“Rob. Rob. Get up!” Bugger, it’s 2 am and its cold. Why am I here? Spen was on MSR duty. Ian and Jimbo were packing and I was desperately trying to get a pair of contact lenses in., a tad awkward with numb fingers. Once the brews were finished and a smattering of breakfast was eaten, it was off down to the glacier and onwards to the Barre. Spen and Ian went off like rockets, leaving me and Jimbo to catch up. I swear longer legs give them the advantage, but I’m sure there’s some counter argument about less weight! Onwards we slogged until we reached the pile of (old) avalanche debris at the bottom of the Barre. Now, these blocks looked about two foot high from the bivvi, but they were more like eight! An air of apprehension hit when we passed these. “I wouldn’t like to have been around when that came down.” I was thinking, after which I managed to persuade myself that it was early and still cold, and there is no way that we are going to get avalanched. At the bottom of the couloir, we tooled up, roped up and got on with the task in hand.
The first section of the couloir had a crevasse, and the snow was surprisingly soft and uncompacted and was posing some problems. Finally, this was solved by putting the axes in, shaft first, followed by your arms and then flailing about with your crampons. At least that’s what it felt like. Afterwards the snow was perfect neve, and we had no problems motoring up the couloir. We actually managed it in guidebook time and were on the col as the sun lit up the north face of the Barre. The next option was to carry on up the ridge, or take a slightly more interesting route up one of the gullies leading to the summit. Of course, the latter was chosen. We’d seen other people on it, so why couldn’t we do it? As we got higher, the snow turned to ice and then the ice got more and more brittle, until we reached another crevasse. This had to be crossed otherwise we were going nowhere. I think it overhung slightly, and the snow was less than perfect. After some more flailing, I managed to get over it and stuck a couple of ice screws in for a belay. Only when I got back to the UK did I see the photo that Jimbo had taken whilst he was supposed to belaying me! Not that it would have done much good anyway. The ice was now quite steep and very brittle, and my axes were very blunt. Jimbo led off, and ran out a pitch to a belay of sorts. Next it was my turn, I led a bout half a rope length and decided to put a screw in. Unfortunately, I messed up my axe placements and so had to leave one in the ice whilst I placed the screw. There was a whistle and then a clunk as some loose came down. “F*ck, F*ck, F*ck, F*ck, bugger! I’ve lost my axe! I’ve lost my f*cking axe! Sh*t, Sh*t, Sh*t! Put another screw in, yeah, that’s right put another screw in!”. And then, with some composure regained, I brought Jimbo up. “Sorry mate, I was this far from catching it, what do you want to do.”
“Lets get on with eh? We’ll just have to swap axes for leads.”
And with that we carried on. After a few more pitches of brittle water ice, and an equal number of optimistic “belays”, we reached the summit ridge. For the next hour or so, we pitched the last section and scratched up it in crampons, finally reaching the summit cross at about 11am. The only problem now was that we couldn’t see anything because it was beginning to snow. At this point Ian and Spen were about an hour behind us. All this way and no summit view. We stayed for enough time to take a photo and eat some chocolate, and then we decided to get the hell off the mountain. The way down was to follow the NW ridge down (the voie normale), but with a whiteout approaching, a more direct decent was needed. We found a snow slope that looked quite promising, but the optimism soon disappeared when it led onto a thinly iced mixed section. So we canned that idea and re-ascended to the ridge. We followed the ridge down until Jimbo spotted a more direct way down.
“Rob, what I want you to do is listen to me. Climb down….a bit more……bit more. OK, stop. Now what I want you to do is jump backwards.”
“What!”
“Jump backwards.”
“Fair enough.”
At which point I let go and landed the other side of a crevasse. Not the best way down, but we had to take the opportunity as it arose because we could no longer see the glacier and vis was getting worse. The rest of the descent was uneventful, the visibility gradually improved as we descended and we even managed to find my axe. Once onto the glacier, all that was left to do was to eat chocolate and get back to the bivvi site, and hope that Ian and Spen had managed to get down successfully.
Thankfully, everyone returned safely after having an interesting trip up the mountain, and after vast quantities of tea, it was off down to the valley with a few lives less and a few campfire stories more.

Rob Lavin, 28/09/00.