Conquistadors of the Useless (31 page)

As I remarked above, during the years which followed my ascent of the Eigerwand I devoted myself more completely to my profession. No doubt this was partly due to a material need, but also I think because my guiding was sufficiently enterprising to absorb a lot of my energy and courage, leaving little hunger for further adventure. The virtues of the profession have been much inflated in books and the Press, and it has become almost a cliché to call it ‘the most dedicated job in the world', an empty phrase which I have also heard applied to medicine, aviation, seafaring, and even bicycle racing. In this women's magazine-story type of literature the guide is always endowed with the most remarkable qualities: not only is his mountain skill positively superhuman, but he is brave, strong, good, honest and generous – a proper little plaster saint. Nothing could be more naive. By the mere fact of being a man no guide could possibly be such a paragon of the virtues. Alpine literature as a whole is, of course, astonishingly conventional, but on the subject of guides it really surpasses itself. If an author isn't lost in a rosy haze of folklore he usually gets completely carried away by his hero's legendary reputation.

Personally I do not know of a single book which treats the subject in objective or even remotely credible fashion. It is quite true that the work calls for genuine physical and mental qualities, and that in order to succeed in it one must be reasonably tough, skilful, bold, and capable of devotion to duty. But whatever the old wives' tales may say, it is by no means necessary to be either a saint or a champion.

Professional climbing has virtually nothing to do with what I call ‘grand alpinisme'; that is to say the passion, crazy or otherwise, for climbing the most improbable crags and peaks. Comparatively few guides go in for this kind of thing. Their work almost invariably involves them the whole time in much easier types of ascent, and it is in fact very difficult to combine the two because, since they both take place during the same short season, they cancel each other out. Guiding is poor practice for the extreme climbs, which demand a specialised and lengthy form of training, and in any case their motivation is so different that they require quite other qualities. Only a fortunate few, usually amateurs turned guide in order to live among the hills, manage to practise both arts satisfactorily, and even then one or the other usually becomes predominant after a few years.

The guide's job is to teach people how to climb, or to lead those who, for one reason or another, cannot or do not wish to confront the dangers of the mountains without a mentor. Thus most of his clients are beginners, weak climbers, or persons whose age or occupation does not permit them to become really fit, but who nevertheless long for adventure among the splendours of the high hills. By definition such persons are incapable of doing the hardest climbs, even behind the most brilliant of guides.

In the majority of cases, therefore, the professional must resign himself to relatively simple ascents. His function is not to break records but to teach a skill, to enable tourists to do climbs which would otherwise be out of the question for them. It is no more relevant to expect a guide to be a virtuoso mountaineer than to expect a physical-training instructor to be a decathlon champion.

These facts are so basic that they are implied in the very regulations governing the profession. There is no need to have done a lot of hard climbs to obtain your diploma. The candidate simply has to have a good all-round experience of the mountains, and to be able to lead the classic routes quickly and safely. As for pure rock climbing, it is sufficient to be able to lead grade IV pitches without any trouble, a level attained by a great many amateurs. The only difficult part to master is necessary facility on mixed ground, snow and ice.

It will be obvious from all this that to become a guide does not call for any really exceptional qualities, and that it requires less tenacity and toughness than ‘grand alpinisme'. But this is far from saying that it is just another job, even in its more humdrum aspects on the ordinary routes. For those who practise it from conviction and love of the game it is still a genuinely noble profession.

Up on the mountain, at the head of his party, the guide is still sole captain under God. He may be poor and in some sense a manual worker, but in his hands he holds the lives and trust of men. To be master of life and death is the privilege of kings, and few influential men dispose of such power. It is the same responsibility that surrounds pilots and ships' captains with their especial glamour. The guide lives in an environment of majesty and splendour where the pettiness and malice of society have no meaning, and it is rare to find one who has failed to absorb something of the largeness of his surroundings. The plaster saint of legend is of course equally rare, but at least you will practically never find a guide with the mentality of a lackey, a tendency which circumstances might well have encouraged.

Like any other human activity, professional mountaineering attracts all sorts: there are good guides and bad guides. The most brilliant technically are by no means always the best at their job. For its proper conduct the work calls more for moral qualities than physical dexterity, and this primacy of mind over matter is one of its main claims to dignity. One of its most attractive sides is, after all, the giving of happiness. A good guide must possess the considerateness to create an atmosphere in which his client can savour his pleasures to the full. Dedication is required not only to aid other mountaineers in distress, but more immediately to help a client to surmount his own weakness. Patience is a necessity, to put up with moving all day at a snail's pace without irritation. Psychological insight plays its part in bringing the tired and discouraged client safely to the journey's end. And only a steady courage can face up day after day to the risks which even the simplest climbs involve in such circumstances.

This does not exhaust the list of necessary qualities. To become and remain a guide, one must have a quite exceptional taste for physical effort, without which no man would be able to continue doing climbs of ten, twelve, fourteen hours, or even more every day in the season. Considerable ingenuity is required to devise ways of avoiding wasted time and effort, and also to make the best profit out of a season replete with activity but terribly restricted in time.

The ordinary routes will always be the daily bread of guiding, but a man with the right qualities has a chance of raising the standard of his work, and a few may even get the opportunity to do some of the great climbs in a professional capacity.

Comparatively few mountaineers have the ability to do the big climbs, even as seconds, and those who do are mostly gifted youngsters either living close to the hills or, as in the case of undergraduates, disposing of ample holidays. Climbing is their major passion and they give all their spare time to it. By intensive practice they quickly acquire considerable technique and experience, and the best among them are then able to undertake the great routes. These young enthusiasts rarely have enough money to consider engaging a guide, or, if they do, they generally prefer to climb with other amateurs. Many feel that the presence of a guide, whose technical mastery is a foregone conclusion and who knows every inch of the mountain, robs the sport of precisely that spice of adventure which is its main motivation. A good many also find such efficient help mortifying to their pride.

Mountaineering is a young man's pastime. Marriage, careers and growing responsibilities account for the gradual retirement of a good three-quarters of those who take it up. A few, however, are so possessed by it that they continue throughout their prime and even their entire lives. Desk jobs, age and lack of training soon reduce the abilities even of the best, but simultaneously, by the same token, their financial means tend to increase. Some climbers, in growing older, find all the happiness they need in simple contact with the hills, and are quite content to do progressively easier climbs. After all, if growing skill makes adventure harder to come by, the reverse must also hold good. But others are so taken with the majesty of the greatest routes and summits that they want to keep on frequenting them, and such men, when they have the means, do not hesitate to hire the services of a good guide.

A professional lucky enough to cross the path of such a client thus gets the chance to raise the level and interest of his work; occasionally he may even find a phenomenon with whom the greatest climbs can be attempted. But these are few and far between: in France for example, there are no more than a few dozen for the big climbs, and hardly any for the greatest. In fact very few of the really top-class ascents have been done by guided parties – the Walker once, the Eigerwand twice, the right-hand Pillar of Fresnay once, the north-east face of the Badile two or three times, the east face of the Capucin three or four, the north face of the Triolet twice. Up to the present none of the three severe routes on the Drus and practically none on the
sesto-superiore
climbs in the eastern Alps have been done by professionals climbing as such.
[2]

Fortunately there is also another category of capable clients, namely that of naturally gifted persons who begin their climbing days with a guide and remain faithful to him as their own powers increase, whether out of habit, prudence or friendship. I have had several such, notably my Dutch friends and clients De Booy and Egeler, who I think constitute a unique case in modern mountaineering. They first obtained my services by the ‘first come, first served' system of the Chamonix Bureau des Guides, at a time when they were still more or less beginners. By gradual progress we reached the point of doing several of the hardest ice climbs in the Alps together. Still more extraordinary (and only known once before in the annals of French guiding) they took me with them overseas, where we conquered some of the last unclimbed summits in the Andes.
[3]

In recent years the opening up of practice crags close to the big centres of population has considerably improved the normal rock climbing standard of clients, but in spite of that all guides lumped together probably do not carry out above a dozen unusual climbs in any given season – and the majority of those will be done by two or three specialists. The restriction is imposed quite as much by economic as by technical considerations. A guide is working for his living, and even if he has other sources of income at other seasons he has a right to expect a just remuneration for his toil and danger. The shortness of the season, the instability of the weather, and above all the fact that his money has to come from quite a small number of people, make his remuneration precarious and slight, relative to his perils, qualifications and responsibilities. Taking all these factors into account, the earnings of a guide on the great climbs are derisory compared with, for example, those of an airline pilot.

Still, the price of guided climbing may seem high when it is considered that it must be borne by one or two people at a time. Quite a lot of people can afford the tariffs for the simpler, classic ascents – among my clients I have had a carpenter, a garage mechanic, and a number of school teachers – but for the bigger climbs the cost is too high for most, so that even those who would like to do them and have the ability must give up hope of realising their dreams. And yet the guides do not make much out of it. A big climb takes two or three days instead of one, and the effort they call for makes it essential to have a rest in between. Unlike ordinary routes, they can only be embarked on in perfectly settled conditions, which may entail further loss of time. Financially speaking, it is better to do a climb every day at a fee of a hundred new francs than to make a killing of three or four hundred every now and again. For this reason alone, then, a great many guides do not particularly push their clients into attempting anything very outstanding.

In 1947, as an instructor at the E.N.S.A., I was paid by the month, and this particular problem was no headache to me. But we were far from overpaid, and most of us tried to increase our earnings by finding clients to guide at weekends and between courses. In those days these interim periods were quite long, and with the weather on our side we could often make respectable sums in this way. Personally I used my spare time mainly for my own amateur climbing, but after the Eigerwand I felt satisfied for the time being, and what was more I badly needed money to finish off my chalet. I therefore decided to devote the rest of my free days that season to climbing with clients.

That summer was uninterruptedly fine, and it was possible to climb almost every day. Between my work at the Ecole and my private clients I accumulated climbs galore, a process which led me to considerable feats of endurance. Thus, straight after the Eiger, I did eleven ascents in twelve days, seven of them one after the other. The easiest was the ordinary route on the Peigne, and the others included Mont Blanc, the traverse of the Aiguilles du Diable, the Ryan-Lochmatter on the Plan, and the Jardin arête of the Aiguille Verte. Add to the climbs themselves the time required to get from hut to hut, and you have a daily timetable which sometimes exceeded eighteen hours of hard labour.

To carry out a programme like this calls not only for physical stamina but also a continual effort of will. During this time I learned that doing the great climbs is not the only way of going beyond one's normal limits. This equally severe and less spectacular way gave its own kind of joy.

Luck, and perhaps also my growing reputation, brought me a few good clients, with whom I found it pleasant to be doing interesting climbs. I began to enjoy the climbing for its closer human contacts. At the Ecole Nationale the instructor is given different students every day, and except on the mountain he does not share their way of life at all, so that he hardly gets to know them. Most are already mountaineers of some ability. The instructor watches and advises them, judging, and dropping a word of advice here and there; but they don't actually need him in a direct sort of way. Most of them are not there simply to enjoy themselves, but to get a diploma. Rather as though they were back at school, taking their
baccalaureat
, the teacher seems a threatening figure, seeking to catch them out, and they rarely relax in his presence.