I found it difficult to get to sleep that night. I spent quite a lot of time just gazing at the stars from my bivi bag and thinking about what lay ahead the next day. Lower down the slope from me were Lizzie Kennett, Keith Stribley and Sarah Hammond. We had just finished the three day BMC Jonathan Conville course in Chamonix and reckoned we were ready to do our first unguided route. From where we were bivi-ing near the Albert Premiere hut, we intended to climb the Aiguille du Tour by the South-West (Table de Roc) Spur.
I was relieved when it was time to set off, since I hadn't been getting much rest anyway. We organised ourselves in two pairs - I climbed with Sarah, and Keith and Lizzie climbed together. We got to the bottom of the mountain and puzzled over where the route went. After deluding ourselves that we knew where the route went (or not wanting to admit that we didn't) we started by climbing over an awkward step to get into a broad gully. After climbing up this gully for a while, we realised that we didn't have a clue where we were. We definitely weren't heading for a ridge, which we should have been. However, it would have been tedious to reverse all the climbing we'd done so far, and anyway the way ahead didn't look too bad. The gully opened out onto a rock section which was the next obstacle. This was enjoyable enough climbing, but we had now become committed to finding a way up a section of mountain we knew nothing about. The slopes above this section were mixed with occasional rocky sections and steps between sections of about 40° snow slope, on which we moved together. Not too hard you say, and it wasn't - until the sun hit the snow. In a frighteningly fast time the snow turned into unusable mush. Instead of biting into the snow, our crampons sank through and scrabbled about on the rock beneath it. The sense of insecurity was further increased for me because the rope between Sarah and me had been made too short, meaning we had on average about half a piece of wobbly gear on the rope at any time. Sarah was leading, and the expletive count rose with the stress levels, especially after a vital handhold came off unexpectedly. Despite complaints that this was "doing her head in" (hardly surprising since falling off would probably have been fatal) she managed admirably to keep it together - we just had to get up before the snow got any worse. Keith and Lizzie were a little way ahead of us and still finding the going slow - they had moved onto climbing on the rock since the snow was useless. Finally Keith got to the top of the slope and found somewhere to set up a belay to bring the rest of us up with.
Our attention now switched to finding a reasonable way down. We scrambled along a ridge until we reached the top of one of the other routes (Table Couloir) - nobody felt like going to the summit. We were all feeling extremely uneasy about the prospect of going down here since it looked like an avalanche death trap (big piles of debris at the bottom testified to this). There had been "very high avalanche risk" warnings posted in the valley - lots of new snow had fallen and had not had time to consolidate, and now the afternoon sun was beating down on it. The plan was to try to keep to the part of the slope shaded by a large cliff so as to reduce the risk. The top part was steep, so we decided to start the descent by two abseils. From there we would downclimb the rest as quickly as possible. Lizzie was the first to set off after completing the second abseil, and I got ready to follow her down. A few moments later I turned round and watched horrified as she tumbled head-over-heals down the whole height of the slope (about 150m) and then disappeared out of sight. Lizzie recalls:-
Having reached the snow, desperate to get down, I made a stupid mistake. I turned round to ice axe break down. The next moment I found myself on a moving lava of snow. The snow all around me gradually sped up. I sat there horrified, helpless. My crampons caught and I felt myself flying through the air head over heals, with axes flailing.
With great trepidation I set off next. I concentrated as hard as I could on getting down quickly without slipping. I climbed down until Lizzie came back into view. At first sight it seemed that Lizzie was unconscious, but looking again a few moments later I saw with great relief that she was moving. When I got down to the bottom I found that amazingly Lizzie was unhurt. Now we just had to wait for the other two to get down safely. Going down the shaded bit of the slope was seen to have been a good idea as we sat at the bottom watching avalanches go down all the other parts of the mountain at the rate of about one a minute. We all got back safely to the Albert Premier hut where we happened to meet the instructors who had taught us on the Conville course. The mistakes we had made were all too obvious. "Well, you're still alive, that's the main point", they said, "and you'll have learnt a lot". They weren't wrong.