Conquistadors of the Useless (19 page)

We had hardly sat down when a violent storm began. Hailstones like marbles forced us to protect our heads with our hands. After a bit the calibre fortunately diminished, and I took advantage of the lull to get going on the food, devouring bacon, butter, cheese, dried fruit and Ovomaltine. Lachenal was not hungry, and I had to force him to take something to keep his strength up. Torrents of hailstones were still breaking over our arête, and although we were out of the main stream we had to keep clearing them away as they piled up against our backs, pushing us outwards. But despite the fury of the elements, the continuing hail, the noise of thunder and falling stones, and despite our uncomfortable position on one buttock, squeezed up against each other with our feet swinging in the air, the night gradually crept by. We passed the time alternately singing anything that came into our heads and discussing our chances of getting through alive. I felt that the situation was not without hope, because a good storm often clears the air and it might be fine next day. Lachenal thought that in any case we were near enough to the top to receive help if necessary. All this is not to say that we were not extremely worried, but somehow something told us that we would win through. We kept in quite good spirits, therefore, and my own love of adventure was so strong that in my deepest self I was not sorry to have lived through such an exceptional experience.

The storm died down towards morning, and in spite of the cold we dozed off. A dismal, freezing dawn revealed our situation for the first time as truly dramatic. It was impossible to gauge our position on the face because of the swirling clouds that cloaked and distorted everything. The next part of the couloir was just like what we had climbed the day before, but it had been covered in hail during the night and now the biting cold had transformed it into a sheet of black ice. From the very first move it became obvious that it would be impossible to climb in vibrams, but, by a stroke of luck, I had brought along one pair of crampons on the advice of Pierre Allain. There was only one possible solution: to climb the slabs in crampons, trying to get over to the left on to the proper route as we went. Still wearing my cape and quilted jacket I set out to try my luck, filled with the energy of despair. It was delicate and dangerous work. The only points of contact for the feet were the two front spikes of the crampons, which frequently had to be placed on minuscule holds while my numbed hands painfully cleared the rock ahead. The pitons never went in more than half an inch, and were so loose that Lachenal was able to pick them out casually with his hands. Every movement was a feat in itself. I was continually at my limit, and the best I could do for my partner, whose rubber-shod feet kept skidding off, was to help him keep his balance by holding the rope as tight as I could. There would have been no question of holding a real fall, and we only got up this part of the climb alive thanks to his exceptional class.

For all my efforts I could not manage to traverse left, and in the end I was even forced in the opposite direction on to an ice slope, up which we notched little pockets. I was literally obsessed with the need to hurry, because if it once came on to snow that would be the end of us. This ruthless concentration enabled me to overcome obstacles that I would not even have considered in normal circumstances. In a sense it was rather like the time I had been caught in an avalanche and had been forced to swim desperately to get back to the surface: there was the same fantastic surge of unsuspected forces, the same cold-blooded summing up of the situation. So now I followed lines of least resistance almost more in a spirit of curiosity than of trepidation, though I was quite clear in my own mind that it would probably be impossible to reverse them.

Finally we came up against a vertical wall split by a huge chimney. The small part we could see looked climbable, so we proceeded to bury ourselves in its depths. The clouds thinned out for a few minutes, and we made the most of our relatively secure position to look down at where we had come from and where we had gone wrong, imprinting it on our memories. Then we climbed on again, finding it all as desperate as ever: a succession of overhanging chimneys choked with loose boulders, interspersed with short, deceptively easy-looking couloirs. The walls of the chimneys sloped away from each other unpleasantly, calling for great efforts, and sometimes for all-out artificial climbing. The rock was so rotten and the pitons gripped so badly that sometimes I took half an hour to gain only a few feet. At these times Lachenal was in the less enviable position, constantly running the risk of being brained by the stones I could not help knocking off, despite the greatest precautions. His prodigious agility enabled him to dodge most of them, but one block twice the size of a man's fist scored a direct hit on his head. Miraculously he was only knocked out for a couple of minutes. Sometimes he would have to spend a whole hour hanging from a peg by his waistloop, racked by cramps and deprived of the physical and mental heat which the leader generates in the battle. But he bore up wonderfully. Shivering with cold, dodging the stones, but still smiling and jovial, he never ceased to encourage me, referring frequently to a certain slap-up meal we were going to have before long.

Above each overhang I kept hoping to find easy ground at last, but I was constantly disappointed. Each time it would turn out to be a slab with small, friable holds, all covered in rime and verglas, and each time I would have to do a dangerous balancing act in which I would succeed only at the price of running enormous risks.
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The climbing was physical torture, too. My hands were so cold that I constantly had to beat them raw to get any feeling back, and as for my feet it was so long since I had felt anything in them that I had given up bothering. Terrible cramps in my calves, thighs, neck and left arm added to the uncertainty of my progress. But worst of all was the unending fear (that at any moment we might come up against some unclimbable overhang, beneath which we would die slowly of cold and hunger. By this time I was climbing like an automaton, in a kind of trance. Every pitch provided some sort of peril from which we only escaped by a miracle. Once, a huge flake of rock slid off as I passed, almost touching Lachenal as it whizzed by. In another place I had just crossed a smooth slab, and shouted to him to pendulum across to me. As he did so the spike of rock round which he had placed the rope broke off. Luckily the rope flicked round my wrist as he fell. As the strain came on me I was pulled outwards inexorably … but managed to hold on. Farther on we came to an overhang capped with snow. I pushed the shaft of my ice axe into it and was pulling up when it gave way, and I landed on another lump of snow ten feet lower down. Fortunately this one held.

At last the cloud thinned for an instant, and a few feet above us I could see the vapour being blown by a strong south wind. The summit ridge must be just beyond this last overhang – another eighty or ninety feet and we should be there. All at once my nerves, too long stretched to breaking-point, seemed to go slack: I became aware of all the clangers that surrounded me and was almost paralysed with fear and fatigue. That last pitch seemed to me the hardest of the whole lot, though in fact it was relatively easy, and I only got up it thanks to a ridiculous number of pitons. Pulling out through strong gusts of wind on to the snowy ridge I felt no well-defined emotions, only the impression of having done with a repeating dream. Months of preparing and dedication thus found their consummation on this perfectly unremarkable patch of snow. Who can say that happiness lies not in desire but in possession? The adventure was finished, a page of my life had turned over, and already, staggering slightly, I was swallowed up by the mist.

Up to the time of our ascent of the Walker, Lachenal and I had always been rather modest in our mountain ambitions. The mightiest alpine walls attracted us by their grandiose wildness and the adventurous character of their ascents, but they still seemed a fearful world, hostile to the presence of man. Face to face with the last great problems of the Alps we were far from possessing the quiet confidence of a Rébuffat or the exuberant cocksureness of certain very gifted young climbers. On the contrary, we were timid and uncertain of ourselves. It certainly never occurred to us that we might be good enough to triumph over obstacles so far above the human scale. Our success on the Grandes Jorasses gave us a better idea of our possibilities. In spite of bad weather and of losing the way we had done the climb in a considerably shorter time than anybody else before us, and it is interesting to note that even today, with all the improvements in training-methods and equipment, only five or six out of some twenty-five ascents of the Walker have been completed in a shorter time than ours.

From this time on we knew that, even if our lack of opportunity to practise prevented us from becoming virtuoso ‘XS men', the frequency and intensiveness of our high mountain climbing had given us an almost unrivalled rapidity on only slightly easier rock, as well as on ice or on mixed ground.
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Further, we climbed very much better together than either of us did apart. Our differing characters and physical aptitudes complemented each other, each of us making up for the other's weaknesses.

Lachenal was by far the fastest and most brilliant climber I have ever known on delicate or loose terrain. His dexterity was phenomenal, his vitality like that of a wild beast, and his bravery amounted almost to unawareness of danger. On his day he was capable of something very like genius, but strenuous pitches gave him trouble, and above all he was unpredictable. Perhaps because of his very impulsiveness and incredible optimism he lacked patience, perseverance and forethought. He also suffered from a bad sense of direction.

For myself, I was the less gifted partner on any kind of ground; but I had more stamina and was stronger, more obstinate and more reflective. I suppose I was the moderating element in the team, but it also seems to me that I gave it the stability and solidity necessary for the really major undertakings.

After the Walker we felt that our rope, united by a close bond of friendship, was ready to try anything the western Alps had to offer.

My feet had been mildly frostbitten on the Jorasses, and up to the end of September I had all I could do to carry on with my job. Gradually the swelling and the pain diminished, and by early October I was practically cured. Courses were over for the time being at both the E.N.S.A. and the Collège des Praz, and the weather was set fair. We were in no way satiated by our long months of intensive activity – rather the peaks seemed more wonderful to us than ever through the limpid air of those autumn days. Why suffocate among the fogs and clatter of the valley when a world of incorruptible purity was waiting for us up there? Having seen rather a lot of the Mont Blanc range in recent months we decided to make the most of this Indian summer by trying some of the great Swiss climbs.

After a visit to Lachenal's in-laws at Lausanne we set out for the Argentine to get a bit of practice at limestone climbing. While Louis took his father-in-law up one of the classic routes, the excellent Genevan climber Tomy Girard and I made the second ascent of the hardest climb on the crag, the Grand Dièdre. Next, we went up the Rhone valley to the south-east ridge of the Bietschhorn, a beautiful ascent of grade V standard that we had heard much about.

By this time we were so fit and acclimatised, both mentally and physically, to living in high mountains, that we had virtually overcome the normal human lack of adaptation to such surroundings. Our ease and rapidity of movement had become in a sense unnatural, and we had practically evolved into a new kind of alpine animal, half way between the monkey and the mountain goat. We could run uphill for hours, climb faces as though they were step-ladders, and rush down gullies in apparent defiance of the laws of gravity. The majority of climbs seemed child's play, which we could do without any particular effort in half or a third of the time taken by a good ordinary party. The Bietschhorn ridge gave a spectacular example of this ‘over-mastery'. We set out shortly before dawn and reached the top in five hours of unhurried climbing. The sky was of that perfect blue which only comes in autumn, and all around us the mighty shapes of the Oberland and Valais peaks rose dazzlingly above the dreary plains. On our remote summit, life seemed so far away that it might never have existed. Nothing betrayed the presence of man; no barking, no tinkling of cowbells rose to us through the still air. The silence was so absolute that we might have been transported to another planet. We lay there for a long time despite the biting wind, letting the infinite peace sink into us, our muscles still tingling from our recent efforts.

The way down is via the north ridge. After a few minutes we found ourselves going along the top of a steep snow slope on the east face. Lachenal said:

‘Let's go down there. I noticed it from the hut. It's good all the way, and there's hardly any rimaye.'

‘Well, the snow's in perfect condition. If you're sure it runs out at the bottom, why not? It'll be something a bit more out of the ordinary than freezing solid on this confounded ridge,' I replied without hesitation.

And so we turned at once down the fifty-degree slope. The snow was perfect, with the top four or five inches unfrozen but firm, and we went down together without taking any belays. After a few moments Lachenal called out:

‘Why don't we glissade with our crampons on? It works very well on snow like this with a slope of about this angle. Armand Charlet told me he'd done it on the Whymper.'

But, more cautious by nature, I replied: ‘Yes, and what happens if we come to a patch of ice? We'd go head over heels, and goodbye to the pair of us.'

‘Sez you. I tell you I had a good look at it from the hut. There's not a patch of ice on it anywhere.'

And without waiting for my reply, Lachenal let himself go like a skier. I was completely taken by surprise. It was impossible to pull him up without running the risk of being jerked on to my back, in which case I would still have gone down, but not in such good control. There was nothing for it but to take off after him in his daring glissade. One minute later we had made a controlled swoop of a thousand feet. At 11.30 a.m. we were back in the charming Baltschieder hut, deserted as though it had been specially built for us, feeling as fresh as daisies.