|
<< previous page
| next page >>
|
|
After lunch Bernardo, Dominik, Fabian and Jan decided to leave,
because they had to get down before dark. Bruno, Carlos, Martin and I
had prepared to stay overnight, and continued climbing towards the
real mountains. Tête Rousse, our aim for the day, is the first
little top in the middle of the picture, with Aiguille de Goûter
rising behind it on the left. On the right you can see Piton des Italiens,
4002 meters.
|
|
Some of the mountain goats (or what is this animal called?) had big
handsome horns. Apparently they were used to tourists, we could walk to
only a few meters away and they weren't disturbed.
|
|
Carlos started feeling a bit tired and decided to descend back to 2700
meters where we had planned to put up our tents. Before leaving he
took this nice picture of Bruno, Martin and me.
|
|
Finally we got on top of Tête Rousse, 3167 m. There is an
operated hut you can also spend your night in. We only used the lovely
toilet on the right and purchased some more water - 30 francs a bottle. We
thought they would have had also some water melted from snow, but at
least didn't want to give or sell that to us.
|
|
From here up the snow took over the rocks. This is a closer look of
Piton des Italiens, 4002 meters. You can also see the starting
point of the glacier going down till about 2000 meters. Mont Blanc
wasn't far away, but we couldn't see it because of the other
mountains.
|
|
Over 2000 meters of altitude climbed in one day - time for a picture. This is
Martin, I also have an almost similar picture of Bruno and me. After
taking the pictures we headed down to 2700 meters again to set up the
tents. During the trip we heard many small stonefalls and a few tiny
avalanches too, and decided not to try to climb any higher the
following day. A rescue helicopter was also around several times
during the evening.
|
|
We filled our empty bottles with snow and put them between dark rocks
to get more water. The clouds started becoming heavier and temperature
dropping. A good thing was that we weren't surrounded by other hikers
any more, alone at last.
|
|
Bruno didn't like the idea of his sleeping bag getting dirty, so he
washed the sweat off with snow. Certainly refreshing!
|
|
An idyllic place for tents, wouldn't you say?
|
|
We climbed on the nearby cliff to watch the sunset. This picture tells
nothing about the beauty of it.
|
|
After the sunset we stayed on the cliff to chat and watch the
stars. The weather forecast had warned about thunderstorms, and indeed
we started to see some lightnings. First they were far away, didn't
hear any sound, but little by little they got more frequent and
some of them closer, too.
It was a rather strange feeling to sit there, the sky illuminated
by lightnings but the only sounds originating from stonefalls on the
mountains and cracks from the glaciers. We stayed up almost until
midnight waiting the storms to calm down, but eventually decided to
move our sleeping bags to the nearby abandoned cottage for safety. We
could hear some sound of thunder, but the storms didn't come over
us. It wasn't hard to fall asleep after a day like this.
I would estimate that the temperature during the night was about
zero, perhaps even a bit less. We all had warm enough sleeping bags
and didn't have any problems, but this is one thing you should take
into consideration if planning a similar trip. The sunshine is hot
also in the mountains, but it can get cold fairly quickly.
|
|
<< previous page
| next page >>
|
Copyright Arto Teräs
<ajt@iki.fi> 1999.
Redistribution of this document as a whole or any of the pictures
individually is permitted in any medium as long as this copyright
notice is preserved.
Last update 22.7.1999
|
