Mike checking out our approach and the route in a brief clear spell the night before (right hand side of central spur in photo).

Horizontal pellets of snow fired across my field vision looking like tracking lines on an old VHS as I stared desperately into the featureless black night. It was 2.30am and for the first time I was starting the lead of an assault on Les Droites, negotiating an awkward path through the glacier and bergstrunds guarding the start of our route. Last nights smattering of snow thinly covered crevasses and the bare glacial ice made putting a skin track in a real challenge in itself. Dipping our head torches we we able to squint through the blizzard to locate the start of the Couzy spur, attached our crampons and marched the rest of the way over, heads bowed against the howling wind.

We had met at the…