On my first trip to the Alps, along with some great North face ice routes in Zermatt (Lyskamm, Breithorn, d'Herens), the Sentinelle Rouge on Mont Blanc was probably the boldest route that I did.
I teamed up with a South African - Richard Wilmot - who I had met just a few days before we headed up the the bivy hut at the Col de Fourche. We started at 2am, and were on the summit at dawn, in time to see the sunrise. I was moving faster, and so when we got to the face, Richard untied and we third classed the route at our own pace, and I arrived on top 10-15 minutes before him.
Little did I know of the controversy between the two first ascentionists of the three classic routes on the Brenva face: red sentinel, major, and the pear. The story of their breakup in the late 1920s unfolds in the link below.
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