Bellevue to La Chalette, where we caught the Tramway du Mont Blanc, a steep cog train that ratchets up another 1,850 feet to the Nid d'Aigle, the eagle's nest. On our way up something a local clerk had said messed with my mind: "Only this many people make it to the top," she'd confided, holding up her thumb and forefinger. The ones who don't? "People who never climb before. They want to climb Mont Blanc only so they can tell their friends they climb Mont Blanc." Mea culpa.

The train purged us at Nid d'Aigle, and we trekked three hours alongside sight-seeing hikers and ardent summiteers, winding along the scree slope of the Desert de Pierre-Ronde. Bit by bit the tourist crowd tired and turned back. Soon the steepening path changed to solid stone. We cramponed up and roped together, helmets on for loose rocks.

Crows followed our long ascent to the Grand Couloir, a snowy gully notorious for the missiles of rubble and stone that rocket down it. Mike held us back, looking, waiting. When he greenlighted us, we sprinted 50 yards to safety on the far side. Another climber that day was brained in the very same alley.

Beyond the couloir our path went vertical: choice handholds, mild exposure, and railings attached to the rock. Prior to installation of the railings, 20 climbers a year died on this stretch alone. With the sun on our backs and the air thinning, we crept onward. Cloaked in sweat, we finally clawed our way to the Goûter hut amid mild applause from its guests.

"Bonjour? Pronto? Hallo?" filled the cool air as European climbers in glacier glasses punched away at their cellphones. At 7:30 p.m. we piled, fully dressed, into the world's longest bunk bed with 116 other anxious climbers, waiting for the predawn wake-up call and the final pitch to the peak. Why so early? It's six hours from the hut to the summit and eight hours back down to the last gondola to Chamonix at 4 p.m.

Denied sleep by an altitude-induced migraine, I welcomed the flood of fluorescents at 1 a.m. We packed to the din of Scottish brogue and French, German, and Italian dialects, sucked down cocoa, and joined the rainbow of Gore-Tex shuffling out the door.

In the icy darkness I adjusted my climbing harness with a few gut-sucking tugs. Crampons, check. Carabiner, locked. Ice axe, ready. Then we got the news about a high-wind warning; we'd have to climb fast to beat the weather. Headlamps flickered on and, in twos and threes, rope-united climbers marched upward into oblivion.

Faint rings of lamplight illuminated the way. Above us the sky was navy-black, contoured by the subtle, glowing shape of the mountain. With metered step we silently skirted the base of Dome de Goûter, a minor peak still far below the summit. Ahead, four leading teams, tiny beacons, navigated the steep rise past the Refuge Vallot. The air was calm and cold, the snow frozen, hard. We traversed the incline, inching our way higher. Every hundred vertical feet meant a dozen switchbacks; the way up is five times longer than it looks.

Dan became nauseated, but wasn't alone: Piles of vomit marked the trail ahead of us. I became light-headed, then delirious. My eyes blurred, so I focused on my feet. Each step became a small challenge.

Then, the wind sprang up, blowing me out of the path. Subfreezing dove to subzero. One of my eyes, crusted with damp frost, froze shut. "Watch me and do what I do," Mike barked through his balaclava.

As we cleared each rise, another appeared ahead, twice as high as the one before. A quarter-mile from the top we negotiated the foot-wide Bosses Ridge on leaden legs. Mike pointed down. "Fall this way, France. Fall that way, Italy." We tottered across and, at 8 a.m., trod the snowy dome of Mont Blanc.

Elation alone kept me from collapsing. Swirling snow obscured the view, yet we snapped photos anyway. Other climbers shook hands, smiled, and posed for us, some still searching for a dial tone on their cellphones.

I can't say whether I conquered Mont Blanc that day, or the mountain conquered me. I gazed over Europe, but my focus was internal. I saw the borders of my being, the limit of my will. It is sobering to achieve one's own horizon.

On weary limbs we dismounted, down to the Goûter hut, down the Grand Couloir to the train, then to the gondola, and finally to Chamonix. Although I half expected a parade to greet us, our achievement was but another day in the comings and goings on Mont Blanc.

As I searched for the nearest massage place, the words of a Frenchman I met on the descent resonated: "That climb, wow, never again." Which called to mind a Japanese saying: "He who never climbs Mount Fuji is a fool. But he who climbs Mount Fuji twice is twice a fool." Amen. Then again, there's always Everest.

The information in this story was accurate at the time it was published, but we suggest you confirm all details before making travel plans.