Most of the hut got up at the promised 3am to start stern ascents of various peaks. With a less challenging day ahead, and crucially a later bedtime the night before, we had decided that a much later start was fine. Despite this Steve clambered out of bed at 4am having been unable to sleep through the clattering of rucsacs, gear and crampons. When asked if he was aware it was 4am and hence a bit early for us he replied 'I know it bloody is', softening his tone a little he added 'I'm going for a piss'. It would be a fair assessment to say that we didn't get a cracking nights sleep. With breakfast eventually out the way we started our own faff before heading off up the snow slope, overtaking many groups who had taken the early start. We were following an obvious track up the ridge, following it in fact until it became obvious that we had come too far. Unwilling to back track we once again found ourselves casting around for alternative options and hoping for something better than the 'bus shelter' equivalent. It seemed that there was some fixed gear at the top of a very steep snow slope which flattened out into the valley below or a small rocky ridge which we could scramble down. As we were glancing around someone fell from the end of the abseil on the steep slope and slid down but seemed ok. Encouraged that it could go wrong and still turn out fine we went for the abseil. The descent started out going over a crevasse with a gap that promised all manner of bad news for any unfortunate climber who fell in. However, we all got down without mishap and then turned around to take a better look at our alternative path, down the rocky ridge. We breathed a collective sigh of relief as we saw that the ridge got steeper and ended with an overhanging section - not a pleasant route after all.
For the rest of the day we followed the valley down towards Champex. As we dropped height the temperature rose which got us all thinking that we might have over-packed in our rush to get to the airport. When unsure of the exact route we chosen a path at random with the prophetic comment from Steve that 'if you want a guarantee buy a toaster'. In this case the gamble paid off and we got down to the cable car and were soon in town. Being the high season we struggled for a while to find somewhere to stay and we packed light so didn't have tents. Once again the ghost of the bus shelter was about to raise it hand to get some attention when we found a hostel with space.