We met with our mountain guide Marcel at the cable car station in Le Tour. The small village is about eight kilometres north of Chamonix. From there we took the chairlift, which is also used by normal hikers and MTB riders. From there we went towards the glacier. Marcel set a tight pace in front of us and we followed quickly. It was clear to us that Marcel wanted to test our condition and speed in the next two days in order to be able to estimate us better. The landscape was breathtaking. The weather was still good. For the later day and the coming night however precipitation was predicted. The first stop was the Albert Hütte. Actually the first overnight stay was already planned here and then another one in the Trienthütte. Dani and I had to shorten the original Mont-Blance-Tour from normal 6 to 5 days. And as it turned out later, this was even a great luck, because the weather was still on the brink of the planned summit ascent.
Just above the Albert hut we reached the glacier and put on our crampons and formed a rope team. The sky was closed. Nevertheless, radiation penetrated through the cloud cover and we kept our sunglasses on to protect our eyes. We were in long clothes and the limbs were safe from the UV radiation, but I wore no gloves and I could perceive the burned smell of my hands, as one knows her from sunbathing. The terrain became steeper and steeper. Marcel drove us forward with relentless speed. At the highest point of the tour we had to make an easy climb over rocks, before for the rest of the way wide snow areas opened up over glaciers. Marcel knew the area. Alone I would not have dared to cross the snow surface. We saw again and again crevasses, which were partially almost completely covered by snow. The cloud cover became unstable. The closed grey got gaps, but elsewhere thick clouds piled up and showers soon stood in the house. We crossed the glacier and reached the last rocky climb to Cabanet du Trient when the first wet snowflakes fell. The crampons were packed away and we started our last ascent. It began to snow more strongly, but we reached the hut quickly. Dani had special problems with the mountain air, to which we were not used of course yet.
The Cabane du Trient is a very simply equipped hut without any frills. Whether we could climb the Aiguille du Tour (3.542 m) the next day as planned was unclear, because the weather was predicted for the next day with snowfall. And when we got up early in the morning, it was clear that a further ascent was not possible due to the weather. After breakfast we went back the same way we had come. Without any major problems we were able to descend despite temporary snowfall and returned to Chamonix when we arrived in the valley.
