From a hotel in the Chamonix Valley, I looked out as the August morning sun lit up the highest mountain in western Europe. Situated in an already magnificent part of the Western Alps, Mont Blanc is a snow covered monstrosity in its own right. Some ten miles wide, 30 miles long, and at an elevation of 15,766ft it's a massif of ice and granite wholly impossible to see completely from the ground. I stood at the window from my hotel room looking at it equally with excitement and trepidation at how the coming days would unfold.