“This bit of rock is fairly dry,” I chirp, flicking water from my fingers after stroking yet another sodden boulder. The rain was supposed to have stopped late yesterday evening, but at half four this morning it was still pouring down. Now, a little after seven, a thick, damp blanket of fog envelops the silently-dripping forest as we stride from Tré-le-Champs up to Lac Blanc and beyond. The Aiguillette d’Argentiere appears before us, brooding mutely in the dawn mist like a lost monk, and as we walk higher, two shards of sunlight knife their way through the clouds from behind the Aiguille du Chardonnet, forging a mere hint of its silhouette in glowing gold. As we rise above the temperature inversion, the Verte and Drus loom over the sea of cloud drowning the valley, their shoulders white with fresh snow. The morning is cold and crisp, a taste of winter lies heavy in the air, and, with the lifts closed, we are all alone in the Aiguilles Rouges nature reserve. Even if our route is covered with snow or too wet to climb, the three hour hike will have been worth it.

From the island bay at the the southernmost tip of Lac Blanc, the well-cairned path climbs up to the west for barely a hundred metres before splitting, ascending north-west for the Col des Dards or traversing northwards over a rocky outcrop for the Belvédère, descending once again almost to the waterline, and then snaking its way up through rolling fields of scree and rubble. A solitary male ibex lies sunning himself in the path, where all of the least-comfortable stones have been brushed aside by passing feet. Sixteen prominent knobbles stud each of his formidable horns, one for every year of his life. He slowly turns his head towards us and exhales impatiently. “What?” he huffs, as he throws his head back and scratches a buttock distractedly – he doesn’t have an itch, he’s just drawing attention to the tools at his disposal. Don’t get up, we beg him. We’ll go around.

When we reach the dying snowfield that lies curled around the base of the Belvédère, with an inch-thick layer of fresh snow rendering it a pristine white, a short growing rumble culminates with a rifle-sharp explosion as a dishwasher-sized chunk of rock and its chattering army of pebbles are ejected from one of the sub-summits along the south ridge. A confused rabble of cracks and claps are followed by a pregnant pause, and finally a hollow boom as the rock belly-flops into the snow, some of the debris rolling drunkenly down the névé and hissing to a stop distressingly close to our feet. We take a brief moment to put our helmets on behind a shield of half-hearted laughter.

All the non-essential baggage gets tipped into one rucksack to leave at the bottom of the route, and the blackcurrant squash, a sandwich to share and some shreds of rap tat are shoved into the second’s bag. We each drape a rope over our shoulders and head up to the base of the cliff, where a series of solid, blocky steps leads up to the first easily-spotted Kong hanger, garnished with a short length of white cord to clip to whilst you get dressed, and a clear line of shiny bolts going exactly where Piola’s topo says they should. Dan takes the first pitch, a noticeably-stiff warm-up that momentarily has us worrying if we’ve found the route’s original 7a start to the left, and he enjoys the opportunity to wash his dusty fingers in a few pools of freshly-melted snow in the spacious holds, before they disappear almost entirely for the crux moves. I follow him up, swap the bag for some quickdraws, and set off up what we hope will be the hardest pitch of the route. Today’s expedition was my idea, my fault, so it’s only fair that I get all the most painful bits.

At the time, clinging desperately to the side of this immense lump of gneiss and silently wishing against all the laws of physics for the distant bolts to crawl towards you, the grading for the first three pitches – 6a+, 6b+, 6a+ – seems fair, but if you were down in the valley at a roadside crag with a soundtrack of someone else’s shitty music playing through their car speakers, I’d be tempted to knock the plus off of each. We aren’t, though, we are wheezing through thin air at 2700m after an exhausting walk-in, the occasional rumble of seracs on the glaciers across the valley and rockfall from the very peak that we’ve tied ourselves onto rings heavily in our ears, and there are ravens watching us hungrily from afar as they circle on the rising sun’s first thermals. But the bolts tick past us one-by-one, and after some grunting and swearing and a steep, magnificently-technical slab on pitch three (that I was quite happy to be seconding), we find ourselves perched on the edge of the east ramp, two wide sloping ledges that separate the upper and lower sections of the south face. Noticing the sudden abundance of rockfall-flattened bolt hangers and the sea of debris strewn around us, we are keen to tuck in under the safety of the upper cliff as quickly as we can, and we move together over the two easier pitches that cross the ramp, arriving at a slightly-uncomfortable but cleverly-placed anchor beneath the next set of difficulties.

A pleasantly-juggy 5c weaves its way through the shallowest break in the roof above us, and drops us at the base of a slight corner with an excitingly-airy finish over a prominent bulge. Then a comfortable ledge with a choice of anchors (aim for the second one) sits beneath a system of cracks and slightly-wobbly flakes, at times distressingly run-out between the bolts, and Dan is loudly grateful for the handful of cams he brought. On my way up to join him I stop by a precariously-balanced chunk of rock that Dan had shouted down to warn me about, worried that the rappel ropes might snag it on our descent and ruin our day with a skull-crushing certainty. Confident that we have the whole place to ourselves and that no-one is below us, I wedge a toe behind it and effortlessly lever it off, despite it easily weighing a hundred kilos. An initial hurried rustling of grit and pebbles as they flee the scene, like insects from under a log, is followed by too-many seconds of perfect silence, and even the wind seems to hold its breath for a moment, before the deafening crack and the almost-instantaneous echoes of the impact below us, worryingly close to our last belay ledge, where the rock explodes into a dozen smaller pieces, with the clatter and crash of their bouncing journey down to the névé far below.

Muttering encouraging noises to myself and forcing the odd light-hearted remark up to Dan, I fumble my way up what we decide to be our final pitch. By this time the sun, now high over our heads, has burned the dusting of snow from the slopes below us into swirling wisps of mist, which roll and tumble together in the wind into thick plumes of cloud, rising all around us and blocking the sun’s warmth. We suddenly feel cold despite wearing everything we brought, the topo promises so-so climbing on mediocre rock for the next two pitches, and the sandwich is gone: the decision to call it quits and go home is an easy one to make. As we coil and throw the ropes for rappel, I look across the immense cliff to our right, where several other (much harder) routes are easily visible with their breadcrumb trails of bolts. I scribble a few more targets onto the ever-growing wishlist in my head… one day we’ll be back for them.

After five long rappels through a glut of decent anchors, our feet are back on the ground. But the pristine layer of last night’s fresh snow has melted away, revealing the dirty-grey névé underneath piled with great crumbling streaks of wet gravel, and the thickening clouds over our heads have put an uncomfortable chill in the air. The mountains around us have taken on a lonely, slightly menacing aura, and after a quick drink and a hurried nibble on a chocolate torsade, we are keen to get back down into the valley, so we split the gear, pull up our socks, and turn our backs on today’s adventure. As we approach Lac Blanc, a group of over thirty ibex are browsing through the scree all around us, this spring’s newborns leaping around and imitating their elder siblings as they clash horns, learning how to survive as they play. I could sit and watch them for hours, but we have jobs to go to, so we leave them to their home in peace.