Looking concerned....

Think we must have been the team above you on the route. Did you guys get on ok on the top half? What line did you take around the second gendarme?

Climbed the upper snow slopes by torchlight, topping out at around 6pm, but had no real problems on the crux chimney to the LHS of the second gendarme after the little teeter round the RHS of the first (if that's the section you mean..) - the chimney held 2 or 3 good crack placements for tools that made it easier than it first looked!).
Took a couple of detours from your route below the arete for interest's sake, and found a couple of more technical problems - solved by a bit of rock hugging and scratching crampons!

Great stuff! Yeah, that's the section. On the left, just after the second gendarme there appeared to be two groove/chimney features, of which we took the left one (ie the one that had about a foot of rime cleared from it lol!). The one on the right had a crack running down it but a fairly blank left wall. When we looked down and saw you emerge at the start of the easy ground we wondered if you had taken the right-hand of those grooves instead?

We took the beautifully cleaned left hand of the two groove features - Thanks! ...Time was getting on at that stage!