After Cosmiques we'd been romping around for a few days and were knackered so we slept until late and mostly ate all day. The weather forecast for the next day had been bad and the heavens opened Thursday night and thunderstorms continued for most of the night, friday morning with it reducing to just heavy rain in the afternoon. It gave us chance to have a mooch around Chamonix.
We got up fairly late on Saturday morning and packed the bags with a full trad (6 cams & full set of nuts) and ice rack (7 screws) but had places and food booked in the Albert Premier hut. The bags were still heavy as we had two technical axes this time and again we both lugged a 60m rope each. We headed down from the campsite to the train station at Les Praz, we headed on the train to Le Tour were we first lugged up a hill and then jumped on the cable car to Charamillion and then further up on the ski lift to Balme. Its bloody cold on the ski lift in just a t-shirt :) I couldn't find any cables to connect up my compact camera and didn't want to waste 30 euros on a card reader so my compact camera pictures will have to wait unfortunately!
The path after the ski lift looked more like Wales than the Alps, I guess because of the hot summer!
Me on the path to the Albert Premier Hut
After some more drudging along a fairly easy path, much easier than the Envers hut we turned a corner to gain a view of the Tour Glacier. We had previously been able to see just the tip from down in Le Tour. We chatted to a french couple and exchanged photos.
Chris and I on the path to Albert Premier Hut with the Tour Glacier behind
A little more walking with a couple of sections of iron (which aren't really needed) and we could see the moraine which led up to the Albert Premier Hut with the Aiguille du Chardonnet behind. We had planned to do the Migot Spur on the Chardonnet but had been told it wasn't in condition, we still took the gear just in case the cold snap had bought it back into condition.
Albert Premier Hut on the left, Tour Glacier and the Aiguille du Chardonnet behind
The Albert Premier Hut is not the nicest place in the world. French alpine huts aren't reknown for their cleanliness and given that most of the toilet are a hole in the ground (or those damn porcelain squat jobbies) this was no different. We arrived around 5:30pm and as dinner wasn't until 7:10pm we decided to sort the gear out and get out on the glacier with the screws and axes. We put in 4 or 5 screws and Chris lowered me on to a ledge in a crevasse which I guess was around 15-20m deep, although the crevasse fell away deeper to the left and right of me (I've got some pics and a little video on the compact, I'll put them up when I get home) I climbed out quickly and we scampered back for tea. We were in bed early for a 4am start on Tete Blanche and Petite Fourche.
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