Les Droites, standing firm in their boots and giving us a hard time

While Thursday's escapade was a last-minute idea, this one I had been thinking about for months.

Les Droites. 4000 m high, exactly. The lowest of the 4000ers, but one of the most difficult to climb, and rarely done. A granite wall straddling the Talèfre and Argentière basins, which is coping rather badly with the melting permafrost. In the past, Les Droites were classically climbed in summer, but nowadays the undertaking is considered objectively very risky because of rockfall, and winter or spring are better suited.

Several routes catch my eye, but the conditions rarely come together... My friend John and I were all set to launch an assault on the north face at the end of March, but the weather decided otherwise.

This week's glorious weather revived the idea of an ascent, before the heat brings everything crashing down. The date is set with dear Antho: approach to the Refuge du Couvercle, and an attempt via the South flank the next day.

The approach itself was already pretty tiring: legs still well cooked by the previous day's romp, a sleep debt between getting back from Zermatt and leaving for Chamonix (more time spent on trains than in my bed), the Aiguille du Midi cable car out of order, a glacier strewn with stones and puddles... We reach the Refuge du Couvercle well and truly washed out, take a little nap, then chat with the climbers about their plans for the next day. We are two rope teams with Les Droites in our sights (the other led by the great R. Michellod, a leading light among Swiss guides, whom I'm delighted to see again up there!). The atmosphere is very friendly, dinner is convivial, and we almost feel like not setting an alarm for midnight after all...

And yet we do get up around midnight, forcing ourselves to eat a few slices of bread and setting off in the heart of a night flooded with light by a full moon swollen with pride. The first two hours are magical; we move in silence and meditation through a monumental glacial cirque.

Then fatigue sets in: the approach turns out to be long, our bodies are barely rested, our eyes sting... Luckily, I can rely entirely on my climbing partner, who takes on the whole mental load and runs the climb. Just as well, as I wasn't really in a state to. After 4 hours of skiing and carrying in the dark, out come the ropes and the rock climb begins. It's 5 a.m., the wall is dark, and the austerity of the place weighs on us both: the route-finding is complicated, the rock rather poor, and we have to alternate climbing and mixed passages on sometimes dubious sections... In the distance, we can see the other rope team, who chose a different route. Seeing their head torches spurs us on, and we understand that it's no easy matter on their side either.

After some hesitation, moments of doubt and second-guessing, Antho finally finds a way out of this trap, and we head for the summit, relieved at this happy outcome.

The sun lights up our faces as we sit astride the summit block and its bare 4000 metres. What joy, what gratitude...

The descent is done with extreme care, first to string together 300 m of abseils (0 bolts in place — this is wild terrain), then to ski 700 m of 40–45° slope on rock-hard snow. The descent from the Col des Droites was supposed to be the 100% fun moment, but we hadn't reckoned with snow that hadn't softened because of a few nasty clouds that came to spoil the party... In short, the reward moment turned into a “clench tight, one edging mistake and it's all over” moment.

Les Droites will definitely have left a lasting mark on us both! We descend the Talèfre glacier, then the Leschaux, before reaching a Mer de Glace in an advanced state of decay, browned by the dust carried down from the moraines.

End of the adventure: a hard-won 60th 4000er, the 3rd in 48 hours, and a week that certainly gave the mitochondria a workout.