Conquistadors of the Useless (16 page)

The thing that embarrassed him most was lack of equipment. He had an old pair of nailed boots which he had repaired himself.

‘You see, I've a buddy who's a cobbler. I just watched what he did, and now I can do it as well as he can.'

But the real problem was espadrilles: he only had one.

‘Can't you find this guy a sister?' he asked with a joyous laugh, rummaging round in a bag of provisions and producing an ancient tennis shoe all patched with bits of leather. To tell the truth I was not violently impressed with Lachenal on this first meeting. I liked his uncomplicated passion for the mountains, but his way of talking and his anti-militarism rather irritated me.

The E.H.M. was installed in a hotel above Argentière, right up at the end of the valley. Our own home was in Chamonix itself, so that whenever I wasn't away in the mountains I would make this journey of six or seven miles a couple of times a day on my worn-out old moped. As I was going through Argentière one day I saw Lachenal among a group of climbers, and drew up to say hallo. He told me he had got a job as an instructor at the Union Nationale des Centres de Montagne, a large new organisation aimed at encouraging the public to ski and climb. They had just installed a camp at the village, and after that we began to meet frequently.

Each time I passed that way I paid a visit to the old farm where Lachenal had rented a room. He was living there with his wife Adèle, a jovial Lausannoise of distinguished family who had married for love outside her own circle, and their little boy Jean-Claude, a magnificently vital and exceptionally noisy child. I soon discovered that Lachenal hid remarkable qualities behind his mocking exterior, and we became firm friends. One Friday I told him I was off next day to do the north face of the Aiguille Verte with J.-P. Payot, and to try the second ascent of the east face of the Aiguille du Moine on the Sunday. His eyes lit up at once with his own inimitable enthusiasm, and he exclaimed:

‘What a programme! Would you mind if Lenoir and I followed you? We've got the weekend free too, and I think we ought to be able to manage it.' Lenoir was also an instructor at the U.N.C.M. I had climbed with him some years previously, and now gladly agreed to a party of four.

Watching Lachenal go up the steep Couturier Couloir in unfavourable conditions, and still more on the descent of the Whymper Couloir where a thin layer of soft snow covered the bare ice, I began to admire his extraordinary ease of movement. Whether on ice or on snowed-up, loose rocks, he already gave proof of that disconcerting facility, that feline elegance which was to make him the greatest mountaineer of his generation. The following day Lenoir and Payot both had a touch of snow-blindness, the former because he had dropped his snow goggles on the climb, the latter because he had broken one of the lenses. There could be no question of their coming with us to the Moine, and so, by a quirk of fate, I roped up with Lachenal for the first of many times. The east face of the Moine is now one of the classic grade-five climbs, but in 1945 it had not been repeated since its first ascent by the excellent climbers Aureille and Feutren, who had quite rightly called it severe.

I was not a very polished rock climber in those days. I tended to get up by main force, but what I lacked in style I made up in speed. I also belonged to the do-or-die brigade. In climbing terms this means that I stuck my neck out by not taking a lot of precautions. In particular I used very few pitons to hold me in case I fell off. That day I was on great form and climbed fast, but Lachenal seemed in no way put out by our pace and showed himself as brilliant on rock as on ice. Relaxed and supple as a cat, he climbed without any appearance of effort, and I could not help envying him. We got to the summit far earlier than we expected, and had a long rest. Lying there sunbathing, we had plenty of time to admire the magnificent peaks which encircled us. Opposite us the Grandes Jorasses rose like a gigantic fortress, out of all proportion to everything else. Our eyes were particularly drawn to the Walker Spur, whose smooth black walls rose four thousand feet in one titanic pillar against the sky. We knew that Rébuffat and Frendo were attacking it that very day. The crags still looked rather snowed-up, and we discussed their chances of success.

‘Do you think they'll make it with all that snow around?'

‘Snow or no snow, I don't think so. They're just not good enough. Cassin took three days in good conditions, and he's in a different class altogether, one of the greatest climbers the Dolomites have ever known.
[2]
Anyway, think of the time they took on their last attempt two years ago: a whole day for a quarter of the face, even though they took the Allain start. It would have been two days if they'd taken the Cassin start. At that rate it'll take them a week to finish, and they've had it if there's the smallest bit of bad weather.'

‘Yes, I know, but all the same Cassin was a Dolomite climber pure and simple. He wasn't used to ice or even granite.'

‘That's what you think. He'd done plenty of granite in the Bergell. What about the north-east face of the Badile? It may be a bit shorter than the Walker, but it's in the same class. As for snow and ice he'd done lots of winter ascents, and anyway there isn't much on the Walker when it's in good condition.'

‘Well, all right, but Gaston must be darned good at artificial after all he's done in the Calanques.'

‘He certainly is very good when it comes to banging in pegs, but he's no better than you when it comes to free climbing, and you'd hardly compare yourself with Cassin. Everyone says he's a superman. In the Dolomites they do all sorts of things we'd think impossible. After all they can climb hard stuff for six months in the year. There's nothing but vertical faces down there, they climb grade six all day long. Just think how fit they must be. That sort of thing doesn't exist here. What do we do in the way of hard rock climbing? Twice nothing. Half the time we're on ice, and when we do get on to rock you've got to be a genius to find anything more than grade five. Look at today: we've put in about four pegs and haven't done a move harder than that. Do you call that sort of thing training for the Walker? No, believe me. Our icy old mountains may be twice as beautiful as the Dolomites, where it's as dry as I don't know what, but as far as rock climbing is concerned we're babes in arms compared with those boys.'

‘You don't think they'll make it then?'

‘One never knows. Gaston's a real trier, and if the weather holds out anything can happen. But in my view the Walker's a good three standards harder than anything else around here.'

‘One never knows, as you say. All these stories about the Dolomite boys might just be a load of bull. Have you ever been to see for yourself?'

‘No, and I don't reckon I ever will.'

‘Not even if they get up?'

‘Well, of course, that would put a different complexion on everything. But the great problem is to find someone to go with … would you be interested?'

‘Are you kidding? The Walker's my dream. But do you think I'm up to it? I haven't done much yet.'

‘You may not have done much, but I've been watching you these last two days. You're a natural, it's enough to make anybody jealous. Done. If they get up, we'll have a shot.'

And so, on this modest summit, we became a team that was to conquer the greatest faces in the Alps.

That September the army gave me leave to go on the five-week course for the National Professional Guide's Certificate, and I had no difficulty in qualifying. As often happens in the Alps, the weather was fine that autumn. Officially I was still in the army, but as the courses were over for the year I was almost completely free. I took advantage of these circumstances to climb as much as possible, in spite of the inevitable cold and snow due to the lateness of the season. Particularly I remember an ascent of the Mer de Glace face of the Grépon which new snow rendered so delicate that it took us over twelve hours, whereas in dry conditions I have done it in three and a half. It was dark when we got down, and there was plenty of bare ice on the steep slopes of the Nantillons glacier. We had no torch and no crampons. My companion was at the end of his tether and kept falling off; several times only luck enabled me to hold him.

Finally the army decided to let me go. Immediately we came up against financial problems. We had been living for the last year on money realised by the sale of my livestock, and only the strictest economies had enabled us to spin it out so long. We had now come to the end of the reel. It was true that the E.H.M. had offered me a job as a civilian instructor, and this would certainly have been the easy way out: regular pay, easy work, plenty of skiing and climbing – not much future, if you like, but also no further material problems for several years, perhaps even for life. To live by skiing and climbing was, after all, my dream. It was really tempting – yet I turned it down without a moment's hesitation. To live in society at all means by implication a certain submission to the will of others, but my experiences in the J.M. and the army had taught me that in vast organisations this happens very much more often than elsewhere. Nothing inspired me less than the idea of being subject to men whose fitness to command was, to say the least of it, variable. As far as I was concerned independence was worth more than security, and I turned resolutely towards a future that was full of doubt.

When winter came I took up my old post as ski instructor at Les Houches. The end of the war had brought back plenty of clients, of which I got a generous share through being a better skier than most of the other instructors, but the fees were still too low and it was a poor living for all my hard work. I had had to return my farm at Les Houches to its owners and now lived in a poor flat in Chamonix. I was so hard up that I was unable to afford the ten francs to take the train from one village to the other – though of course ten francs was worth a good deal more in those days than it is now. Morning and evening I would do the five miles of icy road separating Chamonix from Les Houches on my moped. On days when the weather made this impossible I would catch the train. In order to avoid having to pay, especially on the return trip in the evening darkness, I would leap on the train as it rumbled by and then jump off into a snow bank when it slowed down at the other end.

The U.N.C.M., where Lachenal worked, had now moved to Les Bossons, a mile below Chamonix. I used to stop off each evening at the old hotel building it had taken over, spending hours discussing our summer projects in the little room where he and his family lived all heaped up on top of each other. We had definitely decided on the Walker, and much of our talk revolved around it. The success of Rébuffat and Frendo had reassured us as to the technical difficulty of the ascent. We now knew that it wasn't necessary to be a superman to get up it, but we were a good deal worried by the length of time taken. Three days and two bivouacs seemed terribly long to our way of thinking.

In the Alps, even when conditions are ideal, you can never be sure what the weather will do tomorrow, to say nothing of the day after. We were only too well aware that on a face of the height and difficulty of the Walker a storm was more to be feared than perhaps anywhere else in the range. If a party was overtaken by really bad weather high on the face there would be a strong likelihood of its not getting down alive.

Apart from the elegant Cassin route which goes direct to the highest of the mountain's several summits there is also another route on the north face, but it is considerably easier and leads to a lower point on the ridge, the Pointe Michel Croz.
[3]
During an attempt at the first ascent the German climbers Haringer and Peters were caught in a terrible storm. Haringer died in the course of the retreat, and Peters, the eventual conqueror, only got back to Chamonix, where he had long been given up for lost, after several days of desperate fighting for his life.

This example and that of many parties lost on the Eigerwand, the Walker's great rival, gave us a lot to think about. Naturally we were willing to take our chances, but we also wanted to keep the risks to the possible minimum. To cut a day off the length of time required seemed to us to halve the dangers, and we racked our brains for a method of doing so. We could count to some extent on the fact that we were both fast climbers, but sheer pace does not solve all the problems in mountaineering. Quite often a little craft will find a way where even the greatest virtuosity will fail.

From the very outset it was obvious to us that one of the biggest time-wasters was sack hauling: a party that could dispense with this would be able to cut its time by at least twenty per cent. The problem was how to carry thirty pegs, adequate bivouac kit, and food and drink for three days, without making the sacks too heavy for climbing difficult rock. It seemed about as easy as squaring the circle to begin with, but after a while we began to see that careful planning could greatly reduce the weight to be carried. We weighed every single item, cutting out everything not absolutely vital, and to our surprise discovered that we had got the total load for the three days down to twenty-five pounds. Then we were able to knock off another five by deciding
a priori
that the climb would only take two days. Even on quite difficult rock a second man can climb with a twenty-pound sack, because if necessary he can always be given a bit of help with the rope: but it is still a considerable burden. He might easily slow down under the strain. How could we lessen his load without running into danger? Whichever way we looked at it we could not get the total below twenty pounds if we were to have an adequate margin of food, clothing and equipment. There was only one solution. Climbing with a rucksack is a nuisance to the leader, but only if the sack is heavy. He would never notice a matter of five or six pounds which, however, would be a very real saving to the second, probably enough to enable him to climb normally.