Conquistadors of the Useless (25 page)

Leaning out from the rock, holding on with my fingertips and the very ends of my boot-soles, I got up over halfway. At this point the wrinkles got farther apart, but by cramping my fingers on to the holds as hard as I could I managed another five feet or so. The ledge was now very close. When I stretched up I could almost touch it, but my holds were so small that I found I could not let go with one hand without starting to fall back. I could feel myself tiring, and had clearly reached the point of no return. Rather than drop off the wall like a ripe fruit I decided to gamble all. Remembering a technique used on the boulders at Fontainebleau I brought my feet as high up as possible, then bounded upwards, reaching out with my right hand as I did so. My fingers seized the edge of the ledge, and a moment later my left hand was there also. In a flash I realised that the hold was good enough, and a wave of euphoria passed over me. My feet hung clear for a second, then with a jerk and a twist I was up. Once again luck had been on my side.

Panting on all fours on the ledge I savoured the pleasures of security, where a moment before I had felt the abyss pulling me down by the heels. Then I came back to the present and began to examine my surroundings. Only then did I realise the full precariousness of my situation. I stood on a ledge perhaps three feet by three feet, but much good it did me when all around the rock was smooth and featureless.

To try this kind of thing one must at least have a good peg in for security, but I couldn't even find the smallest crack. Could I do it on sheer ‘uplift' like the last bit? A few wrinkles made me wonder for a moment or two, but I was still tired from my previous efforts and anyway the divine madness had now worn off. I no longer felt the sensation of superhuman powers which enables one to confront such risks. There was nothing else for it but to go back down.

It was all very well to say turn back, but how was I going to do it? There were no spikes of rock or cracks in the vicinity where one could place a rappel. I was caught in a trap. Overcome with fear and anger I stamped up and down the ledge, but quickly returned to my senses. Perhaps I could hack out a little spike on the edge of the platform with my peg-hammer? As I bent down to have a look I saw the solution: hidden by dust in the angle between the ledge and the face was a tiny crack which, with a bit of luck, would just take an ‘extra-plat'.
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The thinnest one I had went in about half way, but by hammering it down against the floor of the ledge it was possible to make it mechanically sound. It looked pretty depressing, but logically it ought to be all right. Anyway, since there was no alternative, it just had to be tried.

I quickly tied a loop of abseil-cord to the peg, then arranged a rappel with one half of the climbing rope. I remained tied on in the middle, and Louis assured me with the other end, if one could call such an arrangement assurance at all. Just as I was about to suspend myself from the contraption I felt my whole being revolt at the idea, but I pushed myself backwards with the whole force of my will ... nothing happened. It really takes surprisingly little to hold the weight of a man! With beating heart I let myself slide down the rope, the face overhung to such an extent that I immediately swung clear into space. I was dangling like a spider: where would I fetch up? After swinging to and fro a few times I managed to get back to the grotto.

Time had flown in the heat of battle, and now I suddenly noticed that we were enveloped in thick fog. There was also a curious pattering sound like hail on rock, though none seemed to be falling until we looked away from the face. Then we realised that we were sheltered by the overhangs. Twenty feet out from where we stood the hail was coming down in sheets. Was this the advent of really bad weather or just a short evening shower? Surely it had been too fine to change as quickly as this.

I now had to decide whether to traverse back to Lachenal and attempt the waterfall after all. If I could surmount the overhang which had stopped me before it would certainly be a more comfortable way of doing things, and after so much time already wasted another minute or two would be neither here nor there. I decided to have another try. Steeling my will, I made a couple of swift moves up the loose blocks. They duly collapsed under my weight, but by then I had an arm jammed in the crack above. It was a fight to the death: and at the precise moment that I felt my weight dragging me back a flailing foot landed on a hold and pushed me up a few inches, just sufficient to enable me to grab a hold. My luck had turned, and with a tremendous heave I mantelshelfed into a small cave.

Without wasting another moment I hauled up the sacks and then Lachenal, who was glad of some help with the rope. When he got to me he exclaimed:

‘What a bastard of an overhang! You had a nerve to try it. I never thought you'd make it, you were fighting like hell and getting nowhere. A good thing you had a bit in reserve.'

There wasn't much room in the cave for two, and I made haste to get out of it. After some vacillating I succeeded in traversing to the left; the going then became much easier and I soon reached the top of the waterfall chimney. The sacks now jammed under an overhang, and at first it seemed as though nothing was going to get them clear. Finally I managed it and hauled them to me. Without even taking the time to put on my crampons I sprang at the next pitch, a thirty-foot wall covered in ice. Fortunately the ice was very porous, and it was not too difficult to hack holds in it with my piton hammer. This led to another waterfall chimney about twenty feet high. A huge mass of ice had formed around it, and the water ran down a sort of tunnel in the middle. In my attempt to make up time I once again neglected to don crampons. Huge holes in the ice served for holds, and it did not take long to reach the exit of the chimney, but at this point the ice became hard and slippery. The absence of crampons now really made itself felt, but I had to get up somehow. By nicking out pockets in the ice with the peg hammer I was able to make insecure progress, but several times it seemed as though I might come off. Providence was on my side that day.

Spouts from the waterfall kept breaking over me. Despite the waterproof cape I was blinded and half in the water, which came in through the seams, down my neck and along my sleeves. Eventually I climbed out into a wide ice gully, and there, just where I needed it, was an old piton to which I could tie myself while hauling the sacks and bringing up my partner. When he reached me we looked at the time: it was nearly six o'clock.

We both looked like drowned rats, but it was no time for mutual commiseration. The place where we stood was exposed to stone fall, and we were still far from easy ground. The next thing was to traverse across on little nicks to the rock spine which formed the true right bank of the gully. Here everything got easier again, and we pushed on as fast as possible. It was still hailing hard, and thunder could be heard in the distance. We hoped it was only a local storm, but it was certainly very worrying. Since our dramatic ascent of the Walker we were only too uncomfortably aware of how dangerous it was to be caught by storm on a high face. At all costs we must get the worst of the difficulties behind us that evening. This didn't seem an impossible task – we should reach the Spider in two hours, and another two hours from there ought to see us on the top.

After a while we found a ledge on our right which appeared to end in a vertical sixty-foot wall, and I immediately set off along it, moving delicately over rock like piled-up crockery, Louis, however, reckoned that the traverse must start higher up the couloir, and called me back. I retorted that this was exactly like the aerial photo we had seen of the four men traversing during the first ascent, but he argued that this ledge was so situated that it couldn't be photographed from the air at all. My dislike of argument made me give in as usual. Convinced that he was heading into a blind alley, I suggested that he climb up a bit and have a look. After forty feet he came across a duralumin piton. It seemed obvious to me that this had served to protect a retreat, but he heaped noisy sarcasms on my head at the very idea, particularly as there was a sort of uninviting traverse line at his own level.

He was off again, without leaving me time to argue, along a delicate ascending traverse on horribly loose rock. It was getting dark, and when my turn came I did not take out all the pitons in order to save time. Fifty feet higher there seemed to be a terrace of some kind which it looked as though we could reach. Excited at the prospect I led straight through, but after thirty feet came up against extreme difficulties. Lachenal then tried a bit farther to the left, climbing with his usual agility. Soon afterwards he called down:

‘Another ten feet and I'm there.'

Almost at once, however, all movement ceased, and he started to curse.

‘Just a little high voltage and I'd be there, but the pegs are all so loose it's too dangerous. It might go over on the left: I'll have a look.' Through the murk and the gathering darkness I saw him descend a little, then disappear round a corner. We were in a sort of Scotch mist. Everything I had on was drenched, and I began to freeze with the inaction. The rope had stopped running out some time ago, and sounds of hammering and falling rocks showed that Louis was in trouble. The atmosphere was depressing in the extreme. Cramped to the face in the foggy dusk I felt utterly alone, and my determination began to melt like sugar in the rain. Suddenly I heard a strangled cry and a heavy sound of stones. Faster than thought I braced myself to take the strain of a fall, but nothing happened. I shouted up:

‘Louis, what's going on?'

After a moment a panting voice replied:

‘I pulled off a big piece of rock, but I just managed to grab something else in time. Don't worry, it'll go now.'

So our lives had been saved only by Lachenal's lightning fast reaction! Suddenly the full seriousness of our position came home to me, and my whole being revolted against this mad nocturnal climbing. I called out pleadingly:

‘For pity's sake, Lili, don't push it. If you go on like this we'll have an accident. We've got to get back into the couloir before there's no light left at all.'

Louis grumbled that the pitch would be easier now the loose rock was gone, and that there was a ledge above him, but the conviction had gone out of his voice and I sensed that he was half won round. This time I refused to give way, and shouted back:

‘You silly bugger, if you won't come back I'm not going to give you an inch of slack. You can damn well bivouac where you are.'

This argument seemed to convince him, because he thereupon climbed back down to me. It was now ten o'clock at night, and the darkness was almost total. By feeling around I found a crack which might take a piton, and after several tries succeeded in hammering one home. We unroped and installed a rappel. Louis went down first, and I was just starting to follow him when at the precise moment my weight came on the rope the piton came out. I just managed to grab the rock in time. A shiver ran through me from head to foot, but after a few moments of confusion I managed to pull myself together. I forced myself to bang in another peg, but by now I was working in pitch darkness and the rock was so rotten that it just broke up under my blows. After several futile attempts I came back to the original crack and inserted a rather thicker peg than the previous one. It seemed all right, but all my confidence had drained away. Rigid with fear and not daring to trust all my weight to such a dubious point of support, I tried to climb down while still keeping the rope round me in a rappel position. This is in fact always a bad idea, and after only a few feet I slipped and came heavily on the rope. For a moment I thought the worst had happened, but in the event the peg stood up perfectly to the strain and I abseiled back to Lachenal in normal fashion.

We now had to abseil again, but this time on two really sound pegs. The situation remained serious for all that because we were above the wall which overhung the ramp, and we were painfully aware of the fact that our rope was too short to reach it. This meant that we had in effect to reverse the difficult ascending traverse, an operation which, between the darkness and the rotten rock, turned out to be delicate in the extreme. If either of us came off we would dangle under the overhangs, a position from which it would not be easy to get back.

Once again Lachenal went down first. Conscious of the danger he moved slowly, making the most of his dexterity. These moments were almost unbearable to me, alone and motionless in the dark. Finally there came a cry of joy: he had reached one of the pegs I had left in on the way up, and the click of a karabiner told me he had clipped one of the ropes into it. But he had to reach the second peg before he was out of the wood. Finally another click told me he was there, and shortly afterwards he called to me to follow. My own descent was easy due to being held through the pegs from below.

I had noticed certain rather indefinite balconies on the true right bank of the couloir on the way up, and I now suggested we try to regain them. We eventually found a place where we could sit down about midnight. Exhausted as we were, it took an enormous effort of will to arrange the necessary minimum of safety and comfort. We were soaked to the skin and shivering with cold, and the thought of pulling on a nice dry quilted jacket did one good. I stripped to the waist in the icy drizzle and drew mine on with a feeling of positive luxury. It had remained perfectly dry, rolled up in my rubberised elephant's foot.

Unfortunately Lili had not taken the same precautions, and his down-filled jacket turned out to be no better than a saturated sponge. Even after he had wrung it out it had lost all its warmth, and there was no doubt but that he would pass a chilly night. Eventually, by dint of throwing down some stones and building up others, we evolved tolerable positions some twenty feet apart from each other. I wasn't in the least bit hungry, but I forced myself to eat in order to conserve my strength. I recommended Louis to do the same, but he could hardly choke down more than a mouthful or two.