Conquistadors of the Useless (18 page)

However, even our brilliant success on the Droitres did not cheer us up for long. We had lost faith, and decided to spend our few spare days earning a bit of extra money. But the account of the climb which the Parisians gave me on their return from their great exploit rather modified my ideas. I acquired the conviction that it might be possible to bivouac only a short way below the summit, and perhaps not at all. These prospects revived my flagging enthusiasm, and my wife's exhortations did the rest. She had such confidence in my climbing abilities that she fully expected us to walk up it. Far from trying to hold me back, therefore, as she was occasionally to do in later years, she almost nagged us to go!

I had a week's holiday ahead of me, so I telephoned Lachenal up at Montenvers. Unfortunately he could not get away until the Thursday lunchtime. Meanwhile I got everything carefully packed up in the way we had agreed, five or six pounds for the leader, fifteen or so for the second. But on Thursday I found an exhausted Lachenal. One certainly could not blame him: he had done the Charmoz-Grépon traverse that morning, and the Blaitière-Ciseaux-Fou the day before. For all my impatience he had to be allowed a day of rest, and as things turned out this was very nearly fatal. The weather that afternoon gave us something to worry about, but the sky was clear again by the following morning, Friday. The plod up to the Leschaux was carried out in an atmosphere of sunlight, confidence, and noisy joking. We halted frequently to admire the face, which seemed more beautiful than ever in the limpid air. At long last we were about to make our dream come true and launch out on the great adventure, so religiously prepared for, so ardently desired. The wild, proud crags which had haunted us so long, defying us wherever we stood in the range, were about to become ours. It was good to be alive that morning with luck on our side and the mountains shining in the sun.

Later in the day the weather took a turn for the worse, but this had become so usual in the last few days that we went to bed in a state of modified optimism. For the first time in my life I slept badly before a climb. I was not afraid in the strict sense of the word; rather I felt in suspense like a gambler who has risked his whole fortune. I did not pass the night working things out, or thinking of the joys or the dangers that awaited us, but simply lay there watching the hours go by and wondering which way the dice would fall.

At one o'clock the auguries were bad: the sky was as black as ink. However, we had seen the wind change at the approach of dawn often enough not to give up all hope. By half past two there was no sign of a change, and we voiced our impatience in blasphemous fashion. We were finished with climbing as amateurs, and in the meantime we were going back to bed! We did nothing of the sort, however. It seemed impossible that so much meticulous planning, so many sacrifices, dreams, and desires should come to nothing in this way. At a quarter past three our luck turned: the air was still heavy, but stars twinkled here and there in the sky. We set off at once, moving fast with no other thought but to make up lost time. When we reached the foot of the face it was already light, and the weather was not altogether reassuring. On our own side of the range the sky was still marvellously blue, but it was not as cold as it should have been for the time of day, and large, ominous-looking clouds were wreathing around our mountain. What should we do? Give up? But if the weather then held out we would be bitterly disappointed. Next week we had to start work again, and any hope of the Walker would be finished for this year, perhaps even for ever, since one could not know what the future might hold. Go on, then? But if the weather broke we would be caught in the storm, an act of rashness that could cost us dear on the Walker. In the end we decided to compromise by climbing as far as the famous ‘Pendulum' pitch and waiting there, if necessary until next day, for the weather to make up its mind.

I crossed the rimaye at exactly ten past five, three-quarters of an hour later than we had originally intended. Moving quickly on easy ground, we reached the foot of the ‘Hundred Foot Corner' much sooner than we had expected. I was far from brilliant on this vertical wall with its few, awkwardly arranged holds. Lack of suitable training caused me to get cramp in the arms and calves, so that I had to spend a long time at each piton, resting. When I finally got up after an hour and a half of laborious progress I was completely demoralised and suggested retreat, adding that we had neither the class nor the training for a climb of this sort. The more optimistic Lachenal reasoned with me that I always took a long time to warm up, that we had now done the hardest pitch anyway, and that this particular type of climbing on steep, open walls had never suited me. In the end he persuaded me to push on a bit farther.

The ground now became easier again, and despite a slight mistake in route-finding we soon came to the foot of the notorious ‘
Three
Hundred Foot Corner', which looked almost friendly. It is a tall, right-angled groove, mostly less than vertical, and a thin crack running from bottom to top gives promise of certain progress. The first pitch confirmed my favourable impression. I reached the stance in a few minutes of delightful climbing, and Lachenal came up at once. This was much more my style of thing, and I tackled the second pitch with confidence. About half way up it a small overhang forced me to hammer in a peg and use an etrier, but by now I was warmed up and it didn't take long. We fairly raced up the final third of the comer, which is its best and most sustained part, and found that we had done the whole thing in one hour. Entranced with the beauty of the ascent and the pleasure of our own success, we began to go at such a rate that we reached the ‘Pendulum' by eleven o'clock.

I remember that as I installed the rope for the rappel I remarked to Lachenal that the weather, which hadn't changed much, would probably hold out for the day, but that it wouldn't do to count on it for tomorrow; and that we therefore ought to aim to reach Frendo and Rébuffat's second bivouac site that evening. Guy Poulet had told us that from there it should be possible to finish out even in the event of bad weather. Lachenal, always the optimist, replied that at the rate we were going the climb was in the bag, and that we were now so far ahead of our most sanguine time estimates that he had every hope of sleeping in the hut that evening!

We made a mess of the Pendulum. The ropes got so snarled up that it took us over half an hour to disentangle them. This operation, which was punctuated by words disapproved-of by the clergy and by polite society, was conducted in a place so ill-adapted to the outward and visible signs of bad temper that we had to anchor ourselves to a piton. Finally, three-quarters of an hour later, nothing remained but to pull down the rope which still linked us to the world of men. Once this had been done retreat would be a grave and perhaps even an insoluble problem. There was still time to choose between sterile prudence and the daring which must lead either to success or disaster. My own choice was made, but, seized by a sudden scruple, I turned towards my companion and said significantly:

‘Are you quite clear in your own mind?'

Despite his affirmative reply I hesitated a moment. Then, putting aside every softening thought, I burnt our bridges.

By noon we had reached the first Frendo-Rébuffat bivouac site, from which we could see no way forward. Neither of us was of an easily frightened disposition, but this was really a bit too much. There was nothing but an unbroken wall and, far above it, the sky. Some feet above us a piton, with a karabiner hanging from it, seemed to mark the limit of possibility. With a great deal of difficulty I climbed up to it, but at this point I found myself in an impasse. An attempt to traverse left came to nothing. Finally, by going right to the limit, I managed to get over the overhang above me, and mantelshelfed on to a narrow, outward-sloping ledge where another peg could be inserted. As far as I could judge I didn't seem to be any better off for my pains, because I still couldn't see any way on from there. As I scrutinised the gently overhanging wall above, however, I began to wonder if one couldn't, by sticking one's neck out a little, get up it after all. Allain had mentioned a difficult overhang somewhere about here – this must be it. I consequently brought Lachenal up to the peg and then launched out without hesitation, my body hanging back in space over the enormous drop. There was absolutely no feeling of fear, only a wonderful sensation of being freed from the laws of gravity. Completely relaxed, I pulled up on the tiniest holds with ease and confidence, and the emotional aspect of my situation did not occur to me. I simply thought: ‘If I fell off here the rope would break, and I would fall over a thousand feet clear to the deck'. Somehow this did not seem to apply to me, but to some external object which did not concern me. It was as though I was no longer the same earthbound man who only surmounted his fear and fatigue by a constant effort of will, because I no longer felt either. My personality had dropped away, I was borne upward by the winds, I was invincible, nothing could stop me. I had in fact attained that state of rapture, that liberation from things material, sought by the skier on the snow, the aviator in the sky, the diver out on his high board. After fifty feet of this divine madness I stopped and put in a piton. Immediately it occurred to me that even an angel can't climb where there are no holds, such as now seemed to be the case … but no, over on the left, I spotted some tiny excrescences which would enable me to do a tension traverse worthy of Dülfer himself.
[5]
No sooner said than done. I gave a few quick directions to Lachenal, who was watching me from below my feet in a worried sort of way. Then, held against the rock only by the tension of the rope as it was slowly paid out, defying all the laws of balance, I traversed across the wall on minute flakes. Eventually I came to a jughandle.
[6]
Turning a small corner I came as if by a miracle to a platform about the size of a chair, with a piton just a few feet above it, into which I clipped the ropes. It was now up to Lachenal. He climbed quickly up to the traverse, hesitated a moment, then executed a daring pendulum across to my stance. Feeling more committed than ever, we had a look round at the sky. The northern side of the range was still clear, but the clouds which hooded our own mountain had grown and were now coming down lower. There was no time to be lost.

We continued along the system of slanting slabs, interrupted every so often by walls, which spiral up from left to right and make it possible to outflank the otherwise unclimbable obstacle of the ‘Grey Tower', a well-known feature of the climb. No more splendid climbing could be imagined. The rock is firm, the difficulty is sustained at a high level without ever becoming extreme. I was climbing as never before, quickly, unhesitatingly, without making any mistakes. My fingers seemed to divine the holds, and our progress was almost more like a well-drilled ballet than a difficult piece of mountaineering. At three o'clock we arrived at the Allain bivouac. Its six-foot width seemed like a boulevard by comparison with the rare and narrow ledges we had encountered hitherto.

We decided to make the most of this unwanted comfort by having a bite to eat and a council of war. A comparison of our time with that of the Parisian party showed that we ought logically to be able to get very high before dark, perhaps even to the summit. We had five hours of daylight ahead of us, and Allain, moving considerably more slowly than ourselves, had covered two-thirds of the distance to the top in that time. Unfortunately we were now in thick cloud, which reduced the visibility to a few yards, and just to cap everything it began to hail. It now came home to us what a trap we had put our heads into. What was the best course? To go down? To retreat down those vast slabs up which we had climbed diagonally seemed almost impossible, and even if we managed that, how were we to get back up the Pendulum? There was nothing for it but to go on. We should get to the Frendo-Rébuffat bivouac before the weather got really bad, and once there we would win our way through sooner or later.

Our only guide was a sketch which Guy Poulet had given me. This showed a slight detour to the right, with the words ‘shattered slabs'. So far as one could make out through the murk this description seemed to fit the slabs now on our right, and not for one moment did I think of climbing the overhang above our heads. Two delicate pitches brought us to a series of cracks cutting up through some vast dark-coloured slabs. Not so easy, these cracks, not easy at all; despite my excellent form they gave me a lot of trouble. As we made our way painfully upwards we kept looking for a way back to the left, but the lie of the land constantly forced us in the other direction. It was becoming rather worrying, especially as our sketch made no mention of such difficulties. A few pitches farther on we came up against a completely hold-less stretch of rock. The way ahead was blocked, and our position began to feel serious. The only thing was to go back down – but would we find the way? And what a waste of time it would be. Suddenly, through a gap in the clouds, I saw a way out of the impasse. On our right was a fairly easy-looking couloir. If we climbed some way up this we would be able to traverse back on to our buttress higher up, where some snow bands crossed the face. We placed the ropes for a rappel and swung across into the gully, which however turned out to be much less easy than it had looked. The angle was about sixty degrees, and the rock, some kind of schist with small, friable, outward-sloping holds, offered little or no opportunity to put in pitons. In spite of all that we had to get up, and get up quickly. Any idea of protection was illusory as we began our dangerous balancing act up the gully, and rapidly though we advanced, the night came down more rapidly still.

What with the dusk and the cloud, we were soon unable to see more than about six feet. Were we going to be caught out by darkness in this couloir, with the prospect of spending the night on holds less than a square inch across, and not even a piton to hold us? Well, we weren't finished yet. I still had plenty of energy left, and my blood was up. Putting all thought of security out of my mind I climbed at a crazy speed, and all the time my companion stuck to me like a shadow, splendid in his nearness and calm. At last the slope gave back a little, and we noticed a narrow snow ridge on our right. Evidently the couloir was double and the two branches joined here, forming this providential little ridge on which we could safely spend the night. However, the prospect of sitting all night in melting snow rather cooled our joy, the more so as we had both already tried this unpleasant experience elsewhere. On the right of the ridge a rock about the size of a man's head stuck out of the snow, which would do at a pinch for one of us to sit on. As we dug the snow away from around it we found first a crack which would take a good safe piton, then another stone which, cunningly arranged, would double the ground area of our little palace, bringing it up to some twelve inches by eighteen. The next thing was to don our bivouac gear, consisting of a quilted jacket and a waterproof cape. Lachenal also had a ‘pied d'éléphant', for which I tried to compensate by pulling a pair of socks over my boots and putting my legs in the sack.
[7]