Meanwhile, Geoff and I reached the upper rim of the snowfield. Geoff belayed to a Deadman – another piece of equipment we were glad to have brought – while I tiptoed up some slabs which were covered with powder but without a trace of ice or snow-ice for crampons to bite on. The Verte was glowing a lurid pink. The light of La Flégère téléphérique station, miles away across the valley, was already a brilliant green. Dark was near at hand and we were without a bivouac site. Hurriedly Geoff led through, making for a spike of rock protruding from the snow. At least it would be a belay. As night fell Geoff draped ropes and gear from the spike while I shovelled snow from unpromising bits of rock. Luckily, one of them turned out to be neither a slab nor embedded in ice. A few minutes’ vigorous digging and we had a ledge which was not only flat but spacious enough to lie down on. Unfortunately its advantages were offset by the spindrift that poured down the face every few minutes, threatening us with speedy burial when we tried to ignore it.
We were slow getting away next morning. After a bivouac, not only is the body reluctant but the mind is sluggish, inhibited by the sheer number of different tasks to be performed – not to mention the nightmare of dropping a boot or a crampon. I wasted an hour on a false line, so once again it was nine o’clock before we were properly under way, climbing ice in a shallow gully that split the rock. The top was overhanging but a hidden chimney avoided the issue and emerging, we found ourselves on the central ice field at last. So far we had underestimated both the length and the difficulty of the route. We wondered, with some trepidation, how we would find the steep couloir at the top, which we had always expected to be hard.
In the meantime, the ice field proved to be not ice but snow, on which we could safely move together. Gradually the snow-powdered obelisk of the République grew and became huge and the couloir began to hang overhead threateningly. In time, tired muscles reduced us to pitched climbing; but soon after we met ice where we would have used the rope in any case. Once, a small aircraft shot from behind the north-west ridge in a sudden rush of noise. Without noticing us, it flew on up the glacier and back past the Dru, a cheerful speck of red in the white landscape. The ice field was being funnelled between rock walls now. The ice became harder and steeper. Finally we were gazing with alarm at a near-vertical wall of flakes and boulders embedded in a matrix of ice.
The camera had just run out of film which was a pity for the climbing was spectacular; but we would not have taken many pictures. After two rope-lengths, night was upon us again and the camera could not have recorded the scenes that followed: the blue flame of the Gaz stove illuminating a few inches of rock in a universe of darkness as I stood brewing up on a tiny stance, Geoff crouched in a sleepy huddle at my feet; the faint torch blur moving to and fro far above when we climbed on; the dim shape below, from which issued frenzied strains of ‘The Balls of O’Leary’ as Geoff ‘did his Devil’s Dance on each microscopic stance’; moonlight glimmering on the far side of the couloir while, too tired to face the ice when it reappeared, we groped endlessly in chimneys and grooves and the cold nibbled like barracuda at extremities; or the moment when I emerged into the moonlight on the crest of the NE ridge, a dream of folded, twisted white writhing into the dark, and in a state of trance gazed round from the silhouetted finger of the Géant, over the deep trough of the Leschaux glacier and the delicate pale fan of the Talèfre, to the familiar yet glisteningly strange forms of the Courtes, Droites and Vertes, and on to the long glow-worm of the Chamonix valley. It was almost three o’clock before we bivouacked, just below the summit.
The last few feet, the following morning, seemed as hard as anything on the climb. First a deceitful wall, far steeper than it looked, on which always the next move was clearly impossible until half-hearted digging unexpectedly revealed the crucial hold; then a vicious little corner which Geoff climbed without his sack; finally, a powder-covered slab demanding concentration right to the end. Perched uneasily on the top without a belay, I brought Geoff up, conscious more of thirst than of triumph. For myself, the cold had never been a serious problem, except when I took my gloves off to climb; but a dry mouth and an unsatisfied longing for liquid had been with me almost from the start.
Alpine summits are rarely places for contemplation, let alone congratulations; there is always the descent to worry about. Despite the view of Mont Blanc and the Aiguilles and, near at hand, the amazing ice-tipped lance of the Grépon, this one passed almost unnoticed in a grovelling, burrowing but nevertheless fruitless search for an abseil spike. Eventually we left one of the four remaining pegs, reluctantly for we expected to need them all lower down. In the event, however, the six abseils down the Charmoz-Grépon couloir were all from good flakes and blissfully uneventful. On the Nantillons glacier the crevasses were choked, the séracs silent. In Leslie Stephen’s words, the pulse of the mountains was beating low. After a pause on top of the rognon, we eschewed the rocks of the usual descent and passed rapidly down the middle of the glacier. Soon we were safely out of sérac range on a snow-ridge which in summer would have been a lateral moraine.
With the relief of jousting knights emerging from their armour, we threw off rucksacks, hammers, helmets, crampons, ropes, slings, anoraks and mittens and stretched out luxuriously in the last few minutes of mellow sunlight. Ski tracks led away towards Plan de l’Aiguille, contouring round hollows and hummocks beneath the Blaitière. Unbeknown to us, some of them had been made by Alec and Henry, come to look for us only a few hours earlier. The tracks would not make the going any easier but they saved us the mental effort of picking a route.
As we trudged homeward, ploughing a dark furrow across shadowy snows, the day was dying. Across the Chamonix valley the tips of the Aiguilles Rouges were alight. High above the Nantillons, the ramparts of the Charmoz and the Grépon glowed the fiercer as shadow bit into them. Before us, the sky burned with an orange ever more intense. The last téléphérique from the Midi slowed and halted before Plan de l’Aiguille station, swinging silhouetted like a bird hovering before its nest. It was one of those evenings when one would like eyes in the back of the head to take it all in.
We were tired and it was hard work breaking trail. But much of it was downhill and there was no hurry – we were not going to reach Chamonix that night. Except for the occasional elephant trap between boulders, feet could be left to themselves. Gratefully, our minds returned to the summit and peered back down the North Face on to the last four days. Suddenly, the delicate mauve gauze of an afterglow spread out from the orange west, its fingers brushing across the sky. Behind us, above the Aiguille de l’M, the sky was deepening from blue to vibrant indigo. The whole sky throbbed with colour, resisting the imperceptible yet inevitable onset of darkness. It was, I mused, a metaphor. Our climb, too, had been a blaze of colour, a surge of energy, a metamorphosis.
In the silence, a generator buzzing on top of the Midi carried clear and incongruous across thousands of feet of cold air. Momentarily I was resentful. Then it seemed not to matter. My content, like the silence of the winter Alps, was too deep to be disturbed. Like the poet, I could but exclaim: ‘World, I cannot hold thee close enough!’
– Chapter 13 –
RASSEMBLEMENT (1977)
Every other year since 1957, with only occasional gaps, the French government has sponsored an international gathering of alpinists at Chamonix, under the auspices of ENSA – the Ecole Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme. The hospitality of these meets has become legendary. Not only are board and lodging on a sumptuous scale provided in the valley, but huts, hill food, téléphériques and any other transport are also paid for. Last summer, to our huge delight, Geoff Cohen and I were chosen by the Alpine Climbing Group to attend the 1976 Rassemblement. Our selection was thanks only to the absence in foreign parts of those better qualified but, like winners of the football pools, we did not question whether we deserved our good fortune, we just set out to enjoy it.
However, despite eager anticipation, we missed the opening of the meet. While the
speeches were being made, the ‘flower of British alpinism’, as Geoff remarked ironically, was abseiling down (and on two occasions prusiking back up) the Peigne in pitch dark and pouring rain. Sodden, and with no bivouac gear, it seemed preferable to keep moving, despite the lack of a torch. By four in the morning we were only two or three hundred metres above Chamonix, but there the darkness in the forest became total and we lay down on the path till daybreak. More than a little sheepish, we squelched into ENSA’s domed reception hall and introduced ourselves. To our surprise, nobody was in the least perturbed; and in fact, the whole meet was to be characterised by a pleasant lack of formality. Soon we were meeting André Contamine, whose climb we had been attempting on the Peigne, and who can draw topos out of his head, with details of every piton, pitch and variation, for almost any route in the Mont Blanc range; also, Henri Agresti and Raymond Renaud, the two highly experienced and widely travelled ‘Professors of Alpinism’ who had been appointed mentors to the Rassemblement. Upstairs, in our ninth-floor apartment, a long hot shower washed away the less pleasant memories of the night and we emerged ready to do justice to the four-course meal and unlimited wine served at lunchtime.
The chief object of such a gathering is to allow climbers of different nationalities to meet, make friends, and swap views and ideas in a relaxed atmosphere. Sixteen countries were represented, mostly European, but including the USA, Japan, India and Greece. Surprising absentees were the Italians, Austrians and Russians. A few people had met before: Raymond Renaud and Lhatoo Dorjee, for instance, had been together on the Franco-Indian expedition to Nanda Devi; and I had briefly encountered Henri Agresti in Teheran, eight years before, when we were both outward bound for the Hindu Kush. Mostly, however, it was a case of having mutual friends and acquaintances. Squadron Leader Battacharya from India had been Liaison Officer to the Army expedition to Menthosa. Marian Piekatowski had climbed with Paul Nunn on the Dru. Ulrich Eberhardt, from Munich, had been a guest of the BMC the previous Spring and spoke with some awe of the drinking as well as the climbing abilities of the National Officer, Pete Boardman. Dominique Marchal knew the climbs of the Llanberis Pass as well as we did, and the complexities of its social life considerably better. Conversation at mealtimes was a lively confusion of broken French and English as Greeks talked to Spaniards, Poles to Indians, Yugoslavs to Norwegians, and Finns to Japanese.
Nevertheless, despite interesting company, lavish cuisine and a fine library to browse in, time began to drag as the weather remained bad. After a climb, the first day of idleness is always bliss, the second OK, the third is boring, the fourth sheer hell. Fortunately, the forecast on the fifth day was slightly more optimistic, and we departed for the Brenva face. We were both fairly fit, so we had no qualms about a Mont Blanc route, and the Brenva climbs were likely to be less affected than most by a week’s fresh snow. As temperatures were exceptionally cold, we were prepared to risk the long sérac-threatened traverse to the Pear Buttress, a route much less frequently climbed than the others in Graham Brown’s famous Tryptich (Sentinelle Rouge and Route Major).
In the Midi téléphérique station, Geoff broke a crampon strap. It seemed an ill omen, but he tied the crampon on with a prusik loop, which, slightly to our surprise, proved quite adequate. The Chamonix valley had been filled with cloud but Italy was in sunshine and we congratulated ourselves on our acumen – or luck. For once, the surface of the Vallée Blanche was unsullied. There was not a track, or a pee stain, or a beer bottle to be seen and we made our way across to the Trident (Ghiglione) hut in a solitude and stillness which can usually be found only in winter. The hut too was deserted – even the guardian had tired of waiting for custom – so there was no argument over whether or not we should pay thirteen francs for a stay of four hours.
The Pear is not as natural a line as the Route Major, but it gave us an excellent climb, enhanced by there being, apparently, not another soul on the south side of Mont Blanc. The traverse, on bare rubble at first, then ice (a common combination everywhere after an unusually dry winter) was at an easy angle, and we were on the rocks well before the sun touched the séracs up above. The Pear Buttress itself was snowed up and gave enjoyable mixed climbing; and we were relieved to find that the dripping, riven prow of ice beneath which one must briefly pass at the top of the buttress, would have missed us by a few feet even if it had chosen to break off. Above, we unwisely took another, smaller buttress direct, but a good lead by Geoff extricated us from an apparent cul-de-sac. (A few days later some Swiss friends from the meet made the mistake of following our footsteps and, lacking Geoff’s expertise, they had to retreat. The moral is obvious!) The upper band of séracs is less dangerous than those below, but we seemed to be beneath them for a long time, and regretted not taking the steeper but safer line to the top of the Peuteret Ridge. We broke no records for the long slog through soft snow to the summit of Mont Blanc, and a nose-numbing wind sped us on our way down the other side without pause. We were equipped with tickets for trains, téléphériques and buses, but arrived just too late for each in turn. Discovering the hard way that my new boots were a size too small, I enjoyed the 12,000 feet descent to Chamonix less than I might have done. But even blackened toes could not wholly eradicate the sensations of a day alone with the sun and the wind on that huge face.
The following evening saw us back at the Aiguille du Midi, staying at the privately-owned Refuge des Cosmiques, in order to try the Gervasutti Pillar on Mont Blanc du Tacul. No longer regarded as difficult, it is still a magnificent climb, especially in its central section where it goes straight up the crest of a startlingly slender pillar of perfect yellow granite. The forecast had been for good weather in the morning, deteriorating in the afternoon. Since the hardest climbing is in the bottom half, that seemed fair enough. In the event, the sun was obscured by high cloud almost as soon as it appeared over the horizon, and a North wind forced us to wear windproofs and fingerless mitts from the word go. We seemed to be shivering all day. There was so much snow still lying, thanks to the low temperatures, that crampons became necessary half way up, just after the last graded pitch. About noon, the weather broke as predicted, and with driving snow and wind gusting from every direction, it all felt very Scottish. Easy climbing became difficult, sometimes desperate, and the upper ridge seemed to go on for ever. We were still climbing as dark fell, and the final pitch stretched to 250 feet as, unbeknownst to each other, we moved together across a steep mixed wall which, even in the depths of night created by my dark glasses, felt exposed. On top the snow had stopped but it was still blowing and we could see nothing, so we dug a platform out of a snow arête, and pulled the Zdarsky sack over our heads. I had a lightweight sleeping bag and a small square of Karrimat, and was very snug. Geoff, who had a duvet and only the ropes for insulation, did not fare so well and, next morning, was noticeably more anxious to be on the move. Though we knew the descent, travelling among crevasses in poor visibility is never pleasant and we were glad when, halfway down the steep north slope of the Tacul, we suddenly dropped out of the cloud. Soon we were back at the Cosmiques, having breakfast and trying to make friends with its anglophobe guardian.
A day of rest was called for after this excursion and, at a hint from Henri who had chanced to see my crampons one day, we took the opportunity to visit the Charlet-Moser equipment works. M. Charlet was affable and generous. After a glass of cognac, we came away clutching not only a pair of fourteen-point crampons apiece but also a Gaberou axe and a North Wall hammer respectively. Such fine new gear deserved a worthy baptism so, fortified by a good forecast and able to be extravagant at someone else’s expense, we took the cable car up to the Grands Montets and bivouacked at the edge of the chaotic Nant Blanc glacier.
Next day, in twelve exhilarating hours, we made a new climb on the Nant Blanc face of the Aiguille Sans Nom, a shoulder of the Aiguille Verte. Taking the buttress between the traditional Charlet-Platonov route and the more recent Boivin-Vallencant, at the bottom it was easier but also much sa
fer than either. The central ice field, covered by an inch or so of snow-ice, presented no problems. And in the upper rocks we zigzagged up a thin but continuous ribbon of ice which gave climbing similar to that on the North Face of Les Droites, less sustained, but technically rather harder.
The climbing was enjoyable throughout, the discovery of a way through the rock-band, exciting. Our Charlet gear proved excellent and we climbed with confidence. But the best was yet to come. Beneath us, as we traversed the delicate Sans Nom ridge to the summit of the Verte, the valleys were filled with cloud, rising, falling, boiling, swirling, no mere cotton-wool carpet but as mobile and ever-changing as the sea. We took our time, pausing to gaze around, lingering on the top. Why hurry down to a stuffy, overcrowded hut on such an evening? We bivouacked comfortably halfway down the Grand Rocheuse with a wide-angled view from the deepening sunset hues of Mont Blanc across to the Jorasses, jutting out of the cloud like a rock above a foaming sea of ruddy gold, and on to the dissolving blues, greys, purples and violets in the east over the Triolet. The sun was finally fading from the tops and we were settling into our sleeping bags when suddenly the shadow of the Verte appeared on the cloud below us, an enormous cone appearing to stretch all the way to the Pennine Alps. As the stars came out and night crept over us, we lay silent and wide-awake on our respective ledges, reluctant to let the day pass into memory.
Over the Hills and Far Away Page 7