I spent the first part of the winter at Luchon, working in the sports shop of a friend, repairing skis, putting on bindings and edges, and helping to sell. But there was practically no business, and I was soon forced to go back to Chamonix. There I could at least go on training, and I had the rather slender satisfaction of winning the only race held that melancholy winter. I was about to volunteer for the army when the disaster of 1940 occurred. My personal decisions were deferred for a few more months.
Since my unfortunate traverse of the Grépon I had given up any idea of the really big climbs without, however, giving up mountaineering altogether. At Villard-de-Lans I had done a lot of hill-walking and a number of short climbs, some of which were quite difficult. At Chamonix, apart from some easy scrambles, I had done a lot of spring and summer skiing, which often amounts to more or less the same thing. I would have liked to do bigger climbs, but did not believe myself able to lead them, while the few friends I had who could have taken me along as a second were naturally not too keen to load themselves down with a semi-beginner. Such was my general state one fine morning in July 1940 when the mountains shone in their perfect beauty through the crystal-clear air. I was reading in my room, my open window giving on to Mont Blanc, when I received a visit from a recently demobilised climber who wanted to forget among the mountains the disgrace of an inglorious defeat. He was looking for a companion, and a mutual friend had put him on to me. Only too happy to escape from my frustrations into the ecstasy of action, I accepted his invitation with enthusiasm.
We immediately began to discuss plans. To my dismay, my visitor suggested doing the Mayer-Dibona ridge on the Dent du Requin as our first climb. This had the reputation, in those days, of being very difficult, and only strong parties dared to attempt it. I was so afraid of launching out into an adventure which seemed so far above my standard that the newcomer was forced to point out that he was a member of the G.H.M., and that in his company I could try anything. I continued to refuse to have anything to do with such a hare-brained scheme, and suggested instead the much easier south ridge of the Moine. Being unable to budge me, the member of the G.H.M. ended by resignedly agreeing to take me up this somewhat inglorious ridge.
I had now had several years of intermittent climbing, hill-walking and high-level skiing, and although these had not given me a refined rock-climbing technique, they had made me very sure-footed on mixed ground, by which I mean easy but loose rocks, and medium-angled snow slopes and glaciers. As I had thus no difficulty in following my companion up the first part of the Moine ridge, we got on very fast. However, when we got to the corner which is the hardest part of the climb, he found it too much for him, partly through lack of training and partly because he had forgotten his gym shoes. He made several courageous attempts, trembling frantically the while; and each time I watched with dilated eyes, expecting to see him fall off. After the third try he was completely out of breath and told me, apologetically, that as he could not get up the pitch we would just have to climb down again. I was most upset at the idea of this premature retreat, and felt a surge of revolt mounting inside me. The day was too fine, and I felt too much life boiling through my muscles, to let myself be beaten quite so easily. With some astonishment I heard myself asking if I might have a try at the pitch.
The first long stride out over space seemed the more disagreeable for a sharp blade of rock some way below, which seemed to have been put there by nature to punish the foolhardy. Unwilling to be impaled like an oriental criminal, I felt a surge of energy, and in a few quick moves I stood at the top of the pitch. Emboldened by this success, I continued at the front of the party. Higher up I had a bit of trouble with a vertical wall of some fifteen or twenty feet which seemed practically hold-less, but I eventually got up thanks to the adhesive qualities of the clothes covering my chest and stomach! Soon after this, my face shining with joy, I reached the modest summit of the Moine. Not a cloud marked the vivid blue of the sky. It seemed impossible a day so clear could ever deaden into twilight. We rested a long time, gazing at the savage walls, hemmed with lace of snow, that ringed us round from the Dru to the Charmoz in a cirque without rival in the whole of the Alps. At a time when France was just beginning to recover some sort of unstable balance from one of the worst convulsions in her history, we were alone in the mountains. A mineral silence entered into us. In that enormous peace, I felt that somehow, henceforward, nothing would truly count for me beyond this world of grandeur and purity where every corner held a promise of enchanted hours.
This ascent of the Aiguille du Moine had a decisive influence on the course of my life. Like Guido Lammer, ‘Having been a prey from childhood to every cruel division, conflict and disorder of thought and of modern life, I stretched longing arms towards inner peace and harmony, which I found in the solitudes of the Alps.’
My easy success on this climb had given me back the confidence in my own will and physical powers which is a sine qua non to undertaking the really great climbs, outside of which, in my opinion, mountaineering is only a sporting form of tourism. For ‘Although from my childhood I have found pleasure in the many aspects of nature’s mysteries at high altitudes, and tried with ever-increasing fervour to catch the meaning of her silent language, the bitter-sweetness and the best of mountaineering have always been for me in the rough adventure, the conquest of danger, of the climbing itself … If all one sought were a few moments of rest and peaceful reflection, how absurd it would be to reach the summit at the cost of so much fighting and suffering, amid so many mortal dangers, and by such extraordinary routes, when a cable-car could carry us to the same spot by the shortest possible line. No, from my earliest ascents I have recognised that a passionate involvement in the act of mountaineering, and the constant menace of danger disturbing the very depths of our being, are the source of powerful moral or religious emotions which may be of the greatest spirituality’ – thus Guido Lammer.
That summer I did a lot of climbing, mostly with my companion of the Moine. I gave myself up to a life of adventure and action for its own sake and found in it perfect happiness, for, to quote Lammer once more, ‘on summits haunted by the unfettered elements, you may take long draughts of the foaming cup in the headiness of action which admits no obstacles’.
But to be truthful, though I read Lammer between climbs, finding in his romantic style a clear expression of what I also felt in my confused way, there was nothing of the intellectual climber about me. I was rather an ardent young animal, bounding from summit to summit like a kid among the rocks. I had no thought of reputation, and the simplest climbs made me crazy with joy. The mountains were a sort of magic kingdom where by some spell I felt happiest.
By virtue of all this experience I began to make progress in technique, going through alternate stages of the most promising ease and the most paralysing fear. On the north ridge of the Chardonnet, for example, we found the final slopes consisted of bare ice. My companion cut very small steps which were also inconveniently outward-sloping. Taking these to be quite normal, I walked up them without any bother on the front two spikes of my crampons. I would certainly have continued on to the summit in the same blissful state if I had not, at that moment, noticed a party of famous climbers behind us hacking away furiously to triple the area of our steps. A certain doubt found its way into my soul, which turned to worry. Suddenly I realised the full peril of our position on these tiny steps, up which we were gaily walking without any precautionary measures. It only needed one false move on the part of either of us, or one of the steps to give way, and we should be sliding inexorably towards the abyss which yawned beneath our heels … in a moment I was paralysed with giddiness, and refused to move hand or foot in such unsafe circumstances. My companion had to cut real ‘buckets’ to give me sufficient confidence to finish the climb.
At that time the outlook of the majority of French climbers was very different from what it is today. The traverse of the Grépon was still considered a serious matte
r, calling for considerable natural aptitude and some years of experience. No one would then have dared to try this ascent without leading up to it carefully, a thing which is quite common today. The Mer de Glace face of the Grépon, the Mayer-Dibona ridge of the Dent du Requin, the Ryan-Lochmatter route on the Aiguille du Plan, the traverse of the Aiguilles du Diable, were all considered to be ‘grandes courses’,[3] and the ambition to do them one day began to stir in the bottom of my mind. The north face of the Grandes Jorasses and even that of the Dru were generally considered to be quite out of the question for a normal human being. It was reckoned that to attack a face of this sort you either had to be a fanatical lunatic (a quality attributed in particular to the great German and Italian climbers) or one of those phenomenal supermen who turn up in every sport perhaps once or twice in ten years.
Feeling in no way fanatical and not taking myself to be in any way exceptional, the idea of trying such climbs never crossed my mind for a moment, and I used to think of the rare individuals who went in for this sort of thing with just the same kind of admiring pity that I sometimes see today on the faces of my own interlocutors.
By the end of the summer of 1940 I had done a respectable number of classic routes. If I had not been so impressed with the aura of legend which at that time surrounded the least little climb and the least little climber, I could already have been doing much harder and bigger things. I had amassed a fair amount of experience and possessed an excellent sense of direction. I was also very quick over mixed ground, but my rock and ice technique was by comparison still rudimentary. To be honest, I was held back more by the subjective aspect of difficulty than by the difficulties themselves. The very thought of climbing a pitch with a reputation for delicacy made me as tense as a gladiator entering the arena, and I had to stretch my willpower to the utmost in order to overcome this apprehension. Thus, due to a careless reading of the guidebook, I several times got up the ‘crux’ of a climb with no bother at all, whereas on an easier pitch, which I thought to be the crux, I trembled like a leaf.[4] I had occasional flashes of daring which astonish me when I remember them today, and when I think about the way I got up certain pitches shivers run up and down my spine.
During one ascent of the Cardinal, for example, I got by mistake into a smooth, overhanging chimney. I overcame the problem by pulling up on a blade of rock that I had managed to jam between the two walls. Many years later I found myself by chance on the same mountain and went a bit out of my way to have a look at the well-remembered chimney. Despite my modern moulded-rubber soles and ten years’ experience of the hardest routes in the Mont Blanc range, I was quite unable to climb the last few feet. The most dangerous thing in mountaineering is certainly the carefree confidence of youth!
During the months which followed, some order seemed to come back into the world. For those living in the valleys of the Alps nothing seemed to have changed: the tourists were back, the joyous chinking of flowing money was heard again. Youngsters avid of sensations and fugitive glory were grouped again around the chronometers at the Sunday ski-competitions, which were being contested with the old ardour. That winter was the apogee of my skiing career. In December I was selected to train for the national team. My summer season had put me into a state of exceptional fitness, and had given me the self-confidence essential to clearing the path of victory. I seemed highly likely to qualify when, in an unlucky fall, I badly injured my knee, and barely recovered in time to go in for the Dauphine championships for which I was still eligible. Nevertheless I won the downhill, the slalom, and the combined classification for the four events – for in those days they had the crazy notion to make the same men compete not only in the downhill and slalom, but also in specialised events whose techniques were as far apart as the cross-country race and the jumping.
A few days later, by a stroke of luck, I came second in the ‘combined downhill and slalom’, and third in the overall classification in the national championships of France. Later in the season, at the ‘Grand Prix de l’Alpe d’Huez’, fate took a hand to redress matters. A hundred yards from the finishing post I was several seconds up on the whole of the French national team when some spectators got in my way and I lost first place by a fifth of a second.
By the time the last snows gave place to the delicate corolla of the crocus in the saturated fields, I had good reasons for thinking that my old vision of reaching the highest ranks of the sport were not just the daydreams of a silly child. How I would have laughed in the face of anyone who predicted that it would be many years before I was to know again the enraptured feeling of more than human force that comes from the utter concentration of the fight against the clock.
At my mother’s house I had bed, board and a little pocket money, so that for months I was as free as a mountain goat. I had no place in society to fulfil, no other task than what I saw fit to set myself. Animated by an appetite for physical exercise which amounted almost to frenzy, I led a life of intense activity and virtual asceticism. From the beginning of December to the end of May my ski training, and the many competitions in which I usually entered for all four events, left me almost no spare time. I even grudged the time taken out to give skiing lessons for a bit of extra money. In summer I accumulated climbs at the speed of a professional guide, and in the midst of all this intense activity I still found the energy for enormous cycling trips and to go in for swimming, athletics and gymnastics.
It has to be admitted that my intellectual activity was very much less, being limited to a few books whose serious nature contrasted oddly with the physical preoccupation of my life. About this time I read almost the whole of Balzac, Musset, Baudelaire and Proust.
Had I been less acutely aware of the fragile bases on which my way of life, so rich in action, reposed, it would have satisfied me so completely that the future would not have worried me at all. I have never thought an occupation any the better for being lucrative: on the contrary, money has a way of soiling everything it touches. Then as now, what mattered for me was action and not the price of action. The value was in the acting itself. My whole life has been a sort of tight-rope walk between the self-justifying action in which I have pursued the ideals of my youth, and a more or less honourable prostitution to the necessity of earning my daily bread. Could any mind be vulgar enough to suggest that the prostitution was worth more than the gratuitous act? In any case, outside of primitive societies where every gesture springs from the instinct for survival of the species, what in fact is a ‘useful’ action? If, in order to forget the emptiness of their existence, many people become drunk with words and speak of their place, their mission, their social utility, how meaningless and conventional their words really are! In our disorganised and overpopulated world, how many people can honestly say they are useful today? The millions of dignified go-betweens who encumber the economy, the titled pen-pushers in their sinecures which drain society and frustrate the administration, all the hoteliers, journalists, lawyers and other such who could disappear tomorrow without anyone being a penny the worse? Can you even call the majority of doctors useful, when they fight like famished dogs for patients in the big cities, while all over the earth men are dying for the lack of their care? In this century when it has been shown a hundred times over that a rational organisation can vastly reduce the number of men needed for any task, how many can be quite certain that they are genuinely necessary cogs in the huge machine of the world?
By the end of the winter of 1941 I realised that the foundations of my free and wonderful life were becoming daily more uncertain. Despite her unending kindness, it was obvious that my mother could not go on keeping me like a race-horse forever. At this crucial moment a way suddenly opened up in front of me.
1. Guido Lammer.[back]
2. A method of descending steep rocks. The climber slides down a rope which has been doubled round a spike hammered into the rock, then recovers it by pulling one of the ends. It is also known as abseiling.[back]
; 3. Translator’s Note. The phrase ‘grandes courses’, meaning the climbs which in any era are outstanding for length, seriousness and sustained difficulty, has no exact equivalent in English and is often used untranslated by British climbers.[back]
4. Translator’s note. In climbing parlance the crux of a climb is its hardest pitch. The crux of a pitch is its hardest moves, and so on.[back]
– Chapter Two –
First Conquests
The traditional military service had now been replaced by a kind of civilian service aimed at the virtues of manliness, industriousness, and public and team spirit, much extolled by the national leaders of the day. An institution called ‘Les Chantiers de la Jeunesse’ was set up to put young men of twenty-one through an eight months’ training. A similar but much smaller organisation called ‘Jeunesse et Montagne’, or J.M. for short, was formed on parallel lines. Only volunteers could serve in this corps d’elite, the idea of which was to inculcate qualities of service and leadership among youth by the practice of mountaineering, skiing and a rough life among the mountains generally. The J.M. was endowed with a body of instructors consisting of professional guides and skiing instructors plus a few amateurs who were admitted after a difficult entrance examination. The pay was poor, but the life, dedicated entirely to mountains, seemed fascinating.
I possessed all the necessary skills to pass these examinations without much trouble, and I realised that in this way I could find a method of supplying my material needs while pursuing my true ambitions. Since I was bound to get called up soon in any case for the ‘Service Civile’, I decided to anticipate matters by volunteering for the J.M. I went in at Beaufort around the beginning of May.
Conquistadors of the Useless Page 4