With our last weather window, Dale and I decided to get up high and stay the night in one of the huts. To mix things up from our other days at the Aiguille du Midi, we went up the Mer de Glace from Montenvers to the Couvercle Hut. With the recession of the glacier, the gondola keeps getting extended down and the walk up the Mer de Glace is increasingly broken up. The ladder system getting above the glacial moraine and past polished near-vertical slabs is a nearly comical exhibit of humanity adapting to climate change and overcoming obstacles. It’s not for the faint of heart!
We started our hike at about 2pm and arrived at the Couvercle Hut at about 5:15pm, which sounded similar to Dale’s prior approach there in the summer. We kicked back and enjoyed a lovely evening in the hut. It was quite the luxury to eat a multi-course meal, including a roasted filet mignon with mushrooms.
We got going before dawn, but not that early in the grand scheme of things. We left the hut somewhere around 5:30am. The mostly 4th-class nature of the route seemed to suggest that we’d be able to move reasonably quickly.
The snow to gain the route was reasonably steep for our approach shoes and aluminum crampons, but it went. We spent a few minutes investigating the wrong lick of snow to the climber’s right before realizing we were in the wrong spot and heading up higher to start on what felt to be more challenging rock climbing than either of us expected—probably slightly off route. It went and we found ourselves at a bolted belay before too long. From here, a bit more roped climbing through a steep gully system which was pretty snowy took us onto the exposed 3rd and 4th class ledges with cairns.
We scrambled on for a good ways before hitting the cut back and descent into a snowy gully. We stopped at the ridge crest for a bit here, contemplating our timing and the schedule needed to catch the gondola back down to Chamonix (which, if missed, would require us to walk down—not at all unreasonable and far from the intensity of most North Cascade descents). In the end, we decided that the additional scrambling to the summit wasn’t worth having to walk out and lose a casual last evening together, so we turned around here after soaking up the views. There was nothing technically stopping us—just time and priorities.
The descent was without incident, including the ladder down climb. We made it to the gondola with plenty of time to spare and enjoyed goblets of beer upon arriving in Chamonix to celebrate a lovely week together.
This was a fun, moderate route with stellar, up-close-and-personal views of the range throughout and a memorable trail and hut—a great experience.