Men versus mountain

That a surveyor from the Midlands should step where even the tough mountainmen of the Alps had feared to tread is remarkable enough. But the best bit is that he did it in tweed. Yep, forget breathable fabrics, and polycarbonate helmets; William was dressed like a farmer on a pheasant shoot – complete with tie, waistcoat, hobnail boots...and hipflask.

He may have been forgotten here, but to the people of Pralognan-la-Vanoise, the village huddled in the shadow of that mountain, he is still a hero – whose feat is celebrated by dapper mountain guides, who recreate his feat by dressing up as Victorian countrymen and clambering to the top of the ridge which bears his name – Mathews Peak. Which is only right, seeing as it was Mathews’s sartorially splendid scramble up those treacherous slopes, with local guides Etienne Favre and Michel Croz, which turned this quiet, if breathtaking, corner of Savoie into a Mecca for mountaineers.

This land of sheer rock, creaking ice and towering summits is now the playground of craggy-faced adrenaline junkies, who come to pit their wits against some of the most challenging scenery in Europe.

Where better, then, to take my first crampon-clad steps into the rarefied world of Alpine mountaineering?

A sucker for a challenge – even one I clearly wasn’t up to – it didn’t take much to convince me to give it a go. And, after a ludicrously easy train ride from Oxford to Moûtiers, in the heart of the Alps (changing in London, Paris and Chambéry, and arriving in the late afternoon the same day) I met up with my climbing buddies for a trip into thin air.

As one of the highest peaks in the Alps, the Grande Casse is a mountain which deserves respect, but still offers a sporting trip to the experienced climber. And my friends, all hardened Alpinists, were eager to get their ice axes stuck into its vertiginous flanks.

Having done most of my climbing among the cliffs and caves of the Peak District and Yorkshire, however, I set my sights on the lower summit of its neighbouring peak – La Réchasse.

This is no wander through the Cotswolds, though. At 10,500ft the razor-like ridge of the Réchasse is still a very bad boy indeed – involving a stiff roped ascent, vertical climb and a good crunch over the empty wilderness of the Vanoise glacier which grinds against it.

A good job then, that Pralognan is also the base for an able army of mountain guides, Compagnie des Guides de la Vanoise, including the descendents of Mathews’s own guides Favre and Croz, who will all but carry you to the top – and keep you laughing!

My guide Bernard is a natural comedian, with a glacier-white toothy grin, a pocket full of cheese and a flask of sweet black tea. He also knows every crack and boulder of these mountains – which is just as well as, to avoid the risk of avalanche, all climbs begin before dawn. In other words: in the dark.

First, though, you’ve got to get there. To reach the glacier at the foot of the mountains involves a good afternoon’s hike from the village. You can skip the first few hundred feet, though, by hopping on to a chairlift (yes, the slopes are also a skier’s paradise in the winter). The trail, a walkers’ delight, takes you through lush Alpine meadows, past clear mountain lakes and over streams of glacial meltwater, up into the solitude of the Vanoise National Park – a pristine wilderness where the only inhabitants are chamois, ibex, lynx, golden eagles and marmots – squeaking ground squirrels with comedy front teeth and an endearing habit of taking it in turns to pop up meerkat-style from their burrows to stare you out.

The trail leads to the Col de la Vanoise, where a rustic stone-built lodge, or ‘refuge’, serves as base camp.

If, like me, you spent your formative years ambling around youth hostels, you’ll feel right at home with the boot store, drying room, functional dorms, and communal dining area. But there the similarity ends. This, after all, is France, so forget beans on toast and mugs of cocoa. Here the food is not only plentiful but delicious – and is washed down with pitchers of full-bodied red wine and good coffee – and accompanied by tales of high-altitude exploits. Okay, it’s not Michelin-star material, but for a mountain hut beside a glacier, where the only power comes from a generator and candles, it’s surprisingly good – though it would take a foolhardy climber to hit the merlot too heavily, especially with a 5am start.

Booted, kitted out in harness and crampons, and roped to my climbing mate, we were well up the mountain when the first shafts of sunlight turned the surrounding peaks a fiery orange. By the time we reached the top, scrambling up a cliff of black rock and along the ridge, the slopes were saturated in acid colours – blinding white ice, cobalt blue sky and glowing rows of pinnacles – stretching back to the daddy of them all, Mont Blanc.

For 360 degrees there is nothing. Emptiness; a pristine snowy expanse of jagged peaks and mist-filled valleys with not a single sign of human life. And it is silent.

“Sometimes you can hear the ice creak. Otherwise it is totally quiet. This is why I love it,” says Bernard, before pretending to disappear into a snow hole, then taking off his crampons and sliding down the glacier on his back. I choose to linger though, taking in the majesty of it all – and watching my exhilarated friends snaking slowly down the Grande Casse, as they made their own descent, across the col.

It looks, and sounds, the same as it did when Mathews first swung his antique ice axe up here and, indeed, as it did millions of years before. And where else can you say that?

It was impossible not to feel a sense of huge privilege to be allowed to stand there – and even more satisfying to know that for as long as mountainmen like Bernard are looking after it, it will never change.

Mathews would be proud.

GETTING THERE

• Take the train to London, change for the Eurostar to Paris, then take the TGV to Moûtiers
• Alternatively fly into Geneva.

• Climbing: Hit the mountains with the Compagnie des Guides de la Vanoise cieguidevanoise.com/ You can hire most of the kit you need at the many equipment shops in Pralognan.

STAYING THERE

• Stay at the cosy, wooden Hotel de la Vanoise in Pralognan: hoteldelavanoise.fr/ (+33 479 087034), which has excellent hearty food, a bar, sauna, spa bath – and a games room with pinball.

• On the mountain, stay at the Refuge de Col de la Vanoise (altitude 2516 metres): refuges-vanoise.com/portail/ (+33 479 082523)

  WHAT ELSE?

• If you don’t want to hit the mountains, or fancy hanging around afterwards, you can try your hand at zip-lining, mountain biking, explore waterfalls and woods, or perfect your climbing technique on the via ferrata – a pegged-out route along the rockface. Alternatively you can lounge around in the impossibly picturesque village of Pralognan, where you’ll feel like you’ve walked into the pages of Heidi.

WEB LINKS

• Savoie Mont Blanc Tourism: savoie-mont-blanc.com (+33 450 239600) for information about visiting the French Alps in both winter and summer.

• Pralognan-la-Vanoise: pralognan.com (+33 479 087908)