Conquistadors of the Useless

by Roberts, David, Terray, Lionel, Sutton, Geoffrey

  A week later we were circling Chacraraju, looking for a possible way up. The north face looked the most favourable, but it took us five days to whip forty recalcitrant mules up to the thirteen-thousand-foot mark, where we established a well-supplied base camp. Thence-forward our assault followed more or less Himalayan lines. With the aid of three energetic mestizo porters we put an advanced base beyond a labyrinth of séracs, at around 16,750 feet, some six hundred feet from the base of the wall. Even taking turns with the work it took us three days to rig the first thousand feet with fixed ropes. There was a serious risk of falling ice on this part of the climb, and the rock climbing in some places was so difficult that we had to have recourse to artificial means. Only at the third attempt did we succeed in pitching a bivouac camp, on a narrow platform hacked out of the ice wall, at approximately 16,750 feet. On the following day the leading pair cut their way up another 750 feet of over sixty-degree ice, installing fixed ropes as they went.

  A period of bad weather now drove us back to base. On the 30th July we all went up to the bivouac camp with heavy loads of food and equipment, and next morning the assault began two hours before dawn. The fixed ropes enabled us to reach the previous highest point just after first light, whence some difficult rock pitches soon led us to the foot of a vertical ice groove with a small overhang in the middle of it. Since the ice was too soft for the use of ice pegs it took more than an hour’s delicate progress to overcome the obstacle. Another hundred and thirty feet of very severe climbing brought us to a broad snow terrace three hundred feet from the top. From here the last part of the climb looked so awkward that we decided to attack without waiting for a rest. Four rope’s lengths of continual step-cutting then led me to the hitherto untrodden summit at 5 p.m., and a few minutes later all six members of the assault party were shaking hands on its constricted dome.

  The ‘impossible’ Chacraraju had been climbed at last, but in spite of the size and quality of the team, the quantity of equipment and the methodical tactics deployed against it, the battle had been long and hard. Eleven hours had been required to overcome the last two and a half thousand feet, seven of which were on the face itself. The last six hundred feet had been rendered doubly severe by the altitude, and some of the ice pitches had been harder than anything that any of us had ever seen before.

  It was a moment of supreme happiness. From every point of the horizon the great ice and rock peaks of the Cordillera Blanca, flaming with evening colour, seemed to salute us. Below our feet the shadow of our mountain stretched out over the desolate hills of the Altiplano like a giant arrow. The grandeur of the moment sang in me … yet how cold the wind blew on this ridge, how small and far away our base camp. Without a tent or so much as a sleeping bag, a bivouac here would be absolutely infernal.

  After a short discussion we took a vote. The majority preferred to climb down through the night by the light of our head-torches and so, after innumerable rappels, we got back to the bivouac camp at seven o’clock the next morning, twenty-six hours after leaving it. We were too exhausted to carry on, and it was not until the following day that we got back to the flowers and grass of the valley.

  After our hard-won victory over Chacraraju our thirst for adventure was largely appeased for the moment. The east peak of the mountain,[5] slightly lower but certainly more difficult still, seemed rather too grandiose a project to occupy the three weeks that remained to us, and we settled instead for Taulliraju (19,127 feet). We had frequently admired this mountain’s haughty bearing, and its ascent promised the double attraction of being difficult but reasonably short.

  Although the real climbing on Taulliraju is only about sixteen hundred feet in extent, it turned out to be at least as trying as Chacraraju, and perhaps even more strenuous. There was no ice pitch as difficult as the notorious ice groove, but one magnificent granite slab proved certainly as hard as anything ever done at such an altitude on rock. Some very delicate ice climbing was nevertheless called for before we got the first thousand feet fully equipped with fixed ropes. Then, after a short break in the weather, the attack was launched on 17th August. Although there remained little more than six hundred feet beyond the top of the fixed ropes it was obvious that we would not get up and down in one day, and we therefore carried equipment for a relatively comfortable bivouac, including sleeping bags and two minute tents, one weighing a pound and a half, the other two pounds.

  The fixed ropes enabled us to reach our previous highest point by nine o’clock. From there on we had to climb on the left flank of the east ridge, where we were forced to spend much time and energy clearing away the deep, soft snow. Even the sufficiently suggestive photos we brought back give no real idea of the toilsomeness and danger of our advance. The floury powder lay at an angle of over sixty degrees. Once a section of it gave way, but fortunately I was held on the rope by Sennelier after a fall of thirty feet. Each rope’s length took over an hour, and it was not until three o’clock that we emerged from an ice overhang back on to the crest of the ridge, at the foot of a superb slab of granite, fully a hundred feet high. Sennelier led this pitch and fixed a rope on it for the following day.

  Despite cloud and intermittent snowfall, we were up and doing by 8 a.m. on the 18th August. A fine ice pitch followed the slab, after which we found ourselves condemned to the left side of the ridge again with its tedious flailing and delving and stamping. Finally an ice tower gave us some delicate cramponning to reach the summit at 2 p.m. More than fourteen hours’ climbing time had been necessary to surmount six hundred feet. Never, perhaps, in the whole history of mountaineering, had the ascent of a peak been such sheer hard work. Another night was spent in our tiny tents, attached in an incredible position to the bottom of the slab. On the 19th we reached the glacier and staggered off in the direction of Camp One after a fast of over twenty-four hours.

  My companions now went home to France, but I stayed on in Peru for another two months. Living like a mestizo, travelling in trade trucks and sleeping in huts, I shared the life of the Indians as I toured the south of the country to finish the film I had begun on the Quechuas. A passion to record the violence and poetry of life on film took complete possession of me, and in constantly analysing things to arrive at their essence, in seeking the most striking images, the acuity of my senses became doubled, so that I experienced forms of beauty with an intensity I had never known before. When I at last resigned myself to return to Europe, at the end of October, I was gorged with beauty and adventure.

  In less than seven years I had taken part in seven distinct expeditions, spent twenty-seven months overseas, done approximately a hundred and eighty ascents in the Alps, given nearly seven hundred lectures and driven over ninety-four thousand miles! My wife and friends were all astonished that after such an effervescent existence I felt not the least bit tired; and to tell the truth I was rather surprised myself. To be quite honest I had often felt it was time to stop before my luck turned – but these were times when I could not sleep for nervous fatigue, or when I had got back to the valley exhausted after over-prolonged exertions. At such times I would typically dream of a quiet life, divided between the soft warmth of my own fireside and the love of nature. No sooner had I pulled myself together, however, than I would start to ponder on the past. The circumstances of daily life would start to seem petty, ugly and monotonous, until the memory of my more intense hours began to obsess me. I would find myself burning with desire to experience others as ardent, and once again I would hurl myself into the great game.

  1957 looked as though it was going to be a more peaceful year, since there were no expeditions in the offing until 1958; but unfortunately it was upset by painful events which everybody knows about and on which I will not dwell.[6] My summer was given up to guiding, and I did a number of serious climbs. With Tom De Booy, for example, I made the fifth ascent of the north face of the Grosshorn in the Bernese Oberland. This is considered one of the steepest ice faces in the Alps, but despite unf
avourable conditions we got up its more than three thousand feet in ten and a half hours. On a day of threatened storm in 1955 we had climbed the north face of the Triolet, which is slightly less high but still harder, in exactly five hours. If one compares these times with those of my ice climbs in the Peruvian Andes one cannot help but be struck by the difference. The greater altitude does not entirely account for it. The intrinsic difficulty of the Andean peaks is also very much greater; so much so, in fact, that since I got to know them the ice faces of the Alps have felt like training grounds.

  After our triumph on Makalu and the successes of the Muztagh Tower and Chacraraju one might have been pardoned for supposing that the French were well prepared to make a step forward in the art of climbing the apparently most inaccessible mountains. The reader may wonder whether there was much left worth attempting after so many formidable six- , seven- and eight-thousanders, and whether the tool had not once again become too perfect for the job. In fact this was far from being the case. There were and are numerous peaks far harder than anything yet attempted relative to their height and latitude. In particular there exists a huge field of action among the many difficult summits of barely less than 8,000 metres, which combine technical severity with great height and all its attendant problems.

  True to its pioneering doctrines, the Himalayan Committee now accepted Jean Franco’s advice in formulating a project of unheard-of audacity, namely the ascent of Jannu, the most spectacular of all the unclimbed peaks. This granite tower, rising in two successive vertical tiers to a height of 25,295 feet, appeared to be the most impregnable of nature’s remaining fortresses. A light reconnaissance party led by Guido Magnone went out in the autumn of 1957 to examine the possibilities. They returned with a series of wonderful photographs, showing a gigantic face interrupted only with overhanging séracs and walls of rock. This, it seemed, was the easiest side of the mountain …

  Our friends’ eye of faith had picked out an unbelievably daring line through this vertical obstacle course. No single section of it looked unclimbable in itself, but the sheer length and continuity of the difficulties were out of all proportion with the most grandiose ascents so far done. It was roughly equivalent to climbing three Chacrarajus one on top of another. This meant more than a step forward – it meant a veritable jump.

  The committee hesitated somewhat before the risks involved, but the money was in the coffers, the tool was whetted, and once the idea had been formed it swelled like a mountain torrent, sweeping away all prudence and tradition from its course. An expedition to Jannu was decided on, but in order to get the right men and equipment together it was postponed until 1959.

  My time being my own in 1958, I was able to accept Ichac’s offer to join him in his great project of shooting a full-length feature film about mountains, a project which we carried out in five months of continuous filming on the faces and glaciers of the Mont Blanc massif. This feature to which I have already referred, was called Les Etoiles de Midi.

  When the expedition to Jannu finally took place it fully lived up to our expectations. The line envisaged by the reconnaissance party turned out to be too dangerous, on account of continual ice avalanches, for us to have any hope of getting up it without a disaster, but by a stroke of luck we found an alternative. This was much less exposed to objective risks, but it was very difficult and above all extraordinarily roundabout. It meant first of all scaling the defences of a 21,982-foot satellite peak, then rejoining the mountain proper at the base of its final tower by means of a daring ridge-traverse.

  The first part of the ascent was scarcely less difficult than that of the most redoubtable Peruvian peaks. Eight European climbers and seventeen Sherpas rigged the mountain with six camps, a hundred and fifty ice pitons, and over six thousand five hundred feet of fixed rope. In the hardest part, between camps Three and Four, heavy loads had to be back-packed on more than forty occasions. Yet in spite of all this unprecedented effort the summit was not conquered.[7] About nine hundred feet from the top a last crag proved too much for the assault party.

  It would be both long and boring to analyse the reasons for this failure. There were a number of contributing factors, and every member of the team would probably emphasise one or another according to his temperament. Personally, I think one can only say that our ambition exceeded our abilities. Climbing is before everything else a gamble, even on the Himalayan scale, and if it lost its element of hazard it would lose its own nature. ‘It is obvious that the risks and doubts must increase in proportion to the technical difficulties’, as Lucien Devies has said. We had deliberately chosen difficulty on a gigantic scale, thereby reducing our own chances. Even before setting out we had reckoned that the odds on getting up Jannu were no better than thirty per cent. We had gambled and lost. Nothing could be more natural.

  The level and continuity of the difficulties, the length and complexity of the route, the state of the weather and the element of luck all combined to take up too much time. When we eventually reached our highest point the season was almost over and we were too short of material necessities to finish out with a reasonable margin of safety. The mountain had had the last word, though there had not been much in it. With a slightly bigger organisation and a little more luck the spirit of man would once again have triumphed over the insensate forces of nature.

  There was no disagreement when we got back to Paris: we would just have to try again. The experience we had now acquired should suffice to tip the scales in our favour. Our enthusiasm persuaded the Himalayan Committee to arrange for a new attempt in 1961, but various circumstances combined to delay it until 1962. Jean Franco felt that he was beginning to get old for this kind of thing, and at his request the leadership was entrusted to me, a heavy responsibility which I only accepted after a good deal of hesitation.

  In a few days’ time I shall be forty years old. Twenty years of action on the mountains of the world have left me with more energy and enthusiasm than the majority of my younger companions, yet I am no longer altogether the same person who once rode roughshod over men and the forces of nature to victory on the Walker, the Eiger, the Fitzroy and Chacraraju. So many years of trial and danger change a man in spite of himself.

  Shortly after our return from Jannu I was crossing the Fresnay glacier with a client when we were surprised by an avalanche of séracs. My companion was killed and I was buried under fifteen feet of ice.

  At that moment it seemed as though the insolent luck which had hitherto walked by my side had abandoned me at last, but in fact, by one of the most amazing miracles in the history of mountaineering, I emerged without a scratch. Imprisoned under a block of ice in the bottom of a crevasse, I managed by a series of contortions to reach a knife which I had by sheer chance left in my pocket. With its aid I was able to reach a cavity in the debris which, once again, had formed close to me by the merest luck. With an ice piton and my peg hammer I then carved out a gallery towards the light. Five hours later I reached the fresh air. This stay in the antechambers of death, where yet another companion was lost at my side, ripened me more than ten years of successful adventures.

  In every adventure, whatever my nominal capacity, I have marched with the van. On expeditions or in the Alps, I have accepted every risk and responsibility with a tranquil mind. If I have sometimes led others into danger I have never hesitated to stand at their side. Today my willpower is no longer quite so inflexible, the limits of my courage not so far out. In the assault on the most redoubtable bastion ever invested by a group of mountaineers will I still be a captain leading his shock troops in the last charge, or will I have changed into a general who waits in fear behind the lines while his men advance into action?

  And after Jannu, what? Will there be anything left to satisfy man’s hunger for transcendence?

  There can be no doubt that others will tackle peaks less high, but harder still. When the last summit has been climbed, as happened yesterday in the Alps and only recen
tly in the Andes, it will be the turn of the ridges and faces. Even in the era of aviation there is no sign of any limitation yet to the scope for the best climbers of their day.

  My own scope must now go back down the scale. My strength and my courage will not cease to diminish. It will not be long before the Alps once again become the terrible mountains of my youth, and if truly no stone, no tower of ice, no crevasse lies somewhere in wait for me, the day will come when, old and tired, I find peace among the animals and flowers. The wheel will have turned full circle: I will be at last the simple peasant that once, as a child, I dreamed of becoming.

  1. Translator’s note. The height of this mountain is disputed.[back]

  2. Translator’s note. Then equivalent to approximately £100.[back]

  3. Translator’s note. Dunes of snow formed by the wind.[back]

  4. Translator’s note. Gosainthan, which is in Tibetan Territory.[back]

  5. Translator’s note. Climbed in 1962 by a party including Terray.[back]

  6. Translator’s note. The author refers to the New Year rescue attempts on Mont Blanc.[back]

  7. Translator’s note. It was climbed by the 1962 party led by Terray.[back]