The build up to the climb had been smooth. He says: “I’d been training all year. I’d had a good week beforehand. The first pitch was jet black and there was a gully with a huge snow plug in it. The size of a house.”

I was still trying to figure out the logistics of climbing in complete darkness as Wakeford continued: “I found the way around this ground and it felt good, you know?”

I didn’t. But I could tell by the expression on his face that this was the kind of thing mountaineers came here for, to figure out puzzles and work out routes. The mountains are like one giant crossword to them.

He goes on: “Then the guys followed up. We were pushing fast, pushing hard in the big hills, everyone does it. You’re [feeling] confident [on the] terrain, you’re not putting as much gear in, just to move faster.”

While Wakeford hung upside down, his friends tried to call mountain rescue, but it wasn’t straight-forward.

“They said: ‘We’ve tried but we can’t get through. We don’t have signal.’ I luckily still had my British SIM card in. We were on the Italian border and I got an Italian phone network and phoned the PGHM (helicopter rescue), but about five seconds into the conversation I thought, ‘This is too much for me…’”

“They spent ages on the phone. Asking us what we were secured into. And we were like: ‘Get the chopper out now!’”

“A few minutes later you hear the helicopters coming and it’s unbelievable. You’re in this horrendous situation and they are coming to pluck you from the mountain.”

“A guy comes in on a wire hung from the helicopter, he just takes a glance at our situation and leans over, clips into our rig and the wire flies off. That’s why they wanted to know about what were clipped into…”

Chamonix PGHM (Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne), the helicopter rescue service, performs hundreds of rescues every year. They’re an incredibly experienced team who make it their life’s work to save lives on the mountain. You’d think they might get tired of risking their lives all the time, especially saving people who should know better, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Wakeford says: “The helicopter winchman was Mathieu, he’s a mate of mine now. That helicopter ride was the last good bit of the whole experience.”

Perhaps PGHM have something in common with people like Wakeford. It’s not as if he isn’t an experienced climber. He knew what he was doing and he knew what needed to be done to complete the route. There is a mutual respect and admiration among those in the mountains who push themselves the way both PGHM and Steve do.