How hard it is to get up at 6:45 a.m.!!! I pack my bag, have breakfast with my mum, and head to Courmayeur where Massimo is waiting for me (I met him a couple of weeks earlier at Col Flambeaux). We ascend at a slow pace towards the ultra-technological Bivacco Gervasutti. The door handle knobs are held together with duct tape, the electricity doesn’t work, and the mattresses are an inch thick and hard as marble… a great start! The place, however, is truly worth it, and the bivouac lounge—suspended over nothing with its huge panoramic window—is wonderful. After a very generous dinner, we go to bed with a 5 a.m. alarm, slightly unsettled by the heavy rain outside. In the morning, however, it is not raining, the wall is dry, and our preliminary inspection of the descent to the glacier takes exactly 45 minutes to reach the start of the route. Yosemite-style dihedrals lead us into the upper part of the wall. To my surprise, I onsight a fully gear-protected grade VII dihedral. Another hard pitch that Massimo climbs masterfully, and the crux is solved. The route should now become easier, but the pitches of the Manera variation—which avoid the horrible couloir where the original Bonatti line goes—are not exactly easy either. From the end of the route, a glance to the left reminds us where we are, and the north face of the Grandes Jorasses wrapped in clouds is a dark omen of what is about to happen. A sudden hailstorm prevents us from taking the usual summit photo, and we start running down the rappels. The ropes get progressively wetter, and retrieving them becomes more and more painful each time. In less than three hours we are back at the bivouac, soaked. We laugh at our fate and at the accuracy of the forecast on regione.vda.it. The rain shows no sign of stopping. The die is cast: we will sleep here another night. Luckily, food is not lacking. The sun comes out (but won’t last long). We take the opportunity to dry our clothes. The wind, of course, blows away my only pair of underwear… At one point we see two other unlucky climbers arrive, Eugenio and Dario, who will keep us company in the evening and, despite their climbing plans, on the descent in the rain the following morning.