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Outside Magazine December 2003
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The Hard Way
Fire and Ice (cont.)

JOHN AND I WERE UP before our alarm went off and out before we were awake. The steps we'd postholed the night before gave us confidence until we began scratching our way up the granite arte. The rock was thickly glazed with multiple layers of ice and snow. The new route we'd begun five days earlier in the heat wave of summer was now a winter climb. We were forced to use crampons and ice axes to ascend what we had originally climbed with rock shoes and bare hands.

We reached our gear, buried beneath two feet of snow, at dawn, but the sky was black with fresh storm clouds. The consequences of continuing up would likely be severe: a cold bivouac, frozen toes, perhaps worse. We had been defying and denying the conditions on Mont Blanc from the start, but such impertinence was no longer tenable.

Sometimes, when you have all the evidence you need, you just have to accept it—and then change course. After ten days of ignoring the obvious, it was time to cut ourselves loose.

"We've got to go down," yelled John through the swirling snow.

So we did.
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