The goal of the week is to climb the Dômes De Miage summit at 3673m (12 050 ft.), located in the Mont Blanc Mountains, it is a famous mountaineering race especially because of the beauty of the final snow ridge, and because of almost no technical skills required when the weather isn't bad or many routes aren't frozen or slippery. Despite the "PD-" (not much difficult) rating of the race, some places are still dangerous without being with someone a little bit skillful about mountaineering. Our team is composed of my brother and I, Thibaud and Adrien Jacquier Bret, and our teammate Clément Fivel, who already climbed some mountains and is a lot more experienced than we are, he will be our guide and leading climber.

Starting from Les Contamines-Montjoie, we begin to hike until arriving at the first mid-mountain refuge, the Refuge De Tré-La-Tête (1970m/6463 ft.), next to which we ate our lunches and had some rest before heading to the second refuge. The itinerary we must follow to achieve this hike is pretty hard in the beginning, steep, rocky, and helped by fixed ropes, but then becomes flat and snaking, for a long time, until arriving at the 60m long (196 ft.) Passerelle Himalayenne (footbridge) crossing a huge gulf, before showing the last part of the hike, leading to the second refuge.

The Passerelle Himalayenne Copyright © Clément Fivel

Then, after a last but hard walk because being exhausted, we arrived at the second refuge at about 2610m (8562 ft.) of altitude, the Refuge Des Conscrits, a large building built in 1997 (the old one is now destroyed) on the right edge of the huge Glacier De Tré-La-Tête next to which we hiked all day long.

The refuge is actually the most important one of the Tré-La-Tête area in this mountains, and also the most attended, from which many mountaineering races are starting, including the famous Voie Royale (Royal Path), crossing the Dômes De Miage and the Aiguille De Bionnassay to finally finish at the top of the Mont Blanc.

Approaching the first rocks indicating the end of the day, we are first stricken by the escarpment of the structure, and the isolation of such a living place, but then, delighted by the perspective of a sit and a warm place.

After having dropped all our stuff, payed our booking and being given slippers, the good weather lets us smoking a cigarette and drinking a fresh beer on the terrace before a meal and a short but comfortable night.

Refuge Des Conscrits (2610m) Copyright © Adrien Jacquier Bret

It's now 3:00 a.m and we get up from our warm and cosy beds, get down to have a brief breakfast (in fact, a part of our rations for the lunch and meal) and to wear our mountaineering clothes and gear. At 4:30 a.m, helmets and headlamps put on, we're finally ready to start climbing and are beginning to walk on slippery rocks, before we put on our crampons when arriving on the glacier.

The Glacier De Tré-La-Tête, seven kilometers long, is the third biggest glacier in France and in the Mont Blanc Mountains, and is the one that has been the less studied by scientists because of its isolation and difficult access, it is, like every glacier in these mountains, full of crevasses, and shrinking every year because of global warming, making it more dangerous and uncertain for climbers.

At 6:00 a.m the team is now walking on hard snow, with a bit of difficulty due to the shape of it, solid snow waves graven by the wind, forcing us to make every step on the top of every ridge, and tiring a bit our legs. But we are also walking in a pure and beautiful valley of ice, looking at the shy and thin light of sunrise, while glowing sunbeams are slowly cuddling the summit of mountains, nothing could be more pleasant than this feeling, than this silence.

First lights coming from the East of the glacier Copyright © Adrien Jacquier Bret

It's time for us to be more careful about our movements, especially because we had to pass a bunch of crevasses and to check the reliability of snow bridges. But it's also time to suffer a bit more while climbing the Col Infranchissable (Impassable Mountain Pass) (3350m/10 990 ft.) and to get colder at the top of it, because of the temperature (-6/-9°C // 15/21°F) and also because of the wind chill effect.

But we are finally reaching the sunbeams and are beginning to warm up during the ascent of the Col Des Dômes (3564m/11 692 ft.) that is endless and tiresome, but that is offering us a beautiful view of the whole Passy Valley, the Aravis Mountains and at the bottom of the mountain, Les Contamines-Montjoie.