‘Then they’re just a lot of goons! A day to climb that? They must have been playing cards on every ledge! If it’s like that all the way we’ll be up in four hours! The weather’ll hold out that long – don’t argue, let’s get going!’
And he was off like an arrow. The wild beast had slipped its bonds, and I had no choice but to follow. Once again it was devil take the hindmost.
Contrary to what some people later suggested, we did not climb continuously without belaying, but we were so used to each other’s ways that it saved us a lot of time. Thus, for example, as soon as the leader could see that only easy ground lay between him and the next stance, he would call down ‘it’s easy’, and the second would start climbing right away. Over a long series of pitches this amounted to a considerable saving. Needless to say, if the second could not see how to do a move immediately, he wasted no time over it but pulled up on the rope at once. Naturally we used as few pitons as possible; with the exception of the first overhang we did virtually no artificial climbing at all. In half an hour’s sprint we reached the first real terrace on the face. Ahead of us lay the series of long grooves which constitute the crux of the climb.
‘Go on’, said Louis. ‘Time you did some leading, or you’ll be getting rusty next.’
All keyed up, I rushed at the first groove. My rigid boot-soles held to perfection on the small holds, and I went up like a monkey. Two pitons and a few minutes later I stood at the top of the pitch, and a moment afterwards Louis was beside me. The groove continued above, but after climbing it for thirty feet I was held up by an overhang. One peg went in, but I then spent a long time looking for somewhere to put another. It was most surprising – there was no trace of any previous passage, and I began to wonder if I had got off route. Meanwhile Louis had a glance round the corner and shouted up that the route lay to the right, so I got him to lower me with the rope through a karabiner. To do all this, untie, and pull down the rope cost valuable minutes: my mistake had in fact wasted a total of half an hour.
I led three more pitches for appearances’ sake, then, since Louis was after all the faster climber, I yielded up the ‘sharp end’ of the rope to him again. It was becoming obvious that we would reach the top long before night, so I now abandoned some of the food which loaded the rucksack and slowed me down. It was cloudier than ever, but it looked as though the weather would hold out for a few hours more. Far from slowing down, however, we climbed faster and faster, under a sort of spell which made all things seem possible. The upper traverses were disposed of with the briskness of a trapeze act, and so we came to the final slopes, which were easy enough to allow us to climb together.
Lachenal, fresh as a daisy, scuttled off like a squirrel, but try as I might I could not keep up. Finally there remained nothing above us but sky: it had taken us seven and a half hours for the two and a half thousand feet of face. Spurred on by the threat of bad weather we had thus accomplished a feat which was considered stupefying at the time, yet without my mistake in route-finding, and if we had forced the pace from the very beginning, we could easily have knocked over an hour off this ‘record’.
Certain people subsequently took it upon themselves to doubt the veracity of our timing, nearly three times as fast as the best hitherto, but history has shown that we did not exaggerate. A rope of three Germans did the climb in eight and a half hours a few years later, which for a party of that size is relatively quite a lot faster. The famous Austrian guide Hermann Buhl, climbing alone, put up a time of four and a half hours; and the German Nothdurft, later one of the victims of the big Eiger tragedy, three and a half.
In fact we did nothing that smacked of the superhuman. It was merely that our physical and psychological fitness enabled us to discover that the face was, in terms of strict technical standard, easier than had hitherto been thought. Our constantly accumulating experience and Lachenal’s fabulous gifts had put us somewhat in advance of our generation. Nowadays the north-east face of the Piz Badile is no longer considered one of the most difficult in the Alps. Occasionally someone still bivouacs on it, but it is normal to do it in nine or ten hours.
This ‘down-grading’ phenomenon is in no way unique. Among others, it has happened to many of the great Dolomite faces, once considered of extreme difficulty. The improvement in modern methods of training and the spirit of competition between ‘tigers’ are quite sufficient to explain it. Mountaineering is at least partly a competitive sport. Man has never stopped trying to run faster, jump higher, throw farther: why then should he not also try to climb faster?
Since my ascent in 1949 I have done the north-east face of the Badile with a client, the excellent climber Suzanne Velentini. We took a little under twelve hours, but if we had not been held up by a German party who would not let us overtake we could have done it in three hours less. Taking into account the fact that however good a young girl might be she could hardly approach the virtuosity of a super-climber like Lachenal, and that at the age of thirty-seven I could certainly not have had the same ‘punch’ as ten years earlier, it will be seen that our performance in 1949 was respectable without being phenomenal.
It was five o’clock when we reached the top, which gave us plenty of time to descend to the hut on the Italian side of the mountain. The prospect of food, hot tea and rest only an hour away was extremely tempting; but if we did this we should have to cross the Passo di Bondo the following day in order to get back to Switzerland, thereby losing a day. A quicker but infinitely harder way back was to descend the classic but difficult north ridge.
Still on the boil and rendered even more optimistic than usual by our amazing success, Lachenal was for the north ridge at all costs. With a bit of luck we should reach the pastures before it got completely dark, Promontogno in the small hours, and Chamonix the day after. We knew that the descent had already been done in three and a half hours, and given our usual speed at this kind of thing we ought to be able to knock thirty minutes off that, so that technically, at least, the thing was possible. In the end I let myself be persuaded.
The memory of that descent is blurred. I remember that we heard thunder a quarter of an hour after leaving the summit, which added still further to our haste. Lachenal himself was literally overcharged, and drove us at almost nightmare speed. We didn’t stop to place any rappels in the difficult places. I would more or less slide down on the rope, held by Louis, then he would swarm down with preternatural agility. Whenever the slabs were not too steep he would let himself slide too, braking with his rubber soles and leather seat.
At one point we went too far down the west face. Lachenal reckoned that we would find ledges below to lead us back on to the ridge, and wanted to continue; but I was convinced that we would end up among overhangs and refused to follow him. We thereupon had our biggest row, and finally Louis unroped in a rage and went on alone. I climbed back to the ridge and carried on calmly with the job of getting down. After half an hour, while I was installing the only rappel of the whole descent, Louis appeared, looking rather contrite!
We reached the last slabs just at nightfall. As we came tearing down them, two climbers who had just preceded us, and who had observed us on the face during the day, looked as thunderstruck as if they had just seen a pair of ghosts. We bivouacked in the pastures, having been unable to find so much as a drop of water. My throat was intolerably inflamed and I could only doze off occasionally.
Back at Chamonix I took up my guiding again at once. The weather was set fair and the clients too numerous to satisfy. One day it would be the Petits Charmoz, the next the Verte, the day after that the Aiguilles du Diable, and so it went on. When the end of the season came I was exhausted but happier than I had ever been. I had reached my goal: henceforward, like Michel Croz, Lochmatter, Knubel and Armand Charlet, I was truly a guide, one of the leading ones in the valley. Was I not ‘le plus fort en masse’? Had I not, that season, done more great climbs than any other guide? And yet, to tell the truth,
I had hoped for greater things. I had still only about ten climbs to my credit rarely done by guides and clients, and none of these was really an exploit apart from the Arête de Tronchey.
Subsequently I was luckier in this respect. Gaston Rébuffat and I did more and greater climbs in a professional capacity than any other guide of the post-war generation. Only, I had hoped to do better still: and this remains the one small disappointment my way of life has ever brought me. All my willing sacrifices and risks devoted to this end have brought a relatively small return.
Apart from the five great Andean peaks climbed with my Dutch friends and clients,[6] which have given me some of the most enduring satisfactions of my career, I have only done one really outstanding climb in the Alps as a professional, and that was the third ascent of the right-hand Pillar of Fresnay on Mont Blanc. This is a very long and sustained ascent on mixed terrain, providing several high-standard pitches at great altitude, and in those days was the hardest route to the highest summit in Europe.[7] I have also guided a number of routes only slightly lower in standard, among others the north-east face of the Badile, the east face of the Grand Capucin, and the north face of the Triolet.
Just as luck always seemed to be with me in my amateur career, so it always seemed against me in my guiding. Bad weather prevented the realisation of so many glorious projects, and every time I seemed to have a client capable of the really big stuff he would infallibly fall ill the following season, or die, or get married.
At a slightly lower level the record is more satisfying. In sixteen years I have guided some sixty routes not often done professionally, such as the south ridge of the Aiguille Noire, the Sans Nom ridge of the Verte, the Route Major on Mont Blanc, the north face of the Como Stella, the north face of the Piz Roseg, the north face of the Obergabelhorn. Gaston Rébuffat has a definite lead over me when it comes to guided ascents of the absolute top rank, but I think I can claim that none of my colleagues have amassed quite such a collection at this sort of level.
Still, compared with the six or seven hundred ascents I have made as a guide or instructor, I cannot help but find this a disappointing proportion, particularly if one reflects that the grand total includes many repetitions: the Grépon by its various routes fifty times, the Aiguille des Pèlerins forty, the traverse of the Petits Charmoz twenty, and some easier still like the ordinary routes of the Aiguilles du Plan and de Tour. But I repeat that the job of a guide is not to do great feats, except on rare occasions, but to carry out classic ascents, and I would be quite wrong to bemoan it.
In fact I have never ceased to find pleasure even on the easiest climbs. A sort of symbiotic relationship almost always grows up between the guide and his client which makes human contacts in this profession pleasanter than in any other. Surely it partakes of the nature of a creative act to give a man the pleasure of an experience he could not attain on his own? To me, at any rate, it gives a craftsman’s and even an artist’s satisfaction. At whatever level you like to take it, it is much more difficult than it would appear at first sight. Although the majority of clients naturally choose climbs corresponding in some degree to their abilities, they are still not able to cope with them without assistance, and few of them ever manage to be fully in command of the situation. Thus the guide has to be constantly on the alert for trouble and ready to help a man who is out of his depth.
Sometimes, at the end of the season, it has been my lot to lead large parties of tourists up to one or other of the high huts. You could hardly call it mountaineering, but there are problems even at this sort of level. Such people know nothing about mountains. They have to be helped over the tiniest crevasses, and quickly become tired. Ice and scree are hostile elements to them, and they can slip at any moment without reason or warning. I have often had to catch them as they slid. The higher the standard of the climb, the greater the problem; and the wider, too, the gap between the client’s skill and the technicalities of the climb. On ascents of any real difficulty the guide’s life is a perpetual adventure, as is shown by the relatively large number who have been killed at their work. With a client thus more or less at the mercy of events, the leader’s concentration must not lapse for a second. I couldn’t count the number of times I have seen my second ‘peel’ at the very moment when he looked perfectly at ease.
I remember an occasion when I had got slightly off route on the south ridge of the Aiguille du Moine. To regain the right line I made an exposed but quite easy traverse which led to a narrow ledge without any belay. Lower down the ridge my client had romped up considerably harder pitches. It would have been a reasonable risk to bring him across without any assurance – I had often done so before in similar situations, because it is impossible to safeguard every step on a long climb. I had no hammer on me as it was only a classic climb, only a few pegs which I always carry in my pocket just in case. At the very last moment a sort of premonition made me decide to look for a crack where I could wedge one of them without needing to hammer it in. Having found somewhere suitable, I called to my second to come on. He advanced six feet, then, for no reason at all, let go and swung twenty feet through the air on the rope. I was able to hold him thanks to the piton, though I had some trouble getting him up to me again, but without it my name would certainly now be on the obituary list.
This is just one typical example among a great many others. Three-quarters of one’s clients can be expected to peel at any moment without warning, particularly on snow and ice. Woe to the guide who lets his attention be distracted even for a second, and gets caught off balance: how many have gone this way!
Even concentration is not the whole story. One must have storehouses of cunning and patience to get clients up pitches – without too obviously hauling them – which they would never be able to manage without explanations, exhortations and perhaps a little discreet tension on the rope.
In the event of bad weather the difficulties can be multiplied in a matter of moments. Classics turn into major undertakings, and the client, weakened by the cold and terrified by the lightning, becomes virtually helpless. In such circumstances no one can really guarantee a happy outcome. Doing biggish climbs as a guide often calls for more worry and effort than doing the most extreme ones with a ‘tiger’. I could cover many pages with descriptions of the harrowing positions I have been in with vacillating clients.
On one of my six ascents of the south ridge of the Noire I had just finished the delicate and exposed traverse which constitutes the escape from the big groove on the fifth tower. My client had done brilliantly as far as there, and although the traverse was long thought to be grade VI, I was pretty sure he would be able to do it without the complicated rope tactics (called by guides a ‘téléphérique’) necessary to protect him simultaneously from before and behind. I called out to him to start across. He was so impressed with the smoothness and exposure of the pitch, however, that he hesitated, fearing to fall into an irretrievable position under an overhang if he slipped. Each time he made a few tentative inches he would shrink back quickly to his starting point.
Knowing that he could do it quite well if only he could overcome his fear, I tried every trick I knew; technical explanation, coaxing, raillery, finally even curses, but all to no avail. He just stood there, hanging on to his belay piton, his eyes full of mute supplication. This performance went on for more than half an hour. The sky was clouding over and I wanted to avoid a bivouac. Reversing the pitch to install the ‘téléphérique’ struck me as both a long and a delicate process, but I was just about getting resigned to it when in a thoughtless moment of inspiration I shouted out:
‘If you don’t hurry up and do it we won’t be friends any more. I’ll never speak to you again.’
The result could not have been more miraculous if I had played the magic flute to him! I had no sooner finished speaking than, to my immense surprise and pleasure, he launched out on the traverse with the energy of despair, and in a few moments stood at my side.
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br /> On the first direct ascent of the Arête du Tronchey I was held up for some time by an enormous overhang. Finally, by turning on the high voltage for a few feet and also applying every bit of technique I possessed, I got over it. The difficulties now decreased, the summit was not far distant, and success seemed within our grasp. Unfortunately, although my client M. Gourdain was an excellent climber, he had never done anything as extreme as this. Despite valiant efforts he was unable to get any higher, and the friction of the rope through the numerous karabiners was so great that I could not hoist him. It looked as though we were beaten within sight of victory, and would have to make our way painfully back down the ridge, which had cost us more than a day to climb.
It all seemed too futile, and I desperately sought a solution. By scouting along a ledge to my right I discovered that the overhang gave out into a smooth but not quite vertical slab. If I could just get my client across to there it seemed probable that I could then haul him up the fifty feet or so that separated us. After all kinds of strange manoeuvres I succeeded in getting the rope clear of the karabiners, which I deliberately abandoned, and threw it back down to Gourdain. Unfortunately he was unable to reach the slab, but, noticing a little ledge directly below me, I called down to him to pendulum across to it on the rope. This mean a twenty-five foot swing in mid-air, and not many people would have faced up to it. However, he courageously let himself go, and a moment later he was on the ledge. This manoeuvre was irreversible, the ledge being lower than the point of departure. Gourdain’s bridges were now burnt, and he had to be got up to me at all costs.
The slab turned out to be extremely severe, and after his efforts to climb the overhang Gourdain’s arms gave out completely. I was in an awkward position on a narrow ledge, ill-placed for haulage, and could not bring my force to bear properly. Neither could I see any way of getting down from where I was. Unless I could find some rapid solution, the outlook was tragic indeed. At this precise moment a technique for rescuing wounded men from crevasses came into my head, and with the aid of a few pitons and karabiners I rigged up a sort of pulley. Thanks to the mechanical advantage thus obtained Gourdain was soon at my side.
Conquistadors of the Useless Page 29