Over the Hills and Far Away

by Rob Collister

  Back in the valley, the weather broke and climbing was out of the question for some time. After the activity of the last few days, we welcomed the chance to relax and see how the others had been faring. In the past, a feature of the Rassemblement has been fierce competition between leading climbers, fostered rather than discouraged by the organisers, and the wags did not fail to dub this year’s meet the Climbing Olympics. To our relief, however, competition this time was minimal and never overt. Climbs were recorded but not publicised. Good routes were being done but, perhaps because of the unsettled weather, nothing exceptional. Our attitude towards the Rassemblement and, I suspect, that of most of the other participants, was simply that here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to climb free of all financial considerations and we wanted to make the most of it. It is also easier to climb intensively when you are living on a good diet, with a drying room, hot shower and comfortable bed to return to, rather than lurking in a tent somewhere in the forest.

  At all events, when Henri Agresti suggested that we join him, his wife Isabelle, and Bernard Muller in an attempt on the Pilastro Rosso – the Red, or Left-hand Pillar of Brouillard – we were initially delighted, and it was concern at the size of the party rather than rivalry that caused us to opt for the Right-hand pillar instead. Seen from the valley, the Brouillard pillars appear insignificant outcrops perched high on the south flank of Mont Blanc. Close to, they are superb granite monoliths that would delight the eye of any rock climber. Both give something like 1,500 feet of mostly free climbing in an extremely remote setting from which retreat, if not quite as difficult as from the neighbouring Frêney Pillars, is nonetheless uninviting. The Left-hand Pillar, first climbed by Walter Bonatti, exits directly on to the long and rarely-climbed Brouillard ridge, but from the top of the Right-hand Pillar there is a further 1,500 feet of mixed climbing to reach the ridge. Not quite so fine a line as Bonatti’s route, the Right-hand Pillar has had even fewer ascents since it was first climbed, at the third attempt, by a British/American team in 1965. Bonington and Harlin, the leading rope, turned back well below the Brouillard ridge, and it is possible that in the intervening ten years the route had never been completed to the summit of Mont Blanc.

  Time was running out now, so at the first hint of a good forecast all five of us drove through the Tunnel and started the 7,000 feet walk up out of the Val Veni. We were late away and it was under an afternoon sun that we toiled up steep snow slopes towards the Eccles bivouac hut. The snow was deep and wet, and while we rested on a small rock island, with an innocuous hiss the entire slope we had just crossed slid away from the ice beneath, wiping out our tracks. Sobered, we sat on our rock listening to Geoff reading aloud from W.H. Murray’s Mountaineering in Scotland, until the sun disappeared and the temperature dropped. We reached the hut as night fell. The Eccles hut is a tin chicken coop lashed with wire on to the crest of a buttress overlooking the Brouillard glacier. Equipped with four bunks, its accommodation is hardly palatial even for two. We arrived to find it already occupied. The residents, two Japanese bound for the Central Pillar of Frêney and two English for the Innominata Ridge, were in bed and less than pleased to see us ...

  Next morning found the five of us on the Right-hand Pillar. Henri and party had discovered that to reach their pillar would have involved an irreversible abseil over a bergschrund and they preferred to have a line of retreat. Progress was slow, being hindered by snow in corners and chimneys, the dropping of the guidebook, and some unskilful aid climbing. The route described in both English and French guides, and which we followed, more or less, is curiously unsatisfying in its lower half, seeming to avoid the issue by sidling off to the right of the pillar. In retrospect, the huge corner in the centre, taken by Bonington and Rusty Baillie on their first two attempts, would give both better climbing and a better line. However, the weather was perfect, the situation magnificent, the company of the French entertaining. And, once into the middle of the upper pillar, the climbing was superb. As we neared the top, the sun sank and the sky darkened. Searching for a bivouac site, we climbed on. The last pitch of 5 Superior was a blind, clutching swing from an unseen peg, landing us on an ice-arête that had to serve for the night.

  Next day the sky was veiled with cirrus. We ran out the rope eleven times up a broad snowy spur before reaching the Brouillard ridge, encountering serious mixed climbing when we turned a rock tower on the left and found, to our surprise, that the spur narrowed near the top to a precarious knife-edge of snow. The cloud was dropping and the wind rising as we hurried along the loose and delicate Brouillard ridge to Mont Blanc de Courmayeur, on to the summit – always further than expected – and down to the Goûter hut. The Agrestis and Bernard, a couple of hours behind, fought their way over in a full-scale blizzard and counted themselves lucky to find the Vallot refuge on the descent. We all met up again the following morning and, in company with the two or three hundred people who had been foiled in their attempt on Mont Blanc by the Goûter route, returned to Chamonix.

  The Rassemblement ended the same evening at a buffet banquet attended by Maurice Herzog and the Mayor of Chamonix. Two enormous salmon formed a centrepiece and Beaujolais was by the barrel. Afterwards, thirty odd climbers adjourned to Henri and Isabelle’s barn in the woods above Les Houches, to drink coffee and home-brewed wine by candlelight. The meet could not have ended on a better note.

  – Chapter 14 –

  ALPINE GUIDE (1994)

  Ian took off his pink and lilac rucksack with the rolled yellow Karrimat strapped to its side, and dumped it beside the path with a grunt. His orange T-shirt was dark with sweat and stuck to his back. I followed suit and, suddenly light-footed and free, scrambled down to the little stream that had been the excuse for a rest. I cupped my hands under a fall and drank and drank from the cold, clear water, then splashed it over my face, again and again, savouring the exquisite coolness on hot skin. Apart from a few stunted old larch trees, their limbs contorted by wind and the weight of winter snow, there is no shade on the path up to the Pelvoux refuge, not in the middle of the afternoon, anyway. Above us, the path zigzagged endlessly up a steep meadow. Little figures were dotted about it, tracking their way, some to right, some to left, laboriously upwards. The hut itself was out of sight, higher yet, reached by a hidden break in seemingly impregnable crags. All around us were flowers every bit as gaudy as ourselves – showy, orange lilies, the yellow and purple spikes of mullein, mauve and orange asters, bright pink willow-herb (the alpine variety) crimson house–leeks and many more. I pulled out the Collins Guide to Alpine Flowers from the lid of my sack and debated whether it was St. Bernard’s or St. Bruno’s Lily we had seen earlier. Then I lay back in the sun, arm across my eyes, and allowed body and mind to relax totally. It was a good place to be.

  Much later we reached the hut. It is a solid stone–built affair, with red wooden shutters and a helipad in front of it. Alpine huts can be delightfully sociable places, but at the height of summer they are liable to be crowded, full of people not all of whom are making an early start in the morning. Dormitories are noisy and stuffy, sleep not easily achieved. Add to that an exceedingly grumpy guardian and his equally bad–tempered Alsatian, both of whom I had encountered already that season, and we had every incentive to bivouac. Out of sight, out of mind seemed an adage worth heeding, so we scrambled up a rock step and contoured across the hillside until we found the perfect spot, a grassy hollow studded with spring gentians and mountain pansies, not far from a stream. A hundred yards away across the stream, four chamois stood stock-still on a snow patch watching us. Then they were off, in a four–footed glissade down the snow and away out of sight. Near at hand, young marmots were playing quite unconcerned on the slope beneath us. Suddenly there was a strident whistle. Mama had returned and was ordering her young inside in no uncertain fashion. A second later, there was not an animal to be seen.

  We had a pleasant evening. Our site kept the sun till late and we lay on our mats overlooking the valley of the Celse N
iere, deep in shadow, lingering over our bread and cheese and fruit. We could not emulate Whymper who, on an early ascent of the Pelvoux in 1862, had a whole cask of wine to see him through the night, and a porter to carry it. But we did have a modest plastic bottle of vin ordinaire. When the sun finally set, the earth continued to radiate warmth and it was some time before we snuggled comfortably into our sleeping bags. Even then we did not sleep but chatted desultorily, watching the planets appear and light fade from the summits. I remembered W.A.B. Coolidge, the alpine historian and pedant, a man not given to flights of fancy, who had remarked of this same view: ‘One of the most striking sights ever witnessed by the present writer was from a high bivouac on the S. (sic) slope of the Pelvoux when, as daylight vanished, the eye ranged over many ridges, the crest being in each case picked out by the light, though the slope was enshrouded in darkness, these ridges fading away, little by little, towards the plains of Provence, and presenting a marvellous series of silhouettes.’

  Coolidge first climbed the Pelvoux in 1870 during a season in which he made the first ascents of the Ailefroide and the central summit of the Meije, the third ascent of the Écrins, and the second ascent of the Brenva Spur on Mont Blanc. History does not relate whether his regular climbing partners, his aunt Miss Brevoort and his mongrel dog Tschingel, were present on this occasion. However, by the time he returned to the Pelvoux in 1881 and climbed the couloir that bears his name, guided by the Aimers father and son, both aunt and dog were dead and he was developing the prickly sensitivity that was to earn him the soubriquet The Hedgehog of Magdalene. Today, the Coolidge Couloir is the voie normale, a popular route throughout the summer. It was our goal for the morrow.

  Much of the attraction of alpine climbing lies in the likelihood that at some point the unforeseen will occur, to delight, to terrify or to confuse. We fell asleep beneath a star–filled sky but we were awakened, a few hours later, by the light patter of raindrops on our bivvy bags. Lightning flickered on the horizon. Our little nook was sheltered from the wind, but down below a loose sheet of corrugated iron on the roof of an outbuilding clattered and banged insistently. Suddenly, from nowhere, an avalanche of rocks crashed down the stream–bed a matter of yards away. I poked my head out of my sleeping bag in time to see the sparks struck as a second avalanche roared by. We were not in the line of fire, but sleep had been well and truly dispelled. Muttering, I looked at my watch. It was three o’clock, time to be moving anyway.

  By the time we had breakfasted and packed our bags, lights had appeared and several parties had passed not far away with a clinking of axes and a scrunching of boots. We followed them sleepily up a slope of hard–packed moraine, to the edge of the little Clot de l’Homme glacier. It was less than fifty yards across but steep enough to warrant crampons. There was a mêlée of stooping figures and bobbing torch beams. Whymper had problems here, too. Looking back, we could see more lights approaching. The Pelvoux was going to be busy.

  Beyond the glacier, moraine, steep snow and bits of slabby rock lead soon enough to the easy–angled slopes of the Sialouze glacier. By now, dawn was breaking, albeit murkily. Suddenly, with no warning at all, there was a tremendous clap of thunder. Everybody stopped in their tracks. All over the slope, little knots of climbers formed to consider the implications. Many of them turned about and descended back the way they had come. High on a peak of nearly 4,000 metres is no place to be voluntarily in a thunderstorm. On the other hand, this was not only Ian’s first big peak, but also the last day of his holiday. We were not inclined to give up just yet. The sky was overcast but the summit was still clear and the cloud did not appear to be dropping. There was no more thunder.

  After waiting twenty minutes, we continued, pleased to note that the mountain was no longer crowded. Only one other pair followed us as we cramponed up névé away from the glacier proper on to the steeper slopes of the Coolidge couloir. Towards the top, old footprints led into an icy runnel overshadowed by crumbly–looking cliffs suggesting stonefall. We chose to move slightly left, crossing sections of block scree to link up snow patches that led eventually to the broad summit plateau of the Pelvoux. A short walk brought us to the Pointe Puiseux, 3,946 metres, the higher of the two summits and, after the Écrins and the Meije, the highest point in the Oisans.

  The panorama that greeted us was dramatic, a monochrome landscape across which grey curtains of precipitation drifted menacingly. Away to the east, the mountains were inky black, distant snowfields on the Meije and the Grande Ruine standing out a livid yellowish white, like old ivory by contrast. Thunder rumbled in the distance. A rising wind whipped up the snow at our feet, but Ian’s face was glowing with pleasure in the eerie, threatening light. It was a fitting culmination to his first season.

  We were about to leave when the second rope arrived, a French couple whom we had met on the path the day before, cheerful, friendly people. He had last climbed the Pelvoux twenty–two years before, and their ascent obviously had sentimental significance for them both. We all shook hands, then Ian and I left the summit for them to enjoy alone. They were descending the Coolidge, so we were going to have the Violettes glacier to ourselves.

  As a climb, the Coolidge Couloir is unexceptional, no more than an exercise in cramponing, it has to be said. But the complex descent down the Violettes glacier and back to Ailefroide, all 8,000 feet of it, makes this one of the finest traverses in Europe. At first the glacier was straightforward but as we descended things became more exciting. There were some steeper slopes, crevasses to jump with the rope kept tight between us, a dramatic ice architecture of riven blocks and towers on either hand, and enclosing rock walls that grew higher as we lost height. Once, we had to leap ten feet down from the lip of a bergschrund: nothing unusual about that, except that a second bergschrund was yawning only feet below, waiting to snap up the clumsy or the unwary. Lower yet, we found ourselves picking a way down a rock buttress that splits the glacier. A couloir on its right flank, with a short abseil halfway down, brought us back on to the glacier at the point where it levels off briefly. Old tracks led horizontally to a brêche in the ridge beyond. It was only 300 yards away, but threatened by huge toppling séracs and littered with avalanche debris – a place to suspend the imagination and run ...

  Another short abseil and a scramble down a couloir on the far side of the brêche brought us on to a snow slope. Another rock barrier, then more snow, glissading and skating by now in slushy snow, until it ran out into ice and we took to a moraine ridge at its side. A steep dusty path wound its way down the moraine and, almost as steeply, on down a stony meadow. The sun came out with a fierce heat, though behind us the cloud had dropped, smothering the tops. We were glad to be back on terra firma. Our mouths were dry and gritty, our feet hot and sore when we reached a lovely and much–needed stream. We drank and bathed our feet and stripped down to our T-shirts for the first time since the path up to the Pelvoux hut, twenty–four hours before. We had come full circle.

  However, we were not finished yet. At the point where most paths would become progressively more amenable, this one dived abruptly downwards, following a rock rake across some extremely steep ground for several hundred feet. It was not difficult, but definitely not a place to trip, and it seemed to go on and on. The only compensation was that the vertical and overhanging rock above shielded us from the sun. It was a shock to emerge at the bottom, out of the shadow into a dry, hot world of scorched meadows and churring cicadas. The village of Ailefroide was only a few hundred metres away, but there was still a moment of excitement to come. As we picked our way through some massive fallen blocks, what should flutter away in front of us but a large, black and yellow butterfly – unmistakably a swallowtail, a beautiful creature I had last seen over ten years before in the very different setting of Wicken Fen. And so, parched and weary, we came to the little cafe on the corner as you enter the village, to sit under a parasol and drink cold beer and look back with disbelief at the way we had just come.

  – Part 5 –<
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  Further Afield

  – Chapter 15 –

  MOUNTAINEERING IN GRAHAMLAND (1972)

  We approached Mount Charity in a spell of clear, sunny weather, after travelling through cloud on bearings for the best part of a fortnight. The southernmost of the three Eternities, it rises out of a 6,000-foot plateau without noticeable glaciers or foothills to twin summits of 9,000 feet. In the previous three months Malcolm McArthur and I had covered 1,000 miles, sledging down the Grahamland Peninsula, through Alexander Island and across the Palmerland Plateau and, despite plans, had so far climbed nothing. Charity had been climbed at least once before and, with so many virgin peaks available, it had not been one of our original ambitions. But fine days were scarce and as we passed by on our way north, the unclimbed East Ridge of the highest summit became more and more enticing until, at last, we could resist it no longer.

  Spanning the dogs high up a corrie south of the ridge, just out of sérac range, we cramponed up to a col. Above, the ridge rose as a sharp snow arête, punctuated by little outcrops of orange-brown granite, for about 1,500 feet. Keeping to the snow, kicking through a layer of soft to the névé beneath, we soloed up it rapidly, feeling very fit. In a sense we had been mountaineering all summer. Negotiating crevasses, icefalls, pressure systems or steep slopes with a sledge can be as mentally taxing as a serious climb and crossing high cols we had experienced some thrilling moments scenically. But it was a joy to be actually climbing again.

  The slope steepened. Some slab echoed when I kicked it. Investigation revealed a gap between it and the underlying ice and we roped up. The sun was scorching its way through glacier cream and lip salve but my feet were numb in less than adequate footwear. Axe in one side, feet the other, and disturbing drops on both, we continued along the arête till it levelled out just before a jutting square block of a cornice. Moving on to the north side of the ridge by the simple expedient of swinging a leg over it, we traversed up and across a face, steep, icy and very exposed. Bendy old ski-mountaineering boots are not ideal for steep cramponing and we had to bear in mind our descent by the same route; so we chopped comfortable steps for 300 feet. Then the ice became snow, the angle eased and we were there.