Climbing Mont Blanc and happy new year

Happy new year everyone!

I hope you all had great and happy end of the year celebrations. Wishing you the best 2013, full of fun and adventures.

Since my last post, I completed several adventures. One of them being the main reason behind creating this blog, climbing Mont Blanc in France.

A picture being worth a thousands words, here we go:

Top of Mont Blanc du Tacul, 4248m

After a week of training in the French and Italian Alps, we climbed a Mont Blanc (Mont Blanc du Tacul) but it was not the Mont Blanc (the tallest mountain in the European Union culminating at 4,810m). 

We had decided to get to the top of Mont Blanc through "La Voie des 3 Monts", route which goes through the Mont Blanc du Tacul, the Mont Maudit and finally Mont Blanc. According to wikipedia this route is "known to be more technical and challenging than other more commonly used routes". 

Due to conditions similar to the ones which led to nine people dying two months before on the Mont Maudit (literally the "Cursed Mountain"), we decided to not go through the Mont Maudit and climb the Mont Blanc du Tacul instead. As Ed Viesturs said "Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory." Cherry on the cake, we got media coverage on French National TV:

"Australian mountaineer" according to French TV

Please find below a few pictures and videos of this fantastic experience. I will post more of them later on (lots to select/edit). I would like to thank my mountaineering friend Matthieu, who trained and prepared his brother Arnaud and I during a week and kept us safe the entire time. 

We went through amazing landscapes, got interviewed by French TV and finally climbed a +4,000m mountain to experience an amazing sunrise over the Alps (see below).

Looking towards the Aiguille du Midi

  

Looking towards Italy

And the reason why this update was not posted earlier is because right after coming back to Australia, I was selected by Rexona to complete the gruelling Mark Webber Challenge, an adventure race consisting of 350 kms in five days across Tasmania. More about this shortly.

Recommended treks by the world’s greatest climber alive

Reinhold Messner
Photographed by A.Savin

Reinhold Messner is regarded by many as the world’s greatest climber alive.

He was the first person to climb all mountains higher than 8,000 metres (the "Eight-thousanders", there are 14 of them), and the first to climb Everest alone and without supplementary oxygen.

I just read a great article in the Financial Times, where he is sharing four of his favourite treks.

These are:

• Seti Khola, Nepal (a 6,993m peak never been climbed and for him the world’s most beautiful mountain)

• Tre Cime di Lavaredo, Italy (a six hours trek around five beautiful peaks in the Dolomites)

Tre Cime di Lavaredo, Italy - photographed by Günter Seggebäing

• HieloContinental Norte, Chile (one of the most beautiful and challenging treks he has ever done)

Southern Patagonian Ice Field - Grey Glacier in Torres del Paine National Park by Boludo

• Nanga Parbat, Pakistan (the most scenic of any of the treks on the 8,000m peaks) 

Nanga Parbat, Pakistan from Wikipedia

More details in  the Financial Times article.

The pictures are sourced from wikipedia.