Mont Blanc was the first mountain I ever climbed, 7 years ago now. Since then I have done 4000, 6000, 7000 metre peaks and even 8000 metres without oxygen. Every mountain, every expedition, was a progression in altitude, difficulty or physicality. This time, with travel being what it is atm and my Everest expedition postponed, I took what I could get - I just wanted to get into the mountains and have some fun, but I also wanted to see how far I’ve come and see what I can do now if I push a little.
7 years ago it took my brother and I 4 days to climb this mountain, but this time I climbed it solo two times in a week, and the second time from the bottom to the top in 8hours 36mins. Just under 15 hours up and down non-stop.
I think there’s 5/6 hours to knock off in that for me if I wasn’t breaking trail through a fresh dumping of snow on the rocky section during the night (I got lost a few times) and if I didn’t spend an hour on the summit, but I did the best that I could on the day that I got.
The purists among you will say say “why didn’t you start from the valley floor” and the answer to that is: because quite frankly, I didn’t want to. I climb for me, not to appease the made-up rules of others 😂 ... It’s a mountain, it doesn’t have rules, other than “take your rubbish back down with you!”
It was fun, exactly what I needed. And now my focus turns to Everest... again.🤞
