Alpine Gems: Summiting Mont Dolent via the Arete Gallet (ENE)

This elegant pyramidical summit, on the northern end of Mont Blanc Massif, is far from the busy lifts of Chamonix and Courmayeur. The normal route up the south face and south-east ridge can be ascended in summer, but is most popular on skis in spring. In exceptional conditions, strong skiers can descend directly from the summit. This was the route taken on first ascent of the mountain by Michel Croz, Henri Charlet, Michel-Clément Payot, Anthony Adams Reilly and Edward Whymper in July 1864. Whymper described the view form Mont Dolent in grandiose terms: "Situated at the junction of three mountain ridges, it rises in a positive steeple far above anything in its immediate neighbourhood; and certain gaps in the surrounding ridges, which seem contrived for that especial purpose, extend the view in almost every direction. The view is as extensive and far more lovely than that from Mont Blanc itself".

The most aesthetic route up Mont Dolent is the Arete Gallet, the east-north-east (ENE) ridge, first climbed in 1901 by Julien Gallet, with the guides Abraham Muller and Jules Balley. As Gallet wrote, this "long and laborious climb ascends a magnificent ridge; at times the route is very steep with sections of snow or bare ice, at others one climbs rocks superimposed in almost perpendicular bell towers."

Gallet's team made an open bivouac, sleeping in the rocks below the glacier. Today the route starts from the spectacular Bivouac du Dolent aka "Maya", positioned high above La Fouly, in Switzerland.

Ben Tibbets recounts the route in the full article in Summit magazine.