Mountain landscape - Europe

Aiguille Verte and Aiguilles du Dru

Ahead of this photograph I’d prepared myself to sleep outside across the valley, 4,000ft above the town centre of Chamonix. My sleeping bag and sleeping mat were on the ground, ready for later, and the sun had set and I was warming up to take a series of night-time long exposure shots of the peaks on the south side of Chamonix. (This image was taken not long after dusk, but it was dark enough to require a 20-second exposure).

From left to right, the big snow and ice-covered peak with the hanging glacier is Aiguille Verte, which at 4,122m is one of the 82 summits in the European Alps over 4,000m high. Aiguille Sans Nom (3,982m) is at the top of the rocky ridge leading down to high Aiguille du Dru (a mountain also known as Les Drus as it has two summits - Grand Dru at 3754m and the Petit Dru at 3733m, the latter being the home for a statue of the Virgin Mary). The obvious large, light-coloured scar on the lower right-hand side of Petit Dru shows the damage caused after major rockfall over the years. This included the loss of the large south-west pillar in 2005, which was called ‘Pilier Bonatti’, or the Bonatti Pillar, after the famed Italian alpinist Walter Bonatti, who climbed it solo over six days in 1955. A traverse of the skyline, from right to left, can take mountaineers three days.

Sources: Walter Bonatti - ‘The Mountains of My Life’ plus New Zealand Alpine Team - Traverse of Les Drus to Aiguille Verte