Conquistadors of the Useless (34 page)

But for all the energy and passion I put into my work, I did not give up amateur climbing. Lachenal and I were determined to do at least one really big climb that summer. As Louis was still an instructor at the Ecole Nationale we could only get away during his two or three short leaves. The first was spoiled by bad weather, and the second, unhappily, came right in the middle of my guiding season: but I kept the time free, thereby deliberately sacrificing a considerable sum of money.

We had been wanting for several years to repeat the famous north face of the Piz Badile, a mountain on the border between Switzerland and Italy in the distant Bregaglia group. In those days this two-and-a-half-thousand-foot wall still had an imposing reputation. Cassin and four companions had made the first ascent in three terrible days of climbing in a storm, and two of the party had died of exhaustion on the descent. Rébuffat and Bernard Pierre had taken almost as long over the second ascent. Since then the face had been done four or five times, but never without a bivouac; the fastest ascent having taken nineteen hours of actual climbing. Cassin had gone on record as saying that while the face was a bit shorter and less sustained than the Walker, certain parts of it were harder. Everyone was in agreement that it was one of the finest routes in the Alps.

Though certainly inferior to the Walker and the Eiger, the north face of the Badile seemed to be the sort of thing we were looking for. There was no doubt that we should have a long, hard fight on our hands to climb such a redoubtable wall, and one which fitted our definition of a true adventure: one in which a man could only win through by throwing every atom of his physical and moral strength into the struggle. True, it was a rock climb pure and simple, and so not strictly our line of country; but we knew that the climbing was mostly ‘free' and that we should feel at home on its sound, rough granite, which resembled our own Chamonix rock.

When Lachenal's leave came round the weather seemed fine enough to justify even the day and a half's journey across Switzerland by train and coach. We arrived at Promontogno so late that it would be dark before we could get up to the Sciora hut. This was annoying, because it meant that we should have to set out without a proper rest first. After an hour's rapid march we came out of a narrow gorge and saw the face above us in the last gleams of day. It was proud and high, and looked appallingly smooth. Our morale sank a few degrees at the mere sight of it. All of a sudden we had the idea of bivouacking where we were, and then going straight up to the foot of the face, rather than flogging on up to the hut, which is a long way off to one side of the mountain. By saving a couple of hours walking these tactics would gain us an equivalent amount of sleep. The eaves of a chalet offered some shelter, and as the night was almost warm we passed it comfortably enough rolled up in our bivouac equipment.

At daybreak we were put out to see the sky half-overcast with clouds of ill omen. The air felt heavy, and all the signs were for an imminent break in the weather. After a long journey and so many willing sacrifices it was heart-breaking, but we had learnt our lesson on the Walker. We were all for battle, but not for sudden death. Life is never so sweet as when one stands in danger of losing it, and if one takes imponderable risks too often one is not likely to last long. Our motto was to take risks, but only calculated ones. The charms of nature were spread out around us as we lay on the pleasant greensward listening to the chuckling of a brook, and we felt no inclination to attack such a serious-looking face in threatening weather.

About seven o'clock the sky seemed to clear up a little, and we decided to go up and spend the night at Cassin's first bivouac site. There would be no trouble in getting back if the weather broke, and if by chance it was fine we could hope to reach the summit the following day. In fact these were more or less the same tactics we had planned for the Walker – and then not used!

There was no hurry, and we stopped frequently to admire the wild spires of granite which rose almost directly out of the pastures and romantic pine forests. The climbing proper began at 9.30, and without a care in the world we scrambled on upwards, laughing and joking, savouring to the full the elegant nature of the climbing. The slabs were steep and the holds small, but they were sound and relatively numerous. One overhang proved really quite difficult, and not long afterwards we came to a spacious ledge. It was not obvious where to go next, so we took out the technical description. There could be no further question about it: we had already reached the first Cassin bivouac, and this in spite of the fact that we had only been going for two and a half extremely leisurely hours. It seemed quite incomprehensible, but there was no getting around the fact that we had reached the place where Cassin and his party had spent the night after a whole day's climbing. At this revelation Louis' eyes began to flame with that passion I have never seen anywhere else, and he cried out:

‘Then they're just a lot of goons! A day to climb that? They must have been playing cards on every ledge! If it's like that all the way we'll be up in four hours! The weather'll hold out that long – don't argue, let's get going!'

And he was off like an arrow. The wild beast had slipped its bonds, and I had no choice but to follow. Once again it was devil take the hindmost.

Contrary to what some people later suggested, we did not climb continuously without belaying, but we were so used to each other's ways that it saved us a lot of time. Thus, for example, as soon as the leader could see that only easy ground lay between him and the next stance, he would call down ‘it's easy', and the second would start climbing right away. Over a long series of pitches this amounted to a considerable saving. Needless to say, if the second could not see how to do a move immediately, he wasted no time over it but pulled up on the rope at once. Naturally we used as few pitons as possible; with the exception of the first overhang we did virtually no artificial climbing at all. In half an hour's sprint we reached the first real terrace on the face. Ahead of us lay the series of long grooves which constitute the crux of the climb.

‘Go on', said Louis. ‘Time you did some leading, or you'll be getting rusty next.'

All keyed up, I rushed at the first groove. My rigid boot-soles held to perfection on the small holds, and I went up like a monkey. Two pitons and a few minutes later I stood at the top of the pitch, and a moment afterwards Louis was beside me. The groove continued above, but after climbing it for thirty feet I was held up by an overhang. One peg went in, but I then spent a long time looking for somewhere to put another. It was most surprising – there was no trace of any previous passage, and I began to wonder if I had got off route. Meanwhile Louis had a glance round the corner and shouted up that the route lay to the right, so I got him to lower me with the rope through a karabiner. To do all this, untie, and pull down the rope cost valuable minutes: my mistake had in fact wasted a total of half an hour.

I led three more pitches for appearances' sake, then, since Louis was after all the faster climber, I yielded up the ‘sharp end' of the rope to him again. It was becoming obvious that we would reach the top long before night, so I now abandoned some of the food which loaded the rucksack and slowed me down. It was cloudier than ever, but it looked as though the weather would hold out for a few hours more. Far from slowing down, however, we climbed faster and faster, under a sort of spell which made all things seem possible. The upper traverses were disposed of with the briskness of a trapeze act, and so we came to the final slopes, which were easy enough to allow us to climb together.

Lachenal, fresh as a daisy, scuttled off like a squirrel, but try as I might I could not keep up. Finally there remained nothing above us but sky: it had taken us seven and a half hours for the two and a half thousand feet of face. Spurred on by the threat of bad weather we had thus accomplished a feat which was considered stupefying at the time, yet without my mistake in route-finding, and if we had forced the pace from the very beginning, we could easily have knocked over an hour off this ‘record'.

Certain people subsequently took it upon themselves to doubt the veracity of our timing, nearly three times as fast as the best hitherto, but history has shown that we did not exaggerate. A rope of three Germans did the climb in eight and a half hours a few years later, which for a party of that size is relatively quite a lot faster. The famous Austrian guide Hermann Buhl, climbing alone, put up a time of four and a half hours; and the German Nothdurft, later one of the victims of the big Eiger tragedy, three and a half.

In fact we did nothing that smacked of the superhuman. It was merely that our physical and psychological fitness enabled us to discover that the face was, in terms of strict technical standard, easier than had hitherto been thought. Our constantly accumulating experience and Lachenal's fabulous gifts had put us somewhat in advance of our generation. Nowadays the north-east face of the Piz Badile is no longer considered one of the most difficult in the Alps. Occasionally someone still bivouacs on it, but it is normal to do it in nine or ten hours.

This ‘down-grading' phenomenon is in no way unique. Among others, it has happened to many of the great Dolomite faces, once considered of extreme difficulty. The improvement in modern methods of training and the spirit of competition between ‘tigers' are quite sufficient to explain it. Mountaineering is at least partly a competitive sport. Man has never stopped trying to run faster, jump higher, throw farther: why then should he not also try to climb faster?

Since my ascent in 1949 I have done the north-east face of the Badile with a client, the excellent climber Suzanne Velentini. We took a little under twelve hours, but if we had not been held up by a German party who would not let us overtake we could have done it in three hours less. Taking into account the fact that however good a young girl might be she could hardly approach the virtuosity of a super-climber like Lachenal, and that at the age of thirty-seven I could certainly not have had the same ‘punch' as ten years earlier, it will be seen that our performance in 1949 was respectable without being phenomenal.

It was five o'clock when we reached the top, which gave us plenty of time to descend to the hut on the Italian side of the mountain. The prospect of food, hot tea and rest only an hour away was extremely tempting; but if we did this we should have to cross the Passo di Bondo the following day in order to get back to Switzerland, thereby losing a day. A quicker but infinitely harder way back was to descend the classic but difficult north ridge.

Still on the boil and rendered even more optimistic than usual by our amazing success, Lachenal was for the north ridge at all costs. With a bit of luck we should reach the pastures before it got completely dark, Promontogno in the small hours, and Chamonix the day after. We knew that the descent had already been done in three and a half hours, and given our usual speed at this kind of thing we ought to be able to knock thirty minutes off that, so that technically, at least, the thing was possible. In the end I let myself be persuaded.

The memory of that descent is blurred. I remember that we heard thunder a quarter of an hour after leaving the summit, which added still further to our haste. Lachenal himself was literally overcharged, and drove us at almost nightmare speed. We didn't stop to place any rappels in the difficult places. I would more or less slide down on the rope, held by Louis, then he would swarm down with preternatural agility. Whenever the slabs were not too steep he would let himself slide too, braking with his rubber soles and leather seat.

At one point we went too far down the west face. Lachenal reckoned that we would find ledges below to lead us back on to the ridge, and wanted to continue; but I was convinced that we would end up among overhangs and refused to follow him. We thereupon had our biggest row, and finally Louis unroped in a rage and went on alone. I climbed back to the ridge and carried on calmly with the job of getting down. After half an hour, while I was installing the only rappel of the whole descent, Louis appeared, looking rather contrite!

We reached the last slabs just at nightfall. As we came tearing down them, two climbers who had just preceded us, and who had observed us on the face during the day, looked as thunderstruck as if they had just seen a pair of ghosts. We bivouacked in the pastures, having been unable to find so much as a drop of water. My throat was intolerably inflamed and I could only doze off occasionally.

Back at Chamonix I took up my guiding again at once. The weather was set fair and the clients too numerous to satisfy. One day it would be the Petits Charmoz, the next the Verte, the day after that the Aiguilles du Diable, and so it went on. When the end of the season came I was exhausted but happier than I had ever been. I had reached my goal: henceforward, like Michel Croz, Lochmatter, Knubel and Armand Charlet, I was truly a guide, one of the leading ones in the valley. Was I not ‘le plus fort en masse'? Had I not, that season, done more great climbs than any other guide? And yet, to tell the truth, I had hoped for greater things. I had still only about ten climbs to my credit rarely done by guides and clients, and none of these was really an exploit apart from the Arête de Tronchey.

Subsequently I was luckier in this respect. Gaston Rébuffat and I did more and greater climbs in a professional capacity than any other guide of the post-war generation. Only, I had hoped to do better still: and this remains the one small disappointment my way of life has ever brought me. All my willing sacrifices and risks devoted to this end have brought a relatively small return.

Apart from the five great Andean peaks climbed with my Dutch friends and clients,
[6]
which have given me some of the most enduring satisfactions of my career, I have only done one really outstanding climb in the Alps as a professional, and that was the third ascent of the right-hand Pillar of Fresnay on Mont Blanc. This is a very long and sustained ascent on mixed terrain, providing several high-standard pitches at great altitude, and in those days was the hardest route to the highest summit in Europe.
[7]
I have also guided a number of routes only slightly lower in standard, among others the north-east face of the Badile, the east face of the Grand Capucin, and the north face of the Triolet.