The circus continued on our second day in the Mt Blanc area. After the previous day's aborted attempt we decided to try the same route again instead of going with our original plan of climbing the Tour Ronde North Face. There were a few reasons for this: July is very late in the year for climbing a North face. While this year had unusual conditions and we were cautiously optimistic that it could have worked, looking at the face revealed that crossing the Bergschrund might be an issue and that some sections of the route only had very little snow left. On top of that I had zero intention of experiencing the same kind of idiot traffic jam in a more serious undertaking. So we went up towards the Dent du Géant once more, hoping that an earlier arrival by starting from the hut instead of the cable car would give us a chance of climbing the route in peace.
We had a leisurely late 6am breakfast. Crossing the glacier and negotiating the mixed climbing section at the beginning of the route only took us a little over one and a half hours. Knowledge of the route; going ropeless and improved acclimatization were all helping. When we got to the ledge that marks the beginning of the rock section we encountered a queue of people yet again. At least this time it was progressing - albeit slowly. We still had to wait for nearly an hour, all the while more people showed up and queued behind us. It was already devolving into yet another clusterfuck.
The climb started out orderly enough, but it didn't even last for one or two pitches before people started getting impatient and attempting crazy overtaking maneuvers. Reckless chaos ensued. Parties were climbing stacked four levels deep. Ropes tangling, people (intentionally or not) stealing one another's gear, stepping onto hands and feet, cursing and swearing, overloading anchors by crowding five parties on a single one. Utter madness. At some point we were sandwiched between two mountain guides with their respective clients and one of the guides was practically begging another party to behave and not climb on top of everyone else. No such luck. Some of the guides were themselves part of the problem. They promised their clients a roundtrip from cable car to cable car. This gave them a fairly limited time window in which to complete the climb, so they were trying to overtake and rush their clients and everyone else.
Once we reached the summit ridge things got even worse. The mountain features a dual summit, you first scale the lower one, then the second, higher one. After which you have to return to a spot between the summits in order to rappel. This meant that we now had traffic in both directions, making things even more chaotic and dangerous. Some parties abandoned their ropes completely and went free solo. Again, one of the more respectable guides was begging them to be safe and follow reasonable climbing practices, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. The mountain comes equipped with two parallel rappel routes (apparently it regularly sees a lot of traffic?). Even so, the rappels turned into another bottleneck. When it was Arne and my turn to rappel, some shoving assholes behind us were making up stories about wives in labor and other such shit to skip the queue.
By some miracle (and solid climbing and rappel technique practiced on hundreds of outings) we made it back down safely and quickly. All I wanted at that point was to get out of there. If this experience was at all indicative of the Mt Blanc area I'm done with it. I'll happily climb my tier two mountains while ya'll can shove each other off the famous prestige routes, thank you very much. Yes, mountaineering history was written here. And yes, these are some spectacular mountains and climbs. But the spectacle isn't worth it by a long shot. I'm much more proud and much happier with accomplishments like the Nesthorn. Not 4000m (but close), not famous. Not climbed in months and we broke trail all the way instead of waddling up in a queue of guided tourists.
Anyway. We did meet some nice people on the mountain as well. Had some good chats with some of the guides and the Italian husband and wife team also returned for a second attempt and made it this time around. Arne was, as always, a super reliable and rock solid climbing partner. We worked efficiently and maintained our safety standards even amongst all the chaos. So that part was great.
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