It was 3am and the hut warden was tidying up after breakfast. Upending stools and placing them on the tables he was keen to get to bed. We too were about to return to bed, much to his surprise. ‘You’re not going to give the weather window a go’ he said to me with a look which said, ‘you loser’. No, we weren’t, we were going back to bed, the only group in the hut to do so. Outside, headlamps guided everyone else on their way to the summit of Mont Blanc.
Marco, Paolo and I have been doing the guiding gig for a long time now and our back to bed decision was a relatively easy one for us for four reasons. One, the summits above 3800m were in cloud and due to stay that way. Two, wind at 4000m was to be 40 to 60kmh. Three, the forecast was a deteriorating one and four, we were all on the mountain to have fun.
Rather than navigating, heavily crevassed and complex glaciated terrain at altitude in a windy whiteout we had our fun at a hastily organised garden barbeque complete with view up to the cloud covered peaks.
Later that afternoon we learnt that nobody had made it anywhere near the top. Everyone had turned back for the reasons we never went out. We got that decision right. Lucky again!