I tried higher with my other tool, just a little tap, scared another rebound might topple me off.
The pick bit by an inch.
I kicked again, keeping both axes in place, left then right, stepping up.
‘If anything pops I’m off,’ I thought.
How often had I thought this?
One day something would.
I placed the other pick a little higher, a little harder, its tip biting an inch deeper. Lifting my foot up to the little shelf I’d cut, and praying to the angels, I stepped up.
‘How’s it going?’ said Paul cheerfully.
The day went quickly, and darkness caught us moving up the big snowfield beneath the buttress of rock, perhaps a third of the way up the climb, still below the hard stuff. Luck was with us, and our line bumped up against a small rock buttress, the size of a small garden shed, but offering the chance of a good bivy with good protection if we could cut a ledge below it.
Attached to a couple of nuts we hacked away with our axes, stopping every so often to rest, both dying for a brew.
‘I feel fucked,’ said Paul, stopping and resting his head on the boulder.
With the snow and ice chopped away, we had a ledge wide enough to take the tent, which we pitched, attaching it to the rock as well as us. It was quite a camping spot.
Paul crawled in and I passed him the bivy gear, listening to the echoing calls of the French team, who, out of time, were abseiling back down their route, their headtorches flashing back and forth.
Inside the tent we could forget we were on the side of a mountain, that is until we ventured too far from the side of the tent pressed against the mountain, and felt only the void on the other side. Since he was ill, Paul got the inside berth, and I made a mental note not to roll over in the night.
As the stove purred away, Paul lay on his back looking at the ice crystals grow on the tent ceiling. It was obvious he wasn’t feeling well.
But then I wasn’t feeling much better.
My heart seemed to be beating very hard and very fast. Unsure whether altitude was the cause, I unzipped the door of the tent a few inches in case the stove was asphyxiating us.
My heart raced on.
‘There you go Paul,’ I said, passing him a cup of noodles, then listened, between the thumps of my beating heart, to a helicopter moving below us in the dark. It was odd for a helicopter to be out at night, so I poked my head out of the tent and saw its flashing red light moving over the glacier below us. The beam of a big searchlight shone down, the helicopter transformed into a UFO about to scoop up some hapless climber, the white light sweeping across the ice as it neared the bottom of the face, where it began to creep up the wall below us, seemingly following our tracks.
‘What’s it doing?’ asked Paul, sucking down noodles.
‘I think maybe it’s looking for us?’
The chopper rose higher and higher until the searchlight illuminated the tent, which I guess must have been a bit of a surprise, pitched there, seemingly defying gravity, like a limpet to the side of the mountain’s hull.
The chopper hung there for a moment, no doubt taking us in, and I gave a little wave to say we were okay, wondering if there was a signal meaning: ‘We’re camping.’ I guessed someone had seen our lights on the face and imagined we were in trouble.
‘Ask if they’ve got any paracetamol,’ said Paul.
With a whoosh the chopper swept away and dropped towards the glacier, its beam of light growing smaller, and then picked its way back down the valley. We were alone with our noodles again.
The following morning it was light by the time we’d packed up. Everything was done in slow motion.
Paul looked in pain as we stuffed our gear back in our packs, and I felt even stranger than the night before, my heart still pounding.
We really had to go down, and we both knew it.
‘We could traverse over to the Lagarde couloir from here,’ said Paul, pointing over to the left side of the face. The Lagarde was an easier route up the edge of the face, nothing more than a big gully. ‘It would be easier and we could get to the top today.’
Paul was not going to give up.
‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said and off we went.
After a series of traverses we broke into the Lagarde couloir and began climbing up its edge, placing more gear than usual, aware of the state we were in. Each pitch seemed to take an age.
My heart now began to act very oddly indeed, beating hard but then seemingly skipping a beat, going bu-boom bu-boom bu-boom, falling silent for a beat, and then recovering with a boom-boom, before continuing as normal, as if it was taking a breather. Feeling it pounding like that, as if at any moment it could just stop, was scary. Very scary. A sane person would immediately go down and rush to a doctor. I did neither. I just pressed on, convinced that at any moment I could simply drop down dead.
While climbing a pitch, something caught my eye on the side wall, something I mistook for ice for a moment until I realised it was a fist-sized crystal, a huge lump of beautiful quartz.
I climbed up to it, took off my glove and ran my fingers over it, so perfectly smooth and geometric. The last crystal I’d seen like this was on Poincenot in Patagonia. It was a tiny hollow of rock I’d stumbled on filled with stones just like these. My instinct had been to smash one out with my axe and take it with me, but as I lifted up my hammer I had stopped, believing that if I stole it, the mountain would punish me.
The same thought came into my head again, as I stood there on Les Droites, that the mountain would punish me. That the mountain cared.
I lifted up my hammer and smashed it out and stuck it into my rucksack.
We swapped leads until night was nearly on us, believing we could get to the top, but knowing we probably wouldn’t.
The gully petered out and we broke right up a wide chimney, looking for a spot to sleep.
‘I think I’ve found something,’ Paul croaked, and I climbed up to find him sat on a large wedged block the size of a wheelie bin laid on its side. It was plenty big enough for us to sit out the night, but within a minute a slight wind picked up, dumping spindrift onto us from the summit slopes.
‘Let’s see if we can get the tent perched on top,’ Paul suggested. He looked pale in my torchlight, as though he too could drop dead at any moment.
We worked hard, chopping away ice and fiddling with frozen poles until the tent hung half on, half off the tiny perch. It was another improbable campsite.
Squirming inside, both on our sides, we fought to get our shoulders and arses on something solid, while the rest hung over the drop. Spindrift poured down now, pressing on the tent, building up on the fabric, pushing us off our spot until we punched it clear.
‘This is pretty grim,’ said Paul, quite a remark from the master of tough bivys.
‘It could be worse,’ I replied, which was no comfort at all.
With great care we got in our sleeping bags. Then Paul fished out the stove and fired it up. As soon as it lit, a foot-long flame flared out.
‘Don’t shake the stove, Paul,’ I gasped with alarm, judging the tent about to go up in flames.
‘I’m not,’ said Paul, as another huge belch of fire burst out of it.
‘You bloody are,’ I said, flinching backwards. ‘Don’t move it.’
‘I’m not bloody shaking it, there’s something wrong with it!’ he said, his head held back from the rocket-like flame.
‘Give it to me, you’re wobbling it,’ I said, taking it from him, showing him the correct way to hold it.
The stove immediately flared again, the flame an inch from the tent fabric.
‘Told you,’ said Paul, looking smug as the snow hissed down hard on the tent.
The stove settled down at last, and after a brew and more noodles we tried to get comfortable, not easy in such a cramped spot. The sound of hissing spindrift, my beating heart and Paul’s groaning were far from conducive to sleep.
Lying half on, half off
the chockstone, I felt unable to move an inch, as if even the slightest alteration in position would see me slide over the edge, trapped in a pocket of tent until its seams bust. My feet were stuck in Paul’s face, his in mine. Our bivy had all the comfort of a shared park bench. It was one of those nights when you keep feeling for the rope, making sure you’re still tied in, giving it a little tug to check it’s not too slack and that you’ll not fall too far.
As the snow continued to pour down on us, we began to realise that the chimney was its usual path and we had camped midstream, the tent a logjam flexing under the onslaught. Just as quickly as we cleared it with our fists and elbows, the snow pressed down again.
I worried about the pole snapping, or that the spindrift would push us off our block, and so lay there half awake for much of the night.
‘This is really grim,’ mumbled Paul, his voice sounding muffled and faraway.
I flicked on my torch and saw his head was trapped under the bulging fabric. It looked as though a big fat person had parked their backside on his end of the tent.
‘I concur,’ I said.
And I did.
There was no desire for a lie-in next morning. Just after dawn we broke out of the chimney and made our way up the final snow slopes to the East Summit of Les Droites, moving together in a light wind, watching the snow catch the sun as it blew from the summit ridge. We sped up the final few metres, just wanting it to be over.
At the top we sat down and shook hands.
The whole of the range was spread out around us.
I’d seen it before.
It took two days to make it back to the valley, my heart settling down as we lost altitude, Paul getting more ill and looking like he was ready to check into A&E when I drove him to the airport.
A few days later I was back at the airport to pick up Mandy and the kids, my heart taking another kind of leap as I saw them coming through customs, the kids running up to the glass partition and waving madly.
This was it, the two sides of my life about to meet.
Ella and Ewen had never seen so much snow in their lives, and they made the usual comic errors kids make, like making snow balls with their bare hands, or not making sure their snow suits were zipped up before tumbling into a drift. The result was their first hot-aches, standing dumbfounded and tearful as they held out their hands, their clothes soaked with melted snow.
Yet they were fast learners and soon when they fell over in the snow without gloves they would always fall with their hands held clear.
‘Just think of snow as radioactive poo,’ I told them. ‘Only touch it if you really have to.’
I wasn’t due to climb for another week, so we did family things, my main exercise pulling the two kids in a sledge around town, which was good, as my system felt strained after climbing Les Droites.
Mandy was keen to ski, so we headed over to the nursery slopes in Argentière. I’d barely skied myself, but gave Mandy and the kids the benefit of my limited knowledge, confined to shuffling along the flat on borrowed skis and then taking them off to walk downhill.
It was the usual British ski farce, with kids falling off the tow and crying, or speeding off into the trees without being able to stop. Being the one in charge, by necessity I improved fast and soon found myself skiing down with Ewen and Ella taking turns to stand between my legs, their skis trapped between mine.
I’d come to realise that the one thing I could do well was deconstruct complex tasks and understand how they worked. It’s how I’d learned to climb, to write, and take photos. So I applied the same method to skiing, looking at how the French did it. I guess it’s called copying.
Judging that being able to ski was a good thing for a middle-class family, we booked Ella into ski school, and Mandy took lessons, leaving me with Ewen. Only being three, it was easy for him to travel along with his skis braced between mine, lifting him up when we needed to turn, and the number of crashes caused by his skis catching mine was quite small.
Anyway, he had a helmet.
My long-anticipated climbing holiday became a family skiing holiday: chocolate croissants and hot chocolate for breakfast, collecting our skis, queuing, skiing, more hot chocolate, then home.
All day, I watched Ella go by in a long line of kids, learning the basics. The French skiing instructor kept calling her Ellek all the time, which confused me. It was only on her last day – her new silver snowflake badge denoting snow-ploughing mastery pinned to her red ski suit – that I asked him why he called her Ellek. He said it was the name we’d written on her skis – Elle K.
After her first lesson the three of us skied a very long green run, Ewen between my legs and Ella sliding hesitantly behind me, coaxing them down each little steep step.
‘Throw yourself into it Ella – be bold!’ I told her. ‘Try and relax, enjoy it, don’t be scared.’
We reached the bottom of the slope, and a long queue for the button lift, the kids shuffling along beside me like penguins.
‘You cannot go on,’ said the ski patroller, holding up his hand. ‘They are too young, you will have to walk up the hill.’ He obviously had no children, I thought to myself, otherwise he’d know how likely that was. ‘Or you can go down that blue run over there and get the chairlift back,’ he said pointing to a trail that led through the trees.
The safe option was to walk all the way down, but the more exciting one was to try the blue run. If we couldn’t do it, we could always just walk down.
Plus, I’d not been down a blue run yet.
As soon as we set off I could see there was a big difference between green and blue. The piste, as narrow as a road, zigzagged through thick forest, the trail dropping off steeply in places.
It was obvious Ella’s snow-plough skills were not going to cut it, so the only way was to hold Ella’s hand and keep her steady on one side, while holding the scruff of Ewen’s neck as he zoomed along between my legs.
It was a little taxing, to say the least, juggling both kids, dodging other skiers, trees and pylons, while skiing my first blue run. Thankfully the kids stayed calm, and they trusted me, even if I didn’t trust myself.
Down we hurtled.
By the time we reached the final stretch, and I was at last able to let go of Ella and release my death grip on Ewen, I was in a state of nervous exhaustion.
‘Can we do that again?’ said Ella, beaming.
Sat on the chairlift, slowly rising through the trees, the kids pressing hard against me on both sides, scared of the drop while swinging their skis backwards and forwards, I realised that maybe one day the three of us might go on a proper adventure together.
That just being a dad was an adventure in itself.
After a week it was time to climb again. This time my partner was a German called Robert Steiner, a man I’d never met, but had heard a lot about from other climbers.
He was famous for an epic on the Grandes Jorasses, falling seventy metres near the top of the Colton-MacIntyre route and ripping out half the belay. Having broken his pelvis and ankle, Robert was unable to move. His partners were forced to leave him on a tiny ledge – this was in the middle of winter – and climb to the top to get help. It took them a further two days to make it down to Italy where they’d raised the alarm.
Robert had lain there in terrible pain, without food or water, waiting for a rescue.
On the second day he’d been so desperately thirsty he’d drank his own urine, only being so dehydrated it had simply burned his throat.
On the third day Robert saw a big storm approaching, knowing that when it hit the Jorasses there would be no rescue. He had held on, but now time was running out.
Yet as the first snowflakes began to fall he heard the rattle of a helicopter and saw the tiny red machine flying ahead of the storm as it closed in on the mountain.
The crew had one chance to save Robert. The winch man swept in at the end of the cable, clipped him in, cut away his belay and then kicked them both clear of the face.
/> The accident had left Robert with a fused ankle, but this hadn’t stopped him becoming one Germany’s premier alpinists. I’d never seen a picture of him, however, and only knew him through email. We’d made loose plans to climb on the Grandes Jorasses, and perhaps repeat the Japanese route, and agreed we’d meet at the Montenvers railway station in Chamonix before heading up to climb.
I’d heard a lot about Robert’s exploits, and his many solos. He seemed very much like a German version of me, always getting into trouble. I’d once asked Alex Huber, Germany’s greatest alpinist, if he’d heard of Robert. ‘I think Robert is a bit crazy,’ he said, a real compliment coming from Alex.
I packed my kit under the gaze of Mandy and the kids, Ella and Ewen packing my sleeping bag, Ella in fits of laugher when Ewen tried to put it on his back, the sack twice his height.
After breakfast I kissed them goodbye.
‘Be careful, Dad,’ said Ella, as she stood at the door.
Meeting Robert at the station, I half expected some monster of a climber, limping perhaps, but gigantic nonetheless. Instead, the man I met in the car park stood beside a ramshackle car full of tatty gear looking more like a schoolteacher, appropriately enough, as that’s what he was in the real world.
‘It is very good to meet you,’ Robert said, holding out his hand. Perhaps he had also been expecting some hero climber, and was now disappointed. ‘I’ve read a lot of your writing Andy, I think we will climb together well.’
As we shook hands I noticed that half his index finger was missing.
Although no monster, it was evident Robert was hardcore.
We boarded the train up to Montenvers and the start of the long walk-in to the Jorasses, our big rucksacks dumped on the seats beside us.
‘What happened to your finger?’ I asked, a little self-consciously. It must be a question he gets asked a lot.
‘A bear ate it,’ Robert said, his face stern.
I looked down at it and shuddered, not sure if I should ask any more.
‘I am joking,’ he laughed. ‘I was soloing The Sea of Dreams on El Capitan. I pulled on a block that was loose. It came down and chopped off my finger,’ he said, holding it up for me to see, as though describing a bad blister he’d once had.
Cold Wars Page 29
