Climbing the Mont Blanc 2018

5 min readOct 3, 2018

On a random day, I got a random thought — I should climb a mountain!

A quick call to a friend to seek ideas about nearby mountains and apparently, next month, there will be an attempt to conquer the Mont Blanc, the highest peak in EU. Count me in!

T-3 Gear check and a first hike

Plan for the first day was simple — meet our guides, rent needed gear and hike to the halfway to Weissmies mountain. There we slept and got ready to conquer our first over 4000m mountain the next morning.

Our first night on the mountain was in the Almagellerhütte 2894m

T-2 day — Weissmies summit 4017 and our first snow

This is where we got our first taste of the real mountains. Our guides tested our skills, physical and mental abilities to cope with a different situations.

Of-course, everything started in the middle of the night and it stayed dark for the first hour or so.

But we get to see one mind-blowing sunrise.

Snowy tops are pretty but also require crampons.

Boom! Weissmies 4017m done.

Way down was via different route and it was as pretty as it was brutal to our legs. Legs = Macaroni.

T-1 day — Hike to halfway from Mont Blanc summit

Our agenda for next three days was:

On the first day we hike to halfway and sleep on the mountain,
the next day we conquer the summit and
on the third day we spend slowly coming down from the mountain.

Weather on the first day was incredibly nice and warm. This allowed us to hike in our trainers and skip heavy and bulky mountain boots.

Only the last stretch got a bit snowy. From there we also saw what will waited for us tomorrow. First part of our climb was going to be 600m vertical wall in the middle of the night (right picture).

What a sunset?!

T day — Summiting to the mighty Mont Blanc

This was the day. We started in the middle of the night and took on the rocky wall.

Our guides warned us that there is one extra dangerous section, where often big rocks fall and form an avalanche.

Luckily we didn't see or hear any danger but one week later, at the exact same place, Richard Branson reported that they were ‘seconds from death’ after avalanche. :/

Getting closer to the summit, most of the track was now a narrow icy edge.

We did it! We summited to the Mont Blanc in 6 hours!

Massive thanks to the best guides in the world, Caroline, Adam and Thor! You made this feat extra special!

It was time to start our long way back to the hut. A lot of eye candy everywhere.

We celebrated and slept on the 3815m Refuge du Gouter.

Rock climbing

Next couple of days we spent relaxing by hanging on to the rocky walls.

I found a totally new respect for the rock climbers. It’s pretty epic feeling to find yourself in the middle of the wall, barely holding on to the tiny bump in the rock and not sure where to go next…