At 8 a.m., we left Chamonix. Our big cable car swung up and into a low-leadened ceiling of clouds, scaling, without benefit of lift towers, a sheer rock face. It is the next step that frightens me. Stumble off this ridge, bordered by sheer drops of several thousand metres, and your remains won't be recovered until the end of the next ice age. Still, we have to be careful.
Disasters can befall the overconfident.
The mountain silence is occasionally broken by avalanches cascading off cliffs, exploded by the heat of the morning sun. Daniel says that we are all good skiers and so we will take the Classic Vallee Blanche. I ask the others, thinking I might regret this adventure. The glacier is riddled with crevasses, the route is disguised by a thin blanket of new snow. Daniel steers us through safely and into a precipitous exit couloir down to Le Glacier du Geant.