Lattery telegraphed from Courmayeur, the Italian village just across the chain of Mont Blanc: "Starting now by Col du Geant and Col des Nantillons." The Col du Geant is the most frequented pass across the chain, and no doubt the easiest.

Once past its great ice-fall, the glacier leads without difficulty to the Montanvert hotel and Chamonix.

But the Col des Nantillons is another affair.

Having passed the ice-fall, and when within two hours of the Montanvert, Lattery had turned to the left and had made for the great wall of precipitous rock which forms the western side of the valley through which the Glacier du Geant flows down, the wall from which spring the peaks of the Dent du Requin, the Aiguille du Plan, the Aiguille de Blaitiere, the Grepon and the Charmoz.

Here and there the ridge sinks between the peaks, and one such depression between the Aiguille de Blaitiere and the Aiguille du Grepon is called the Col des Nantillons.