Frederic, 28, an unemployed waiter from Marseille, squinted determinedly at the cloud-shrouded peak with a tent and rucksack.
"I must be up there between midday and two o'clock on Friday," he said earnestly, his brother Laurent, 35, by his side. "A ray of sunlight will pass by all the planets aligned to the Sun and into the rock. At that moment, a passage, a window will open up an inter-dimensional vortex. There is a hole the other side of the summit, about knee height, and we will sit in it. If the passage opens we will pass into another dimension."