So our team assembled. Christophe Ogier, JB Tapie, Mathieu Perrussel, Raphaela Haug, Laura Tiefenthaler and myself. We split into two groups and made sure to arrive a bit earlier than all the other teams at the base. Reopening the route means also a lot of rime cleaning. I was impressed by the amount of rime we had to clean, especially on the headwall – usually an ice pitch, there was about 20cm of rime so that meant a lot of effort cleaning it. We proceeded slow and steady as we took all our gear with us.
After a beautiful but exhausting ascent, as we passed the last summit mushroom it turned out to be too windy to fly off the same day. My focus was on the flight though so I decided to let the other team lead the last pitch and bivouac here instead. Getting up before sunrise next morning would give me the best chance of no thermal activity nor exchange winds.
1500 vertical meters between me and the ground. I knew the take-off was far from perfect, and my adrenaline was pumping.