Dani Pedrosa, Marc Coma and Héctor Barberá are not exactly on vacation. They have ventured into the challenge posed by Jesus Calleja in the Cuatro program "Extreme Challenge" and yesterday they have crowned neither more nor less than Mont Blanc. Did anyone doubt that these pilots are put at risk?
In totally adverse weather conditions, the expedition left the Gouter refuge at 4:00 am to cross the 1,000 meters that separated them from the top. They reached the summit after four and a half hours of ascent, and tonight they will already be in Chamonix, to return to their homes tomorrow.
The adverse weather conditions made the expedition have to hurry to reach the top, since the arrival in the area of a polar front put the expedition at serious risk. It was not exactly a bed of roses …
It was a very difficult ascent due to the difficult weather conditions. The pilots converted to mountaineers had to face r achas of wind that reached 70 km / h and a thermal sensation of 35ºC below zero. The group ascended on a rope, passing narrow ledges, about 40 cm wide, with chasms on both sides and the icy wind loaded with chunks of ice hitting them hard.
The attack to the top (all equipped with crampons and ice axes) was made in three ropes, with Jesús Calleja at the head of the first, with Héctor Barberá, Dani Pedrosa, and Enrique Calleja closing the way. Marc Coma was in the second rope with Emilio Valdés, the cameraman; and the third was made up of Adolfo López, Jesús López and David Martínez Pato, Repsol's Press Officer.
The expedition reached the summit in two groups. The first two ropes reached the summit at 8:30 am, and the third fifteen minutes later.
In particular, Dani Pedrosa and Héctor Barberá had quite a few problems due to the cold, both with loss of sensation in their hands and feet, and Marc Coma, although he also had a bad time, did not suffer as much as his teammates. On the same night that they reached the top of Mont Blanc, which is 4,810 meters high, only 25% of the 74 people who attempted the summit managed to reach it. They were all expert mountaineers, except for the three riders, who kept going despite the harsh weather conditions and being their first big mountain.
After reaching the top, the descent lasted another two hours to Gouter, where they rested for an hour before facing the gorge known as "The ravine of death", a descent in which there is great danger of an avalanche of stones to go down to the refuge of Tête Rousse (3,167 meters), where they have spent the night. Today the expedition returned to Chamonix, where they will spend one last night before returning to their homes.
