Conquistadors of the Useless (35 page)

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.

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.

On another occasion I was doing the south-east ridge of Mont Maudit with one of my oldest clients, then about fifty-eight. The mountain was in poor condition and our progress had been proportionately slow. In the early afternoon, as we approached the neighbourhood of the summit, the storm broke. Needles of flame stood on the pompoms of our woollen hats and I felt the old familiar panic which the presence of lightning always inspires in me. After a few minutes the storm passed over, but the mountain remained enveloped in cloud. Before long a violent wind sprang up, whipping the snow into our faces and plastering our goggles. We started down in an absolute blizzard.

Now the ordinary route, which we were descending, consists of huge, steep snow slopes, interrupted here and there by ice walls and bars of séracs. Even in fine weather the route is hard to pick out on such featureless ground. This state of affairs being exacerbated by the cloud and the driving snow, it taxed all my local knowledge to find the way. Unfortunately my companion had bad eyesight, and with his goggles all plastered up he was practically blind. As is proper in descent he was going down first, but I soon realised that even when I shouted instructions to him he had lost the power to move steadily in a given direction; instead, he was zigzagging all over the place.

However we had to get moving if we were not to be frozen to death. The only solution seemed to be for me to go first, keeping my client on a short rope. By a cruel stroke of fate the slope, which was quite steep, was packed hard with the ice bulging through in places. The cramponning was delicate in such conditions, and an exhausted and half-blinded client seemed likely to slip at any moment. The reader can imagine my state of mind throughout this descent, peering through the thick cloud to seek the way and at the same time trying to keep an eye on my second lest he should suddenly shoot into me from behind and knock me over with the twenty spikes of his crampons.

In point of fact I have only had about a score of clients in my whole career who were really competent, and no more than three or four who could follow anywhere I could lead. One of these, a German-Swiss, gave me an unusual and amusing experience. Normally he never climbed with a guide, but as his friend had been injured he engaged me in order not to waste the end of his holiday. We set out for the Mer de Glace face of the Grépon, a well-known classic which is, in fact, quite long and difficult. Going up to the little Tour Rouge hut the evening before, already about a quarter of the way up the face, I had quickly noticed his astonishing facility.

In the morning I set a brisk pace from the outset, and since my client appeared to have no difficulty in keeping up I soon pulled out all the stops. Every so often I would turn round to see how he was getting on, and always he would be just behind me, smiling and not even out of breath. Once or twice, for form's sake, I asked:

‘All right? Not too fast?'

And each time he replied:

‘No, no. It's going fine.'

Now and again he would pause for a moment to take a quick photograph, manipulating the camera with extraordinary dexterity. As the going got harder and we had to climb pitch by pitch the pace hardly slowed up at all. By the time I had turned round at the top of the pitch he would already be some way up it, climbing like a squirrel, and a few seconds later he would rejoin me. We reached the summit three and a half hours after leaving the hut, an hour and a half sooner than my fondest hopes, including halts for some twenty-odd photographs.

It was 8.30 a.m. I felt on tremendous form, my client was climbing like an aeroplane, and we had plenty of time to do another ascent. I suggested traversing the west face of the Blaitière to the foot of the south ridge of the Fou, then rounding off the day by doing the ridge. It was an unconventional and even rather far-fetched idea, but it struck me as amusing and it would make a wonderful gallop. To my vast disappointment, my Switzer replied mildly:

‘Oh! No, monsieur Terray, I'm not at all interested in ideas of that sort. I've never climbed as fast as that before, and I found it great fun, but that's enough for one day. What I like about mountaineering is being in touch with nature and looking at the scenery. Anyway, the weather's perfect, and since you're engaged for the day we'll just stay here until noon.'

If guiding an ascent is always more or less of an adventure, the organisation of a professional season is equally fascinating. During a prolonged fine spell the effort required is often just as great as on the hardest climbs. There is of course no actual obligation to accept every engagement or to tire oneself out, and some people may suppose that the sole motivation for doing such things is financial, yet I think I can honestly say that this has not been the case. It has been more like a sort of game in which the only rule was to do all that was humanly possible. In point of fact I have hardly ever voluntarily taken a rest day during the season; on the contrary, I have sometimes got so close to the end of my tether that I have only been saved by bad weather, as a boxer by the gong.