Most of the 11,000 or so people who attempt to climb Mont Blanc each summer by the Goûter Ridge Route try to catch a ride on the first cable car of the morning from Les Houches to Bellevue. This is prudent: it's still a long climb from the mountain station to the overnight refuge of Goûter, where places are limited. And you want to get across the Grand Couloir before the big rocks start barreling down late in the day, after the sun has loosened the snow's grip on them. But Christophe Profit, the guide I've secured for my ascent of Western Europe's highest peak, will have none of it. We get to Les Houches after the crowd has gone. We have one coffee at the bottom of the lift and another at the top. Only then, with calm deliberation and a modicum of caffeine, do we start on the day's 2,000-m vertical climb which will set us up, before dawn the next morning, for our quest to reach the summit.

Profit, 43, is not one for convention. One of France's greatest living mountaineers, he unwittingly embodies what he calls "le style anglais": the mix of adventurousness, confidence and will that some Englishmen brought to the Chamonix Valley in the 19th century, much as others did to the exploration of Africa or the Polar regions. In the village of Chamonix, their spirit joined up with the skill and knowledge of local guides, and the sport of mountaineering, or more precisely alpinisme, was born.

Mont Blanc, whose 4,808-m arching, snow-covered summit sets the mood every day in Chamonix, is not an especially difficult climb, yet it's the highest Alp. That combination makes it a favorite mountain for novices, many of whom ought not to try it. Some succeed more by dumb luck than skill; some are injured; a few die. I too am a novice—I had hiked up 4,418-m Mount Whitney in the Sierra Nevadas, but Mont Blanc stands for far more than just another 400 m in altitude; in technique and tradition, it represents a whole different level, one I'd long wanted to test. So I spent a week learn- ing the basics of walking on crampons, setting an ice ax, and adjusting to altitude above the magic number of 4,000 m, where stark beauty and inhospitality become indistinguishable.

For an hour and a half we hiked steadily along the tracks of the cogged railway that, once snow free, will carry climbers to Nid d'Aigle (Eagle's Nest). The traffic was light: a fit father and son from Calgary and, at the burned-out restaurant by the railroad's terminus, a group of five Poles, the oldest among them smoking dolefully. Instead of rushing up with them to eat with the 80 or so other guests at the Goûter refuge, Christophe veered off across a snowy plain to pay a visit to the new gardien of the Tête Rousse refuge, another of the climbers' huts that dot the Mont Blanc massif. There in midafternoon we enjoyed the most perfect omelettes imaginable, the eggs thickened with cream and chunks of potato and bacon. After that respite we headed back out for the most serious part of the day's journey: up and across the Grand Couloir. We traversed it as quickly as we could and were relieved to get our hands on the rocks of the steep arête that leads to the refuge itself.

When we arrived at Goûter in the early evening, dinner was over and most of the climbers were already abed: wake-up call for the march to the summit would come at 2 a.m. We got to eat with the staff in the kitchen: pork with prunes, noodles au gratin and wine. The talk centered on how impossible it has become to manage traffic on the mountain. Goûter is designed to sleep 100 people, 120 in a pinch. Yet on the right summer day as many as 400 people assault Mont Blanc, most on the easiest route via Goûter. This has led to wildcat bivouacs outside the hut and serious sanitation issues made obvious against the once-white snow.

Getting a place to stay is the only bureaucratic hassle facing would-be climbers. France is a highly regulated society, but climbing remains a strictly personal responsibility. If some idiot in tennis shoes and shorts comes puffing up the mountain, nobody can force him back. There is a price for this freedom. Every season the rescue squad intervenes more than 100 times, and the mountain claims at least a dozen lives.