Conquistadors of the Useless (4 page)

My father telephoned to Luchon to say that for this once he threw in the sponge, but that he relied on me to return promptly as soon as the competitions were over. I did very well in the event, and was asked to compete, all expenses paid, in the ‘Grand Prix de Provence' at Barcellonnette. Without a moment's hesitation I went straight off to this jolly little southern resort, where I skied brilliantly and carried off third place in the overall classification. But just as I was joyfully getting ready for the prize-giving, I saw two rather embarrassed-looking policemen arriving. With strong local accents they explained that, my father having alerted the police, they had no choice but to put me on the next train.

After this escapade the college refused to take me back, and my father, no doubt by now completely dispirited at having engendered such a monster, seemed not to take much further interest in my fate. Finding myself free as the air and haloed with the glory of a star in the ascendant, I was in a position to reply to the numerous invitations I received from organisers of ski events. I took part in all the main occasions towards the end of the season and scored some gratifying successes, notably the downhill from the Brèche de la Meije, where I triumphed over a field which included the world champion James Couttet and several other members of the national team.

Reading these tales of a naughty boy, it would be easy to suppose that I was a typical playboy son of a rich father, spoiled by having too much money, imagining he could do anything because his parents were comfortably off, giving himself up to a life of laziness and pleasure. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth. I had so little money that to break a pair of skis was practically a disaster. If, moreover, the differences between my parents made possible a degree of liberty of which many boys would have taken advantage to have a gay time, the opposite was true in my case. My nature was so shy and reserved that I led an almost ascetic life, taking little part in the typical pleasures of my age despite the easy successes my physique could have ensured me. I devoted myself to skiing almost with mysticism, and far from going a round of gaiety I was acutely worried about my future, which appeared to me in the most sombre light.

During the summer of 1939 the thing happened which a whole world had believed impossible: war. Throughout the following months I found myself very much alone and my situation was, in sober fact, critical. My father seemed to have lost all interest in me, and I could expect no further help from this quarter. My mother, who had considerably reduced her fortune in a number of unfortunate speculations, could no longer support me without difficulty, and lacked the means to make me independent. After my ill-starred record at school I had no chance of earning my living in an intellectual profession; and since I had not been allowed to learn a trade nothing of that sort was open to me apart from simple labouring. The only activity through which I could reasonably hope to find a way out of this maze was skiing, and in those days a skiing instructor's life was far from being as lucrative as it is today. I was painfully aware that it provided one with a poor sort of livelihood for the winter months alone, and that the only way to make a decent thing out of it was to be an international champion. My recent successes gave me some slight hope of one day joining the elect, but a career built on such a dubious speculation seemed about as uncertain as could be. To cap everything, the war had reduced all skiing activity to virtually nil. Nine-tenths of the money had gone out of it, and all competitions had been forbidden.

I spent the first part of the winter at Luchon, working in the sports shop of a friend, repairing skis, putting on bindings and edges, and helping to sell. But there was practically no business, and I was soon forced to go back to Chamonix. There I could at least go on training, and I had the rather slender satisfaction of winning the only race held that melancholy winter. I was about to volunteer for the army when the disaster of 1940 occurred. My personal decisions were deferred for a few more months.

Since my unfortunate traverse of the Grépon I had given up any idea of the really big climbs without, however, giving up mountaineering altogether. At Villard-de-Lans I had done a lot of hill-walking and a number of short climbs, some of which were quite difficult. At Chamonix, apart from some easy scrambles, I had done a lot of spring and summer skiing, which often amounts to more or less the same thing. I would have liked to do bigger climbs, but did not believe myself able to lead them, while the few friends I had who could have taken me along as a second were naturally not too keen to load themselves down with a semi-beginner. Such was my general state one fine morning in July 1940 when the mountains shone in their perfect beauty through the crystal-clear air. I was reading in my room, my open window giving on to Mont Blanc, when I received a visit from a recently demobilised climber who wanted to forget among the mountains the disgrace of an inglorious defeat. He was looking for a companion, and a mutual friend had put him on to me. Only too happy to escape from my frustrations into the ecstasy of action, I accepted his invitation with enthusiasm.

We immediately began to discuss plans. To my dismay, my visitor suggested doing the Mayer-Dibona ridge on the Dent du Requin as our first climb. This had the reputation, in those days, of being very difficult, and only strong parties dared to attempt it. I was so afraid of launching out into an adventure which seemed so far above my standard that the newcomer was forced to point out that he was a member of the G.H.M., and that in his company I could try anything. I continued to refuse to have anything to do with such a hare-brained scheme, and suggested instead the much easier south ridge of the Moine. Being unable to budge me, the member of the G.H.M. ended by resignedly agreeing to take me up this somewhat inglorious ridge.

I had now had several years of intermittent climbing, hill-walking and high-level skiing, and although these had not given me a refined rock-climbing technique, they had made me very sure-footed on mixed ground, by which I mean easy but loose rocks, and medium-angled snow slopes and glaciers. As I had thus no difficulty in following my companion up the first part of the Moine ridge, we got on very fast. However, when we got to the corner which is the hardest part of the climb, he found it too much for him, partly through lack of training and partly because he had forgotten his gym shoes. He made several courageous attempts, trembling frantically the while; and each time I watched with dilated eyes, expecting to see him fall off. After the third try he was completely out of breath and told me, apologetically, that as he could not get up the pitch we would just have to climb down again. I was most upset at the idea of this premature retreat, and felt a surge of revolt mounting inside me. The day was too fine, and I felt too much life boiling through my muscles, to let myself be beaten quite so easily. With some astonishment I heard myself asking if I might have a try at the pitch.

The first long stride out over space seemed the more disagreeable for a sharp blade of rock some way below, which seemed to have been put there by nature to punish the foolhardy. Unwilling to be impaled like an oriental criminal, I felt a surge of energy, and in a few quick moves I stood at the top of the pitch. Emboldened by this success, I continued at the front of the party. Higher up I had a bit of trouble with a vertical wall of some fifteen or twenty feet which seemed practically hold-less, but I eventually got up thanks to the adhesive qualities of the clothes covering my chest and stomach! Soon after this, my face shining with joy, I reached the modest summit of the Moine. Not a cloud marked the vivid blue of the sky. It seemed impossible a day so clear could ever deaden into twilight. We rested a long time, gazing at the savage walls, hemmed with lace of snow, that ringed us round from the Dru to the Charmoz in a cirque without rival in the whole of the Alps. At a time when France was just beginning to recover some sort of unstable balance from one of the worst convulsions in her history, we were alone in the mountains. A mineral silence entered into us. In that enormous peace, I felt that somehow, henceforward, nothing would truly count for me beyond this world of grandeur and purity where every corner held a promise of enchanted hours.

This ascent of the Aiguille du Moine had a decisive influence on the course of my life. Like Guido Lammer, ‘Having been a prey from childhood to every cruel division, conflict and disorder of thought and of modern life, I stretched longing arms towards inner peace and harmony, which I found in the solitudes of the Alps.'

My easy success on this climb had given me back the confidence in my own will and physical powers which is a
sine qua non
to undertaking the really great climbs, outside of which, in my opinion, mountaineering is only a sporting form of tourism. For ‘Although from my childhood I have found pleasure in the many aspects of nature's mysteries at high altitudes, and tried with ever-increasing fervour to catch the meaning of her silent language, the bitter-sweetness and the best of mountaineering have always been for me in the rough adventure, the conquest of danger, of the climbing itself … If all one sought were a few moments of rest and peaceful reflection, how absurd it would be to reach the summit at the cost of so much fighting and suffering, amid so many mortal dangers, and by such extraordinary routes, when a cable-car could carry us to the same spot by the shortest possible line. No, from my earliest ascents I have recognised that a passionate involvement in the act of mountaineering, and the constant menace of danger disturbing the very depths of our being, are the source of powerful moral or religious emotions which may be of the greatest spirituality' – thus Guido Lammer.

That summer I did a lot of climbing, mostly with my companion of the Moine. I gave myself up to a life of adventure and action for its own sake and found in it perfect happiness, for, to quote Lammer once more, ‘on summits haunted by the unfettered elements, you may take long draughts of the foaming cup in the headiness of action which admits no obstacles'.

But to be truthful, though I read Lammer between climbs, finding in his romantic style a clear expression of what I also felt in my confused way, there was nothing of the intellectual climber about me. I was rather an ardent young animal, bounding from summit to summit like a kid among the rocks. I had no thought of reputation, and the simplest climbs made me crazy with joy. The mountains were a sort of magic kingdom where by some spell I felt happiest.

By virtue of all this experience I began to make progress in technique, going through alternate stages of the most promising ease and the most paralysing fear. On the north ridge of the Chardonnet, for example, we found the final slopes consisted of bare ice. My companion cut very small steps which were also inconveniently outward-sloping. Taking these to be quite normal, I walked up them without any bother on the front two spikes of my crampons. I would certainly have continued on to the summit in the same blissful state if I had not, at that moment, noticed a party of famous climbers behind us hacking away furiously to triple the area of our steps. A certain doubt found its way into my soul, which turned to worry. Suddenly I realised the full peril of our position on these tiny steps, up which we were gaily walking without any precautionary measures. It only needed one false move on the part of either of us, or one of the steps to give way, and we should be sliding inexorably towards the abyss which yawned beneath our heels … in a moment I was paralysed with giddiness, and refused to move hand or foot in such unsafe circumstances. My companion had to cut real ‘buckets' to give me sufficient confidence to finish the climb.

At that time the outlook of the majority of French climbers was very different from what it is today. The traverse of the Grépon was still considered a serious matter, calling for considerable natural aptitude and some years of experience. No one would then have dared to try this ascent without leading up to it carefully, a thing which is quite common today. The Mer de Glace face of the Grépon, the Mayer-Dibona ridge of the Dent du Requin, the Ryan-Lochmatter route on the Aiguille du Plan, the traverse of the Aiguilles du Diable, were all considered to be ‘grandes courses',
[3]
and the ambition to do them one day began to stir in the bottom of my mind. The north face of the Grandes Jorasses and even that of the Dru were generally considered to be quite out of the question for a normal human being. It was reckoned that to attack a face of this sort you either had to be a fanatical lunatic (a quality attributed in particular to the great German and Italian climbers) or one of those phenomenal supermen who turn up in every sport perhaps once or twice in ten years.

Feeling in no way fanatical and not taking myself to be in any way exceptional, the idea of trying such climbs never crossed my mind for a moment, and I used to think of the rare individuals who went in for this sort of thing with just the same kind of admiring pity that I sometimes see today on the faces of my own interlocutors.

By the end of the summer of 1940 I had done a respectable number of classic routes. If I had not been so impressed with the aura of legend which at that time surrounded the least little climb and the least little climber, I could already have been doing much harder and bigger things. I had amassed a fair amount of experience and possessed an excellent sense of direction. I was also very quick over mixed ground, but my rock and ice technique was by comparison still rudimentary. To be honest, I was held back more by the subjective aspect of difficulty than by the difficulties themselves. The very thought of climbing a pitch with a reputation for delicacy made me as tense as a gladiator entering the arena, and I had to stretch my willpower to the utmost in order to overcome this apprehension. Thus, due to a careless reading of the guidebook, I several times got up the ‘crux' of a climb with no bother at all, whereas on an easier pitch, which I
thought
to be the crux, I trembled like a leaf.
[4]
I had occasional flashes of daring which astonish me when I remember them today, and when I think about the way I got up certain pitches shivers run up and down my spine.