On the last day of our skiing holiday in Chamonix, Martin and I finally decided to stop dithering about the weather (as we had been all week) and do my first ever Alpine route! We dragged ourselves out of bed at 6 in order to have breakfast, clear our stuff out of the apartment and get the first cable car up the Aiguille du Midi at 8. Unfortunately, this considerable effort was wasted as we arrived at the cable car before 8 to find the first two cars were already full - I could have had .html twenty minutes in bed! When we eventually reached the top we headed straight off down to our route. We had been planning to do the Jaeger Couloir but now thought that we wouldn't have time, so instead decided on a route called Cosmique Ridge on the Aiguille du Midi.
The first part of the route was mainly trudging up in the snow which was hard work in the hot sun. I kept hoping Martin would stop for a rest but he refused to - "you should always go as quickly as possible in the mountains" - bastard! Eventually, we reached a point where we had to stop and abseil down two short pitches separated by a short walk across a steep and scary drop. Everything was going well until we tried to pull the rope in after the 2nd abseil. It was stuck right at the top. As we had been expecting to do an ice route, Martin had no gear to use on rock and so had to climb back up with no protection. I sat at the bottom of the pitch belaying him. I couldn't see him from where I was, which was just as well as I really didn't want to watch, but kept hearing awful moans and yelps. The next thing I saw were his gloves which had come unclipped, bounce merrily all the way to the bottom of the long steep slope below us. He was on a particularly terrifying part of the climb at this point and didn't even notice. He told me afterwards that he had used the hammer on his ice axe as a rock nut and clipped into the hand-loop - just slightly dodgy. He also, for some bizarre reason, took his large and unwieldy camera up with him. I have come to the conclusion that he's a complete nutter!
After all this excitement we rewarded ourselves with some chocolate before continuing up the route. I was feeling slightly worried and scared as we traversed more horrible drops and climbed higher. The second to last pitch involved climbing up some rock which I found frightening as I didn't quite trust my crampons on rock - but Martin kept telling me how great they were and of course he was right. We eventually reached the last and hardest pitch. Martin told me to belay him and then to start climbing when the rope went taut as we wouldn't be able to hear each other shouting. I assumed that he meant he would be at the top belaying me when I started climbing but in fact we were actually climbing together for the first 40 m or so (as he told me several days later). Had I known this I would have been terrified, as the pitch involved climbing a mixture of ice and rock (which I wasn't very confident on anyway) with a great view of Chamonix directly below. He seemed to have much more confidence in my climbing abilities than I had. Anyway, as it was, I quite enjoyed the climb, though I was still fairly scared. The worst bit was about halfway when I looked up to the viewing platform which we were heading for and realised that there was a crowd of tourists watching me. This was very embarrassing and annoying - I could just imagine them all saying "Oo look, there's a climber!" and waiting for me to fall off. A couple of them were videoing me - I hope they hadn't got sound, as I was swearing all the way up - and others were taking photos. It was all very off-putting as I was sure I was going to do something particularly stupid. I had to take my gloves off near the end as I couldn't grip the rock properly and edged my way along a narrow snowy ledge clinging to tiny hand holds and feeling terrified, with the tourists watching my every move. Eventually I struggled up the last bit of snow and rock and Martin took yet .html awful photo of me as I neared the top. At last I made it and my fans burst into spontaneous applause - probably because I'd made such a meal of it they thought I was never going to get there. Martin and I climbed up the ladder onto the viewing platform and stood there feeling total idiots while the tourists gawked at us and took photos - we felt like some kind of bizarre zoo animal. They watched us in amazement while we sat down and ate our lunch - I have never felt so ridiculous in my life!
Unfortunately we had to leave our fans and brief moment of fame and walk all the way back down to the bottom of the climb to get our skis. Martin even managed to pick up his gloves on the way which was handy (sorry, that wasn't meant to be a corny joke). We then set off to ski down the Valley Blanche at fairly high speed so we wouldn't miss the train. The skiing was fairly easy as there was an obvious, fairly flat piste to follow, but it was made harder by the heavy rucksacks on our backs. The scenery was beautiful, surrounded by the glacier and mountain peaks so we had to take yet more pictures. The most interesting part of the run was a slope of icy moguls, where Martin nearly fell off the side and into a crevasse, followed by some dodgy-looking snowbridges through the midst of the crevasses. There were lovely views of the Drus and the Grandes Jorasses on the last part where the snow became more slushy and rocks started appearing. We ended up having to clamber over a few rocks at the bottom before reaching a little cable car which took us up to the train station, and more importantly, the station cafe. It was bliss to finally sit down and have a cold Coke in the sun after a long and bloody hard day - with just an 8 hour drive back to England still to look forward to.