Oggioni said to me: ‘Do you remember when we said in Peru: Will the day ever come when we shall be together on the Pillar?’ He said it sarcastically, since at that time we thought that everything on our home mountains would be easier. Yet now we were in conditions similar to those we had found on the Rondoy, when we had had to master that peak in the midst of a snowstorm and had been without shelter for two days and two nights. Gallieni was our vitamin man; he gave us pills, especially of vitamins C and A, to make up for our lack of food. He gave them to the Frenchmen by a primitive sort of pulley which we had made out of ropes and added some of our provisions. The Frenchmen were a little short of food.
The problem of passing water then arose. It was not possible to go out of the tent. I suggested to Gallieni that he should sacrifice his plastic cap and we each used it in turn. It was a terrifying experience; we had to make all sorts of contortions and hold fast to one another not to fall over. The whole operation took half an hour; our legs were hanging in space and our clothes hampered us.
It was now Wednesday evening. It was snowing harder than ever. I asked Gallieni, who was near the edge: ‘Where’s the wind blowing from?’ ‘Still from the west,’ he said. That meant a snowstorm. Mazeaud, full of vitality and initiative, shouted to me: ‘As soon as it gets better, you and I ought to go. If you think it would be better to start towards the left, then we will certainly go that way.’ Oggioni, who did not know French, asked me what Mazeaud had been saying and I explained. He agreed but asked: ‘Do you think it possible to get out by way of the summit even in this weather?’ He knew that I could find the way down from the summit whatever the weather, as I had already done it several times before. I said: yes, but that we should have to stay where we were another night, since in my heart I felt almost certain that the snowstorm would end next day.
Our breath in the tent was transformed into watery vapour and we were wet through. I thought with terror about what might happen when the hard frost which always precedes good weather came and hoped I would be able to bear it. We would have to spend an hour or so warming ourselves in the sun before making the last assault. We could not sleep. Night came upon us almost unawares. We were all on edge. Gallieni began to speak of his young children. My thoughts were ten thousand feet farther down, with my loved ones, in the intimacy of my home. Oggioni talked of Portofino. He had never been there and said: ‘We mountaineers are really unlucky . . . with all the lovely things there are in the world, we get caught up in this sort of thing . . .’ Gallieni said: ‘And to think that I have a cosy home in Milano Marittima and such a nice beach: you can jump into the warm water and don’t even have to take the trouble to swim, it’s so shallow . . . You can walk for miles and miles . . .’ Oggioni hid his apprehension with jokes. To look at, he was the calmest of the lot of us. I was sure that he, other than myself, was the only one to be fully aware that our plight was desperate.
The night between Wednesday and Thursday passed. In the forenoon Mazeaud came into our tent, because the plastic cloth over the Frenchmen’s sleeping-bags had split under the gusts of wind. We managed to arrange ourselves after a thousand contortions and so passed the day. We tried to keep up our spirits, telling ourselves that the next day – Friday – would be fine, but we were not greatly convinced. In my inmost self I was already considering which would be the safest manner of retreating down the way we had come; in my opinion it was now impossible to reach the summit of the Pillar. I did not mention this to my companions so as not to discourage them.
Mazeaud told me about the south-west pillar of the Petit Dru which he had made the previous week. We spoke of our pleasure at getting to know one another and in sharing this adventure. We promised to meet again one day at Courmayeur or Chamonix and to talk over today’s experiences. Our thirst was intense and we had to quench it by eating snow. We made pellets of snow and kept gnawing at them. We thought longingly of a tap at home which would give us all the water we wanted at a turn. It was paradoxical that in the midst of so much snow we should have a burning thirst. The frozen snow made our mouths burn and very sore.
Thursday passed and night came. During the long hours of darkness Oggioni and I, who were farthest from the edge, suffered particularly from lack of air. To him alone I confided my intention of descending at all costs. He agreed, but was terrified at the idea. Thursday night also passed. We had to set the alarm for half-past three. When I heard it ringing I shouted to everyone: ‘We must go down at all costs. We cannot stay here any longer, otherwise it will be too late and we will not have the strength.’
When dawn began to break on the Friday morning the storm had been raging incessantly for more than sixty hours. Mist and snow merged into an impenetrable curtain. We dismantled everything and left a certain amount of our equipment behind. I was without an ice-axe which one of my companions had let fall by mistake on the first day. We began the descent by double rope. We had decided that I must lead, preparing the rappels. Behind me came all the others: Mazeaud, whose task was to help anyone who needed it, then the others and finally Oggioni who, strong in his experience, would be last man and recover the ropes.
At exactly six I lowered myself into the grey and stormy void almost blindly, without knowing where I was going. I felt as if I were in a stormy sea. The snow flurries gave me a feeling of dizziness. I had to watch every detail and try to recognise every fold of the rock to find out where I was. The manoeuvre took a long time and waiting for the ropes and pitons to come down from above in order to make the next rappel took even longer. Sometimes we were all bunched together, belayed to a piton, four or five of us hanging in space. About halfway down the Pillar I was unable to find a place to stop when the double rope came to an end. With some difficulty because of the snow flurries I managed to make myself understood. I needed another rope to attach to the one I was holding on to. There were no holds; the snow had packed tight even under the overhangs. I tied the two ropes together with my bare hands and continued my descent into space. There was now a four-hundred-foot rope down which I was sliding like a spider.
It was now no longer possible to talk with any of the others. I was completely suspended, looking for a hold which I could not find. I was worried, partly because I did not know where I could halt in my descent, partly because an enormous overhang cut off all possibility of communicating with my companions who, higher up, were waiting for my signal. At last, after some acrobatic swings in space, I managed to land on an outcrop of rock. I shouted repeatedly through the storm, hoping that my companions would understand that they could begin their descent. At one moment I saw the rope ascending and thought that one of them was on it and had begun to descend. Then, suddenly, the rope slipped away from me and dissappeared from sight. I was left there, on an outcrop, secured by a cord to a piton, in the heart of the Pillar, without any means of continuing my descent and wondering if my companions would be able to find me or would descend in some other direction. I went on shouting at the top of my voice, hoping to be heard, so that, if nothing else, they could tell me where they were. Several moments of anxiety passed. At last a dark patch appeared near me; it was Mazeaud who had realised where I was and had come to join me.
Our rappels continued with the same rhythm. We were getting closer to the foot of the Pillar. We were frozen and soaked through. Then, hearing the dull thuds of some snowfalls. I realised that we had reached the base of the Pillar. But by now it was late in the afternoon and all we could do that night was to prepare a camp on the Col de Peuterey, which forms the base of the Pillar. We set foot on the level but the snow was extraordinarily deep; sometimes we sank into it up to our chests. I made Mazeaud take the lead for a bit, followed by all the others. I stayed where I was to give the direction. At one time the group seemed to have foundered in a very deep snowdrift. I joined them and then took the lead again, setting out by instinct towards the spot I thought suitable for a camp. Though I could not see it, it was imprinted on my mind. Behind me was Oggioni with whom I discussed whether
it would be better to chance the protection which a crevasse could give us rather than build an igloo, since the snow was unstable. This was not so important for us who had our tent as for the four Frenchmen who hadn’t one. We decided on the crevasse and told the Frenchmen, who accepted our advice.
We made arrangements for our camp before the night between Friday and Saturday fell. We had been making rappels for twelve hours. Kohlman seemed the most exhausted of all of us. We put him in our tent. With what was left of a butane gas cylinder Guillaume prepared some hot tea and gave it to him. The cold was atrocious. The wind was blowing continually and made the snow whirl around us. That was the worst night of all. We divided what was left of the provisions; prunes, chocolate, sugar and a little meat, now frozen. Oggioni refused the meat, preferring the sweetstuffs. All the others, however, nibbled at it. Kohlman showed me his fingers; they were livid. I thought it a good idea to massage them with cooking alcohol, of which we still had plenty. I passed him the alcohol flask, but he put it to his mouth and began to gulp it down. It was a most ill-advised action, but I thought he must have mistaken it for drinking alcohol. I took the flask away from him, but not before he had swallowed a couple of gulps. Were we already on the brink of madness?
It was pitch dark. We were in an inferno. Everyone was moaning and shivering with cold. The wind howled and the snow fell more and more heavily. Every now and then we would shake the snow off the tent, otherwise it would have smothered us. I tried to light the spirit-stove but had to give up for lack of air and, as in the last few days, we had to eat snow to quench our thirst. We were desperate, but no one said a word. Finally Oggioni said to me: ‘Let’s make a vow: if we get out of this safely, let us forget that the Pillar even exists.’ I said, ‘Yes.’
The night passed slowly and despairingly. At the same time as on the day before, at half past three, at the sound of my little alarm, we rose from our uncomfortable resting place. We wanted to save time and to get out of that terrifying situation which seemed as if it would never come to an end. The night had added another eighteen inches of snow to what had been there before. We set out in the midst of the storm. We all seemed to have endured that terrible camp well enough. Now I no longer had to take counsel with my companions; they left everything to me and I felt the heavy responsibility of a guide who must bring everyone back safely by the only possible route, the very dangerous Roches Gruber. We had to get to the Gamba before evening, otherwise it would be all over for all of us.
Before starting, Robert Guillaume gave Kohlman a coramine injection. Meanwhile, I, followed by Oggioni and Gallieni, began to clear a burrow through the very deep snow in the direction of the route chosen for our descent. We were now on a single rope in this order: Bonatti, Oggioni, Gallieni, Mazeaud, Kohlman, Vielle and Guillaume. The face which precedes the Roches Gruber was heavily laden with fresh snow which might avalanche at any moment. I told my companions to hurry up and join me and to get into shelter so that I could hold on to a rope if an avalanche should catch me while I was cutting the channel which would lead us to the Roches Gruber. I managed to do so and called to the others to pass, one by one, but when it came to Vielle’s turn he could not do it. He kept falling and rising again, with every sign of exhaustion. Guillaume was beside him and encouraged him. He took Vielle’s rucksack which he had thrown away on the slope, but Vielle seemed deaf to all our appeals which became rougher and rougher.
Meanwhile I went on to prepare the first of a very long series of rappels down the Roches Gruber. The sky had cleared for a moment, but the fine spell only lasted a short time. I could hear my companions inciting Vielle who had still not got across the couloir. I shouted to them to hurry up and begin the descent if we didn’t want to die up there. I was the farthest down and was waiting for Kohlman who had followed me. Half an hour passed. Not understanding the delay. I again went up the rope for a few feet to see what was happening. Gallieni told me that Vielle was exhausted, that he was unable to cross the couloir by himself. He asked me if it would be possible to slide him along the snow to lighten the fatigue of walking. I agreed and told him to act quickly, adding that at this pace not only would we not get to the Gamba hut, but we would not even get down the Roches Gruber.
I went down again and rejoined Kohlman. I gathered from the excited voices of my companions that they were putting their plan into effect. I went on waiting for one of them to lower himself to me. Another half hour passed and not only did no one come down to join me, but their voices began little by little to die away. I didn’t know what to do. Must every rappel take as long as this? Once again I shinned up the rope a few feet, far enough to be able to see my companions. I asked them: ‘Why don’t you come down?’ A voice, possibly Gallieni’s, followed by that of Mazeaud, told me: ‘Vielle is dying!’ I was petrified. I could see before me the little group of friends gathered around Vielle’s body, which looked like a dark, inert bundle on the white snow. He was belayed to the rock and wrapped in our tent-cover to prevent the crows from getting at him.
I went back to Kohlman without telling him anything. Several more minutes, perhaps twenty, passed; now I knew it was all over with Vielle. There were no more voices to be heard, only the sound of the wind. It had begun to snow again. This agony unbroken by any human word was terrible. I went up the rope again and saw my companions busy securing to a piton Vielle’s body and Galleni’s rucksack, full of superfluous things. There were no laments. It was then ten o’clock. I went back again to Kohlman and told him to hold fast. Then Mazeaud arrived, who told him in broken phrases what had happened. Kohlman was deeply affected, and wept.
We continued the rappel. Taking advantage of a moment when all six of us were hanging on the same piton, I advised the greatest possible speed if we did not want to share Vielle’s fate. Oggioni, as always, was my right-hand man and took the rear. Like Mazeaud, Guillaume and myself, he was carrying a full rucksack. Mazeaud, the strongest and the acknowledged leader of the Frenchmen, had the job of keeping the others up to the mark.
Not quite an hour had passed when we heard voices. I was the farthest down the rope at the time and I thought they must be the voices of my companions above me. Soon, however, I was convinced that someone was searching for us on the glacier below. I shouted back and asked my companions to shout all together, so that they could hear us. From the cries which came from below I understood that they wanted to tell me something, but the gusts of wind prevented me from understanding. For my part, I was quite certain that down there they would not be able to understand what I was shouting, which was: where were they and could they hear us. We went on in better spirits. When we reached the end of the Roches Gruber; about half past three, I calculated that from the morning before, when we had begun the descent, we had made at least fifty rappels.
A brief break in the storm allowed us to see the whole surface of the chaotic Frêney glacier. What a lot of snow had fallen! There were no furrows in the snow, which meant that no rescue party had passed that way. Where had the voices come from? We could see no one and fell into a mood of the blackest despair. Perhaps it was all over for all of us. We had been sure that the voices had come from the foot of the Roches Gruber and that had given us strength to overcome the terrible difficulties and dangers of that exceedingly difficult passage. We were, however, alone at the foot of the rocks and we still had before us many unforeseeable dangers on our way to the Gamba hut.
The slow and exhausting descent of the glacier began. We refused to accept our bad luck. The snow was still very deep. Not even in winter climbs could I recall having met with so much. We left behind us not a trail but a burrow. Fortunately the mists were beginning to rise and visibility gradually improved. That made it possible for us to enter safely the labyrinth of crevasses which led to the Col de l’Innominata, the last serious difficulty on our way to safety. But the deep snow so slowed down our advances, that we despaired of being able to reach the base of the col while there was still daylight.
I felt faint with f
atigue, physical suffering and cold, but refused to give up.
Our file grew longer. Oggioni was stumbling every few steps, at the end of his tether. He was without a rucksack, which he had handed over to Gallieni. Sometimes he was last man, sometimes last but one. We groped our way on to the glacier in complete disorder, drunk with fatigue. We were roped together, but each went his own way without heeding anything. I realised that in such conditions it would be very hard for us to reach the foot of the Col de l’Innominata in daylight. Gallieni, behind me, seemed the least exhausted. I decided to unrope myself and him in order to go ahead as quickly as we could and prepare the couloir of the Innominata, otherwise our companions would no longer be able to climb it. This task would have to be completed by nightfall.
Our companions followed in our tracks. Meanwhile I attacked the terrible ice which had encrusted the Col de l’Innominata. Guillaume had remained behind. Within half an hour it would be dark and we were still struggling to reach the col. Now we were again all roped together; myself, Gallieni, Oggioni, Mazeaud and Kohlman. Our only hope was to reach the rescue parties while we still had a little strength left. They alone might be able to save those left behind. It was pitch dark when I reached the Col de l’Innominata. It was Saturday evening, after nine o’clock, and we had been out for six days. The powdery snow driven by the wind had begun again and in the west we could see the flashes of an approaching thunderstorm. There was nowhere to fix a piton to anchor the rope which supported my four companions and I had to hold it on my shoulders. I urged them to hurry. But the operation was very long and desperate. Orders mingled with cries of pain and desperation. Behind Gallieni, Oggioni seemed unable to grip the rock. Gallieni tried to help him in every way he could, supported in his turn by the rope which I held on my shoulders. The two Frenchmen down at the end of the rope were shouting and raving.
Survivor: The Autobiography Page 10
