Winter vomitting bug hits Chamonix (General news)

Friday 04 January 2008 10:24AM

Nick and I decided to celebrate new year’s day in a somewhat unconventional style – with a fast ascent of the north face of the Droites. Suprisingly there were quite a few other teams up in the hut on new years eve, one even had a bottle of Champagne, although we missed sharing that and went to bed at seven. Our alarms woke us at 12.30am, we wolfed down something resembling breakfast and headed out across the glacier to the foot of the face. From the start Nick struggled to keep up in the deep snow, and complained about feeling “a bit chesty”. I first met Nick racing in to a route in Glencoe, so when he couldn’t keep up I knew something was wrong. We made it to the foot of the face, all the time with him getting slower and slower. He sat down in the snow and we discussed what to do – we had no bivi kit so getting on the route and being slow was not something we could afford to do. I handed him a drink and he promptly dropped it in the snow, complaining that his hands were tingling and he couldn’t make a fist (not good for holding ice axes…). The decision was clear and was reinforced five minutes later when he threw up his new years day breakfast… three times. The rest of new years day was spent throwing up (for Nick), sleeping (for me) and walking out very slowly.

I skied the Vallee Blanche the following day with Alastair Robertson, a friend from Scotland. A nice end to his week-long ski trip.

Radio One says that a vomitting bug is sweeping the UK, and that if you have it then it is so infectious you will pass it on. So far Kenton and I (who share a flat with Nick) have avoided it, fingers crossed it stays that way.

Weather now a bit nasty so I’m taking the opportunity to do some work for my Msc.