I crossed the rimaye at exactly ten past five, three-quarters of an hour later than we had originally intended. Moving quickly on easy ground, we reached the foot of the ‘Hundred Foot Corner’ much sooner than we had expected. I was far from brilliant on this vertical wall with its few, awkwardly arranged holds. Lack of suitable training caused me to get cramp in the arms and calves, so that I had to spend a long time at each piton, resting. When I finally got up after an hour and a half of laborious progress I was completely demoralised and suggested retreat, adding that we had neither the class nor the training for a climb of this sort. The more optimistic Lachenal reasoned with me that I always took a long time to warm up, that we had now done the hardest pitch anyway, and that this particular type of climbing on steep, open walls had never suited me. In the end he persuaded me to push on a bit farther.
The ground now became easier again, and despite a slight mistake in route-finding we soon came to the foot of the notorious ‘Three Hundred Foot Corner’, which looked almost friendly. It is a tall, right-angled groove, mostly less than vertical, and a thin crack running from bottom to top gives promise of certain progress. The first pitch confirmed my favourable impression. I reached the stance in a few minutes of delightful climbing, and Lachenal came up at once. This was much more my style of thing, and I tackled the second pitch with confidence. About half way up it a small overhang forced me to hammer in a peg and use an etrier, but by now I was warmed up and it didn’t take long. We fairly raced up the final third of the comer, which is its best and most sustained part, and found that we had done the whole thing in one hour. Entranced with the beauty of the ascent and the pleasure of our own success, we began to go at such a rate that we reached the ‘Pendulum’ by eleven o’clock.
I remember that as I installed the rope for the rappel I remarked to Lachenal that the weather, which hadn’t changed much, would probably hold out for the day, but that it wouldn’t do to count on it for tomorrow; and that we therefore ought to aim to reach Frendo and Rébuffat’s second bivouac site that evening. Guy Poulet had told us that from there it should be possible to finish out even in the event of bad weather. Lachenal, always the optimist, replied that at the rate we were going the climb was in the bag, and that we were now so far ahead of our most sanguine time estimates that he had every hope of sleeping in the hut that evening!
We made a mess of the Pendulum. The ropes got so snarled up that it took us over half an hour to disentangle them. This operation, which was punctuated by words disapproved-of by the clergy and by polite society, was conducted in a place so ill-adapted to the outward and visible signs of bad temper that we had to anchor ourselves to a piton. Finally, three-quarters of an hour later, nothing remained but to pull down the rope which still linked us to the world of men. Once this had been done retreat would be a grave and perhaps even an insoluble problem. There was still time to choose between sterile prudence and the daring which must lead either to success or disaster. My own choice was made, but, seized by a sudden scruple, I turned towards my companion and said significantly:
‘Are you quite clear in your own mind?’
Despite his affirmative reply I hesitated a moment. Then, putting aside every softening thought, I burnt our bridges.
By noon we had reached the first Frendo-Rébuffat bivouac site, from which we could see no way forward. Neither of us was of an easily frightened disposition, but this was really a bit too much. There was nothing but an unbroken wall and, far above it, the sky. Some feet above us a piton, with a karabiner hanging from it, seemed to mark the limit of possibility. With a great deal of difficulty I climbed up to it, but at this point I found myself in an impasse. An attempt to traverse left came to nothing. Finally, by going right to the limit, I managed to get over the overhang above me, and mantelshelfed on to a narrow, outward-sloping ledge where another peg could be inserted. As far as I could judge I didn’t seem to be any better off for my pains, because I still couldn’t see any way on from there. As I scrutinised the gently overhanging wall above, however, I began to wonder if one couldn’t, by sticking one’s neck out a little, get up it after all. Allain had mentioned a difficult overhang somewhere about here – this must be it. I consequently brought Lachenal up to the peg and then launched out without hesitation, my body hanging back in space over the enormous drop. There was absolutely no feeling of fear, only a wonderful sensation of being freed from the laws of gravity. Completely relaxed, I pulled up on the tiniest holds with ease and confidence, and the emotional aspect of my situation did not occur to me. I simply thought: ‘If I fell off here the rope would break, and I would fall over a thousand feet clear to the deck’. Somehow this did not seem to apply to me, but to some external object which did not concern me. It was as though I was no longer the same earthbound man who only surmounted his fear and fatigue by a constant effort of will, because I no longer felt either. My personality had dropped away, I was borne upward by the winds, I was invincible, nothing could stop me. I had in fact attained that state of rapture, that liberation from things material, sought by the skier on the snow, the aviator in the sky, the diver out on his high board. After fifty feet of this divine madness I stopped and put in a piton. Immediately it occurred to me that even an angel can’t climb where there are no holds, such as now seemed to be the case … but no, over on the left, I spotted some tiny excrescences which would enable me to do a tension traverse worthy of Dülfer himself.[5] No sooner said than done. I gave a few quick directions to Lachenal, who was watching me from below my feet in a worried sort of way. Then, held against the rock only by the tension of the rope as it was slowly paid out, defying all the laws of balance, I traversed across the wall on minute flakes. Eventually I came to a jughandle.[6] Turning a small corner I came as if by a miracle to a platform about the size of a chair, with a piton just a few feet above it, into which I clipped the ropes. It was now up to Lachenal. He climbed quickly up to the traverse, hesitated a moment, then executed a daring pendulum across to my stance. Feeling more committed than ever, we had a look round at the sky. The northern side of the range was still clear, but the clouds which hooded our own mountain had grown and were now coming down lower. There was no time to be lost.
We continued along the system of slanting slabs, interrupted every so often by walls, which spiral up from left to right and make it possible to outflank the otherwise unclimbable obstacle of the ‘Grey Tower’, a well-known feature of the climb. No more splendid climbing could be imagined. The rock is firm, the difficulty is sustained at a high level without ever becoming extreme. I was climbing as never before, quickly, unhesitatingly, without making any mistakes. My fingers seemed to divine the holds, and our progress was almost more like a well-drilled ballet than a difficult piece of mountaineering. At three o’clock we arrived at the Allain bivouac. Its six-foot width seemed like a boulevard by comparison with the rare and narrow ledges we had encountered hitherto.
We decided to make the most of this unwanted comfort by having a bite to eat and a council of war. A comparison of our time with that of the Parisian party showed that we ought logically to be able to get very high before dark, perhaps even to the summit. We had five hours of daylight ahead of us, and Allain, moving considerably more slowly than ourselves, had covered two-thirds of the distance to the top in that time. Unfortunately we were now in thick cloud, which reduced the visibility to a few yards, and just to cap everything it began to hail. It now came home to us what a trap we had put our heads into. What was the best course? To go down? To retreat down those vast slabs up which we had climbed diagonally seemed almost impossible, and even if we managed that, how were we to get back up the Pendulum? There was nothing for it but to go on. We should get to the Frendo-Rébuffat bivouac before the weather got really bad, and once there we would win our way through sooner or later.
Our only guide was a sketch which Guy Poulet had given me. This showed a slight detour to the right, with the words ‘shattered slabs’. So far
as one could make out through the murk this description seemed to fit the slabs now on our right, and not for one moment did I think of climbing the overhang above our heads. Two delicate pitches brought us to a series of cracks cutting up through some vast dark-coloured slabs. Not so easy, these cracks, not easy at all; despite my excellent form they gave me a lot of trouble. As we made our way painfully upwards we kept looking for a way back to the left, but the lie of the land constantly forced us in the other direction. It was becoming rather worrying, especially as our sketch made no mention of such difficulties. A few pitches farther on we came up against a completely hold-less stretch of rock. The way ahead was blocked, and our position began to feel serious. The only thing was to go back down – but would we find the way? And what a waste of time it would be. Suddenly, through a gap in the clouds, I saw a way out of the impasse. On our right was a fairly easy-looking couloir. If we climbed some way up this we would be able to traverse back on to our buttress higher up, where some snow bands crossed the face. We placed the ropes for a rappel and swung across into the gully, which however turned out to be much less easy than it had looked. The angle was about sixty degrees, and the rock, some kind of schist with small, friable, outward-sloping holds, offered little or no opportunity to put in pitons. In spite of all that we had to get up, and get up quickly. Any idea of protection was illusory as we began our dangerous balancing act up the gully, and rapidly though we advanced, the night came down more rapidly still.
What with the dusk and the cloud, we were soon unable to see more than about six feet. Were we going to be caught out by darkness in this couloir, with the prospect of spending the night on holds less than a square inch across, and not even a piton to hold us? Well, we weren’t finished yet. I still had plenty of energy left, and my blood was up. Putting all thought of security out of my mind I climbed at a crazy speed, and all the time my companion stuck to me like a shadow, splendid in his nearness and calm. At last the slope gave back a little, and we noticed a narrow snow ridge on our right. Evidently the couloir was double and the two branches joined here, forming this providential little ridge on which we could safely spend the night. However, the prospect of sitting all night in melting snow rather cooled our joy, the more so as we had both already tried this unpleasant experience elsewhere. On the right of the ridge a rock about the size of a man’s head stuck out of the snow, which would do at a pinch for one of us to sit on. As we dug the snow away from around it we found first a crack which would take a good safe piton, then another stone which, cunningly arranged, would double the ground area of our little palace, bringing it up to some twelve inches by eighteen. The next thing was to don our bivouac gear, consisting of a quilted jacket and a waterproof cape. Lachenal also had a ‘pied d’éléphant’, for which I tried to compensate by pulling a pair of socks over my boots and putting my legs in the sack.[7]
We had hardly sat down when a violent storm began. Hailstones like marbles forced us to protect our heads with our hands. After a bit the calibre fortunately diminished, and I took advantage of the lull to get going on the food, devouring bacon, butter, cheese, dried fruit and Ovomaltine. Lachenal was not hungry, and I had to force him to take something to keep his strength up. Torrents of hailstones were still breaking over our arête, and although we were out of the main stream we had to keep clearing them away as they piled up against our backs, pushing us outwards. But despite the fury of the elements, the continuing hail, the noise of thunder and falling stones, and despite our uncomfortable position on one buttock, squeezed up against each other with our feet swinging in the air, the night gradually crept by. We passed the time alternately singing anything that came into our heads and discussing our chances of getting through alive. I felt that the situation was not without hope, because a good storm often clears the air and it might be fine next day. Lachenal thought that in any case we were near enough to the top to receive help if necessary. All this is not to say that we were not extremely worried, but somehow something told us that we would win through. We kept in quite good spirits, therefore, and my own love of adventure was so strong that in my deepest self I was not sorry to have lived through such an exceptional experience.
The storm died down towards morning, and in spite of the cold we dozed off. A dismal, freezing dawn revealed our situation for the first time as truly dramatic. It was impossible to gauge our position on the face because of the swirling clouds that cloaked and distorted everything. The next part of the couloir was just like what we had climbed the day before, but it had been covered in hail during the night and now the biting cold had transformed it into a sheet of black ice. From the very first move it became obvious that it would be impossible to climb in vibrams, but, by a stroke of luck, I had brought along one pair of crampons on the advice of Pierre Allain. There was only one possible solution: to climb the slabs in crampons, trying to get over to the left on to the proper route as we went. Still wearing my cape and quilted jacket I set out to try my luck, filled with the energy of despair. It was delicate and dangerous work. The only points of contact for the feet were the two front spikes of the crampons, which frequently had to be placed on minuscule holds while my numbed hands painfully cleared the rock ahead. The pitons never went in more than half an inch, and were so loose that Lachenal was able to pick them out casually with his hands. Every movement was a feat in itself. I was continually at my limit, and the best I could do for my partner, whose rubber-shod feet kept skidding off, was to help him keep his balance by holding the rope as tight as I could. There would have been no question of holding a real fall, and we only got up this part of the climb alive thanks to his exceptional class.
For all my efforts I could not manage to traverse left, and in the end I was even forced in the opposite direction on to an ice slope, up which we notched little pockets. I was literally obsessed with the need to hurry, because if it once came on to snow that would be the end of us. This ruthless concentration enabled me to overcome obstacles that I would not even have considered in normal circumstances. In a sense it was rather like the time I had been caught in an avalanche and had been forced to swim desperately to get back to the surface: there was the same fantastic surge of unsuspected forces, the same cold-blooded summing up of the situation. So now I followed lines of least resistance almost more in a spirit of curiosity than of trepidation, though I was quite clear in my own mind that it would probably be impossible to reverse them.
Finally we came up against a vertical wall split by a huge chimney. The small part we could see looked climbable, so we proceeded to bury ourselves in its depths. The clouds thinned out for a few minutes, and we made the most of our relatively secure position to look down at where we had come from and where we had gone wrong, imprinting it on our memories. Then we climbed on again, finding it all as desperate as ever: a succession of overhanging chimneys choked with loose boulders, interspersed with short, deceptively easy-looking couloirs. The walls of the chimneys sloped away from each other unpleasantly, calling for great efforts, and sometimes for all-out artificial climbing. The rock was so rotten and the pitons gripped so badly that sometimes I took half an hour to gain only a few feet. At these times Lachenal was in the less enviable position, constantly running the risk of being brained by the stones I could not help knocking off, despite the greatest precautions. His prodigious agility enabled him to dodge most of them, but one block twice the size of a man’s fist scored a direct hit on his head. Miraculously he was only knocked out for a couple of minutes. Sometimes he would have to spend a whole hour hanging from a peg by his waistloop, racked by cramps and deprived of the physical and mental heat which the leader generates in the battle. But he bore up wonderfully. Shivering with cold, dodging the stones, but still smiling and jovial, he never ceased to encourage me, referring frequently to a certain slap-up meal we were going to have before long.
Above each overhang I kept hoping to find easy ground at last, but I was constantly disappointed. Each time it would turn out
to be a slab with small, friable holds, all covered in rime and verglas, and each time I would have to do a dangerous balancing act in which I would succeed only at the price of running enormous risks.[8] The climbing was physical torture, too. My hands were so cold that I constantly had to beat them raw to get any feeling back, and as for my feet it was so long since I had felt anything in them that I had given up bothering. Terrible cramps in my calves, thighs, neck and left arm added to the uncertainty of my progress. But worst of all was the unending fear (that at any moment we might come up against some unclimbable overhang, beneath which we would die slowly of cold and hunger. By this time I was climbing like an automaton, in a kind of trance. Every pitch provided some sort of peril from which we only escaped by a miracle. Once, a huge flake of rock slid off as I passed, almost touching Lachenal as it whizzed by. In another place I had just crossed a smooth slab, and shouted to him to pendulum across to me. As he did so the spike of rock round which he had placed the rope broke off. Luckily the rope flicked round my wrist as he fell. As the strain came on me I was pulled outwards inexorably … but managed to hold on. Farther on we came to an overhang capped with snow. I pushed the shaft of my ice axe into it and was pulling up when it gave way, and I landed on another lump of snow ten feet lower down. Fortunately this one held.
Conquistadors of the Useless Page 16
