The following day dawned bright and calm. The tops were clear. The long walk back seemed very peaceful and we took our time, basking in the sun when it appeared. From the Fords of Avon, bridged with snow, we could look up the loch to Carn Etchachan. At that distance, it was hard to associate it with the drama and discomfort of the previous day. Not until we were back at Ryvoan did we realise that we had not seen a soul for three days.
– Part 4 –
The Alps
– Chapter 9 –
EARLY DAYS (1988)
August is not the best of months to climb in British hills. It could aptly be called The Month of the Midge. Let the wind drop, or the sun sink behind a shoulder of the mountain, and up and down the western seaboard of Britain a cloud of midges will appear on cue. Insect repellent is no answer, for it merely drives the creatures down your shirt, up your trouser legs or, worst of all, into your hair. Midges are a potential problem all summer, but in August they seem to reach an annual peak of ferocity and resilience. It is an obvious time to migrate, and if there are midges in the Alps, I have yet to be troubled by them.
By convention, the alpine year is neatly segmented. July and August are for climbing; April and May are for ski touring; winter lasts from 21 December to 21 March. In between is limbo. Of course, that is nonsense. You can climb in the Alps at any time of year, and if you like a bit of adventure, you may actually prefer to do so out of season. Be that as it may, when I started climbing everyone went to the Alps in August, so I went to the Alps in August; and since everyone seemed to go to Chamonix, I, too, went to Chamonix. In fact, we were four, and because we all climbed VS at Stanage and in Wales, we had a high opinion of ourselves. For our debut we chose the Forbes Arête on the Chardonnet, which we thought rather beneath us for its technical difficulties are negligible, but it would be useful training and acclimatisation. In the event we discovered that, despite a few days in Scotland the previous March, we were not very competent on snow or ice, some of us were not at all fit, and though we knew we should move together most of the time on the rock, in practice it did not feel as safe as we would have liked. In short, we were a fairly typical party of British novices and as a result, like many before us, we were benighted. There was a violent thunderstorm during the night and it snowed heavily. Mick Guilliard had a polythene bag; the rest of us put on our cagoules, stuck our feet in our rucksacks and sat it out. We were frightened and miserable. Next day, after a harrowing (and unnecessary) jump from the lip of a bergschrund, we descended to the valley somewhat chastened.
Our next climb, a short rock route on the Moine, was relatively uneventful. Emboldened by this success we decided to try the east face of the Grépon, a much longer rock climb pioneered by Geoffrey Winthrop Young and Joseph Knubel before the First World War. At first all went well, though we did find ourselves climbing grade IV rock in the dark to reach the hut. This was the Rochers Rouges bivouac, an amazing construction attached to the mountain by a web of wire cables, with a view through the floorboards into space. The climbing next day was interesting and technical on firm, rough granite. We managed to find the way with only occasional errors and climbing as two ropes of two ensured that we did not move too slowly. It was beginning to feel as though the summit could not be far away when, out of the blue, disaster struck. Not a natural disaster, like being hit by a stone or struck by lightning but a human one, almost as dire in its consequences. When things are going badly on a climb, often the second is noticeably more optimistic than the leader: ‘Looks like a good hold a few feet above you,’ or ‘If you can get across to the right, it looks a doddle,’ and so on. But the converse can also be true, especially on a long climb. While the leader is enjoying the intricacies of route finding, impelled upwards and onwards by his own momentum, the second has time to look around, to brood and worry. That was what happened on the Grépon. I had reached the top of a pitch, belayed and called ‘Up you come.’ There was a pause. Then someone shouted, ‘Come back down. We’ve got to retreat.’ ‘What?’ I was incredulous. ’Why?’ ‘The weather’s breaking.’ I looked up the glacier to a few cumulus clouds on the horizon behind the Grandes Jorasses. Even now I do not know quite what induced this panic in the rear. Maybe it was the thought of the Knubel Crack not far above, on which the axe-cling technique, recently re-invented in Scotland as ‘torquing’, was extensively employed on the first ascent. Maybe the notorious séracs which threaten the descent of the Nantillons glacier had grown preposterously dangerous in the imagination of ignorance. Whatever the reason, I was one and they were three, and they were not coming up. Fuming, but with my head of steam already evaporating, I abseiled down and tried to argue the point. No good. The others were sheepish, but adamant. Down it had to be.
Now abseiling is a lengthy business at the best of times. If you are a party of four, and not very slick at finding anchors, and the knot more than once jams when you pull the ropes down, it is very time-consuming indeed. Before we knew it we were settling down for our second unplanned bivouac in three routes. This time we had a stove and pot so at least we could spend the night brewing up. Alas, someone dropped the pot, so it was cold water after all, and nothing to do but curl up into a foetal position and wait for morning. I had a down jacket, but that did not do much for legs and feet, and the rope only kept out some of the cold seeping up from the rock beneath. Being a clear night it felt, and probably was, colder than our night in the storm, and I made a mental note to buy myself a poly bag. In the morning after a frugal breakfast, we continued on our way. By now we had lost the route of ascent, but we could see the Envers hut below us and were making for that. We had been scrambling down easy rock for a while when we came to a steep gully and set up another abseil from a small rock spike. Mick and John abseiled down, and I followed. Whether the loop slipped off the spike, or the spike itself snapped, I do not know. But one moment I was abseiling down a fixed rope, the next I was attached to nothing, shooting head first, on my back, down the gully. Sideways over a protruding rock I slid, right way up through some soft snow, head first again down a sheet of ice, wondering when something decisive would happen and vaguely registering the faces of Mick and John Hamilton, mouths agape. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I was myself again, stationary, just short of an overhanging rock wall that dropped into a gaping bergschrund. Picking myself up, I brushed some of the snow off my clothes and remarked, ‘That’s one way of getting down, I suppose.’ Then I felt sick and faint and had to lean against the gully wall.
I had fallen fifty metres with nothing to show for it but a knee which was painful but had not yet begun to stiffen. More serious seemed to be the loss of my ice axe, which had vanished. The next abseil, when Pete Hughes had climbed down to join us, was, I suppose, therapeutic in the same way as remounting a horse after falling off. But I did not enjoy it one bit. The anchor was a single peg (and we were not very experienced at placing pegs) and the abseil itself was free for the length of the rope, with a pendulum swing at the bottom to reach the lower lip of the bergschrund. Our progress thence down the glacier was slow. The lack of an axe made the snow slopes dangerous and to bend my knee was increasingly painful. Soon I could not bend it at all and was forced to accept that I simply could not walk the whole way down. My first Alpine season ended ignominiously, but not unpleasantly, with a helicopter ride from the Envers hut down to Chamonix.
For reasons I do not understand, instead of putting me off Alpine climbing for good, this inauspicious start made me determined to do better next time. When next I went to the Alps I had three more Scottish winters and two small expeditions to the Hindu Kush behind me. I had learned many lessons in Alpinism the hard way, but having survived them, chiefly by good fortune, I felt far more assured in the mountains. The techniques of travelling on glaciers, moving together on mixed terrain and cutting steps on steep ice all came more naturally. After a fortnight in the Bernina Alps, Rob Ferguson and I felt confident enough to attempt our first grande course. We chose the north face of the Grosshorn, an ice c
limb on the Lauterbrunnen Wall. At that time most major ice routes in the Alps had received very few ascents, and even fewer by British parties. Ice axes with curved or drooped picks had not yet appeared on the market and protection was provided either by long pegs that had to be laboriously chopped out of the ice after use or by ice screws that were more suitable for opening wine bottles than for holding a fall. Everyone talked about front pointing, but nobody practised it, except on névé.
Rob and I had tried to front point the Scerscen Eisnase. After thirty feet, discretion proved the better part of valour and we compromised by cutting bucket steps into which we mantelshelfed. British climbers were regarded, and regarded themselves, as rock climbers. Robin Smith’s ascent of the Fiescherwand and occasional ascents of the Triolet North face were exceptions that proved the rule. The Dolomites were almost as popular a venue as Chamonix for an Alpine season. In that respect, Rob and I were different. Rob actively preferred ice to rock, while I have always enjoyed rock climbing but am not particularly gifted. On the other hand, week-long sojourns in the CIC hut had made us efficient ice climbers.
Nevertheless, looking back, I am still surprised at our temerity in attempting the Grosshorn. Rob was well versed in Alpine lore, but in my case I am sure that ignorance was bliss. I had never heard of Welzenbach and was quite unaware of the reputation his climbs had acquired, which was a great advantage. The difficulty of a climb can often lie in the head as much as in the configuration of rock or ice. I once retreated off the Central Pillar of Frêney, in perfect weather, and have regretted it ever since. Ostensibly, we were stopped fairly low down by a pitch we just could not climb. In retrospect I think I was simply fazed by having read Bonatti’s account of the harrowing and tragic retreat from that place. My partner, the imperturbable Dick Renshaw, would undoubtedly have worried away until he found a way up or round that pitch, but I was too aware of how high and remote we were, too affected by the historical aura of the place. If reading books can add depth and resonance to the immediate sensations of climbing, it can also make individual climbs much harder. The Eiger with its gruesome, morbidly-documented history, is an extreme example. Even Bonatti failed here to assert mind over matter and retreated from his one solo attempt.
The other difficulty with big Alpine climbs is their appearance. Looked at from straight on, a 50° ice face appears vertical, a rock wall seems sheer and featureless. Experience tells you that ice slopes are rarely as steep as they look, and that close inspection will reveal cracks and flaws in the most compact piece of rock. But it still takes a mental effort, a deliberate stifling of the imagination, first to approach the very foot of a big climb, then to ignore the awful scale of the thing – 1,000 metres or more stretching endlessly above – and concentrate on the moves in front of your nose, or at most the line of the next pitch. The need to start as early as midnight to ensure well-frozen snow and to reduce the danger from stones or séracs, is a great help in this respect. One can be well up a face before day breaks, with no need to contemplate it from a distance. In the case of the Grosshorn we were helped even further by a layer of low cloud which, if unpromising for the morrow, at least hid the face from view on our walk up to the Schmadri hut.
Already ensconced in the hut, in fact the only people there, were two other Brits, Dennis Davis and Ray College. We had come to climb one route of several on the Lauterbrunnen Wall, none of which had received a British ascent and yet here was another British party attempting exactly the same route on the same day. We were rather overawed to be in such company: Dennis was a veteran of several Himalayan expeditions and the previous year Ray had climbed The Pear, The Walker and The Eiger in the space of a two-week holiday. They were welcoming and quite uncondescending, however, and we agreed to join forces next day.
After the usual uncommunicative candlelit breakfast, ‘each dwelling all to himself in the hermitage of his own mind’, we left the hut some time in the small hours, picked a sleepy way over moraines, cramponed up some névés and crossed the bergschrund, always a mental Rubicon, without difficulty. At dawn we were moving together up steepening snow slopes. Shortly afterwards the three of us were belayed to a single tied-off corkscrew, anxiously watching Ray as he methodically chopped his way through the narrows formed by two rock buttresses, on ice only a couple of inches thick. Above stretched 1,500 feet of hard ice, demanding steps all the way. As the day wore on we were glad to be four, to share the hard graft of cutting. When not taking our turn at the face, we shifted our weight from one leg to another on small stances, and contemplated the huge sweep of ice above, below and all around, feeling very small and vulnerable. Once, a sudden hostile whirr made us glance round in time to see a single boulder from the upper cliffs bound past a few feet away. It was enough to keep me peering upwards from beneath my helmet, like an anxious tortoise, for the rest of the day. Another cause of uneasiness was the weather. Great clouds were swirling below and sometimes about us. But, fortunately, they never developed into anything serious, and at evening the sky cleared.
Slowly, we chopped our way upwards. As we rose, the sun dropped. The last few hundred feet seemed harder and steeper, interminable: perhaps we were just growing tired. When dark fell, we were still well below the summit but there was no incentive to stop, and we continued doggedly by torchlight. My mind was wandering now, feet were cold, legs stiff and aching. It was 10 p.m. before we finally emerged on to the top. We had been climbing twenty-one hours, climbing characterised more by nervous tension than any technical difficulty. I was aware of chains of light down in the valley. It was 1 August, a Swiss national holiday when children carrying lanterns process through the villages. Our head torches, we learned later, were taken to be a part of the celebrations. I think the others brewed up; I was too tired to bother. Pulling on my duvet and cagoule, I put my feet into my rucksack, sat on the rope, and fell asleep in a sitting position among some rocks.
There can be few sports in which the distinction between pleasure and happiness is so marked as it is in climbing, particularly climbing in big mountains. Moments of conscious pleasure during the day had been few, moments of discomfort legion. From the torch flashed into my eyes at midnight to the agonising cramp in my calves during that bivouac, there had been suffering of one sort or another. Indigestion, cold, heat, thirst, fatigue and fear had been the dominant sensations of the day. Yet, at the end of it, I was indisputably happy. It was not just relief at a task accomplished, satisfaction at an ambition achieved or anticipation of a limited acclaim. Born of those hours of fatigue, deprivation and stress, in which beauty and grandeur were absorbed almost subliminally, grew an inward singing, which would linger on as a calm content for weeks afterwards. Feelings of regret, sadness, disappointment, seem to be common among mountaineers writing about summit moments, but I have never experienced them. Perhaps my climbs have never been hard enough, or been planned and dreamed about for long enough. All I know is that a taxing Alpine climb leaves me feeling positive about life in general for a long time afterwards. Surely, that is why most of us climb mountains? But there are degrees of happiness. As in so many spheres, the reward is in proportion to the effort expended. In climbing terms, it was some time before I experienced again quite the same high I felt when we awoke to a clear sunny morning on top of the Grosshorn.
Back in the Alps two years later, ice faces seemed suddenly almost straightforward, and everyone was climbing them. Both Chouinard and Salewa were producing axes and hammers with curved picks, designed to penetrate ice rather than shatter it. With such weapons front-pointing became a viable option on the hardest and steepest of ice. Ice climbs could be achieved in fast times even in unfavourable conditions of bare ice rather than névé, yet the leader could feel, and actually was, more secure than when simply standing in steps. Bivouacs, too, had become relatively comfortable with the appearance of the Karrimat. Closed-cell foam had been in use in the States for some years but it only became widely available in Britain after the Annapurna South Face Expedition of 1970.
In addition, I had acquired a two-man nylon Zdarski sack, and had decided that a lightweight sleeping bag made more sense than a down jacket weighing the same. Now, so long as we could find room to lie or sit, any bivouac could be a cosy affair.
After several weeks of climbing whenever the weather permitted, on both snow and rock, I found myself fit and confident but temporarily without a partner. I rather welcomed the opportunity to try some climbs on my own. I had few qualms about climbing solo, for a large proportion of all Alpine climbing is unroped or moving together. But to be totally alone on a long climb would be something quite new. I started with the Frendo Spur which went without incident, but there were so many other climbers scattered up and down the route that it did not feel like soloing at all. Next, I decided to try the Route Major on the Brenva Face of Mont Blanc, a long, serious climb but not technically too difficult; and this time I found what I was looking for.
Travelling alone on glaciers is a hazardous business so I was glad to team up with a pair of Norwegians, bound for the Grand Capucin, for the journey across the Vallée Blanche from the Midi. The weather had been poor for some days and I was alone in the Trident hut that night until an Italian guide and his client arrived long after I had gone to bed. They were still asleep when I left just before l a.m., tiptoeing thunderously in crampons on the metal walkway outside the hut. The moon was high and almost full, the torch unnecessary as I descended steeply on to the glacier and contoured between some big open crevasses. Col Moore was in shadow, steep and icy but covered with old steps. The Brenva face glowered overhead, but I did not allow myself to contemplate its immensity or the lethal potential of those batteries of séracs up above, and set off on a long rising traverse into the face. At first, the climbing was messy and unpleasant, on loose debris left by a recent rock fall which had spilled down the face, like puke on a drunkard’s chin, I remember thinking. Once clear, it was a matter of keeping to the snow, zigzagging through the rock, gaining height but always traversing leftwards. Several times I had to climb down the vertical side of an avalanche runnel deeply scored into the mountain, and up the other side. Once I had to wait a full minute as a torrent of spindrift hissed past. Finally, I recognised the dark mass of the Sentinelle Rouge and climbing the chimney at its side emerged on the edge of the infamous Great Couloir, the main chute for avalanches from the upper regions of the face. I listened hard, took a deep breath, and literally ran across 100 feet or so of hard but easy-angled water ice. I did not pause until I had scrambled up rocks on the far side and was at last on the ridge crest discovered forty years before by Graham Brown as the safest line in a dangerous place. There, panting, I stopped and looked around. Way below on the Col Moore, two torches flickered as the Italians set off up the Brenva Spur. I felt separated from them not just by distance but by a gulf of nervous tension. Suddenly, I realised just how frightened I had been of that traverse beneath the séracs. Even in cold conditions, it smacks a little of Russian roulette. Now I found myself actively looking forward to the climbing ahead.
Over the Hills and Far Away Page 4
