Next morning, crisp and frozen we set off around the glaciers to avoid the seracs (we would ski right through them on a later trip), and form there it was straight forward up the slope. There was no obvious track but there was not really any navigation issues in the dark.
As the sun came up we were high on the slopes heading to the obvious col, and the hut was disappearing below us.
The summit was everything we expected. The views were fantastic and all the Valais Alps were laid out before us.It was a marvellous place for our final summit of the trip.
From here we trekked over to L'Serpentine and Mt Blanc de Chenion. the views down to Lac Dix and the route were really clear. we were still early enough for the snow to be very frozen.First we had to descend the steep frozen wall with a diagonal traverse.
At this point I ran out of film in the camera, but we dropped down to the lower glacier Dix. from here we could go left to the hut but we still had a long way to go, so we cut across to the base of the ladders .. 100m or so of vertical ladder, to get up to the pass. We took the solo direct route, and soon were breathlessly recovering at the top.
From the col it was straight down the track (in winter a ski trail) to the town and very welcome beer or two in a convenient bar. We would almost do the reverse of this route as a ski tour on the way to Zermatt.
From here it was home ... through Pontarllier to Calais ..
After the trip we had quite a sense of achievement, in that we had achieved a fair amount, but I wondered if we should have stayed at the Gnifetti a few days longer.