Back from the Haute Route

I believed in it, I believed in myself, and in the end, I gave it all. And that’s why I proved to be strong, I proved to be more than able, without hesitating a single second.

Here’s how it went.

On Saturday morning, we started the Haute Route from Chamonix, on a perfect day: the sun was shining, there was very little wind, the weather was warm and the snow perfect. We hiked up the first length, and then we had to go down a vertical ditch: the first half we ensured us with a rope, while the second half was free climbing, with crampons and an ice axe, our skis attached to the backpack. I was leading, and it was so exciting, not to mention the incredible panorama!
We proceeded by climbing up another passage which was way more difficult than the first one, but then again I’m better when it’s a matter of skills than of strength.
When we finally got to the hut where we were spending the night, the weather had already started turning bad, a cold wind was blowing, and we were glad to go inside and give ourselves a rest. There were people from everywhere: USA, Canada, Spain, Switzerland (of course!), France, Sweden and the three of us. Although everyone was older than I, I still had a laugh with a lot of people, everyone was there for the same reason after all!

On the next morning, the wind was blowing up to 160kmh (almost 100 miles per hour), there was less than 5 metres of visibility, and lots of snow falling.
We started our trek, we had to ski down 1600 mt of altitude down the glacier, and it was tough, since the wind kept making us fall and so on, but we managed everything pretty well.
We continued the day by climbing up to the next refuge, and it was a mess because, although the wind had lessened, the visibility had gotten even worse, so we had a hard time in actually FINDING the hut.
On the next morning, snow was still falling, but we were way too motivated to surrender! So we climbed up to the next peak, but once up there we realized that we could not cross and go down on the other side without provoking an avalanche.
So we made our way back in order to find another passage, but we called the keeper of the hut were we were going to, to let him know we were going to be late. Only, he told us that due to the newly fallen snow, the way up to the refuge was way too risky, and that avalanches were sure fall during the afternoon.
So we had no choice but to renounce, since I didn’t have the whole week of vacation we could not afford to stop for a whole day (and the weather forecast were bad for the rest of the week either.

As I said, I am however proud of myself. Next year we’re giving it another chance, it’s sad we had to give up, but those who know the mountains know that this is part of the game, so even if we did not reach Zermatt, I’m glad of what we did, together dad and I.
At the same time, the emotions of the climbing, of the panorama, of the storms, were so great and deep, it was definitely worth it. And next week I’ll have some pics to post!!!