Survivor: The Autobiography (13 page)

Our complete immobility and the long stay in the tent had stifled us. We tore away a piece of the cloth and breathed avidly. Our tent was now buried in the snow, and the warmth of our bodies had created inside it watery drops which were transformed, by the sudden changes in temperature, now into water and now into ice crystals. I did not want to look at my watch, so as not to be disappointed by the slow passage of time. We did not speak to one another. All that could be heard were moans due sometimes to the discomfort of our positions, sometimes to the cold and sometimes to the feeling of suffocation which tortured us. We knew nothing about the Frenchmen, but we could often hear similar noises from them.

The night passed and a milky radiance heralded Wednesday’s dawn. Only then did we emerge from the tent and were amazed at the amount of snow which had fallen during the night. The Frenchmen beside us were quite buried in it. Kohlman, on the wider ledge, was already standing up and looked like a dark blotch against the incandescent horizon, which seemed to announce a splendid day. We were overcome by a feeling of joy; the enormous quantity of fallen snow and the terrible frost were harbingers of good weather. Soon all of us were out of the tent, ready to begin the last stretch. I took a few snaps and we dismantled the little tent. But just as we were packing it up we found ourselves – I still do not know where those mists could have come from – again enveloped in the snowstorm. The very strong wind made the fresh snow whirl around us; we could not tell if it were snowing or whether this was the work of the wind.

We once more took refuge in our tent and the Frenchmen did the same. This time we went farther down, to Kohlman’s ledge, which was larger and where the three of us – Oggioni, Gallieni and myself – could be a little more comfortable. Kohlman climbed up a few feet to where we had passed the night. He took his own bivouac equipment with him, a down sleeping-bag covered with plastic cloth, which wrapped him like a mummy. We belayed ourselves to pitons and settled down to wait.

During a short break a little earlier I had noticed that the snow had fallen even at a low altitude. We could scarcely believe that after snowing so long, the storm could come back once more. The Frenchmen asked me what I intended to do. I replied that we would wait, always in the hope of being able to get to the summit, the shortest way to safety. We were not short of provisions or equipment and could stay where we were. At this time of year the bad weather could not last very much longer and the idea of so dangerous and complicated a descent in the midst of a snowstorm terrified us, since we could reach the summit in less than half a day.

Mazeaud and his companions were belayed to a piton about twenty feet above me. Kohlman was alongside them. Mazeaud, who had a certain leadership over his companions, exchanged a few words with me and proposed that we two should set out together as soon as a break in the weather made it possible. Our job would be to fix pitons and ropes up the last two hundred and fifty feet of overhang, so that our five companions could come up after us. We agreed on this, but the break never came. We ate a little ham, some roast meat and jam, but we could not drink anything because the storm made it impossible to light a fire to make tea with melted snow.

It went on snowing, hour after monotonous hour. Amid the thoughts which jostled one another in my mind, I tried to remember other occasions, similar to this, when I had been trapped in the mountains by bad weather. I remembered that snowstorms had never lasted more than a day or two. So I said to myself: ‘One day has gone already. The snowstorm cannot last more than another twenty-four hours. It is only a question of lasting out one day longer and then we shall be able to start.’

To remain in this very uncomfortable position squashed one against the other in a space which could hardly hold a single person, became more and more intolerable. We could not turn our heads, we could not lie on our sides and the constant slope made it seem that our spines would crack. In such conditions it is easy to fall prey to irritability. There were moments when we would have liked to tear off our covering, but woe to us had we done so! Oggioni, Gallieni and I talked; we talked of everything; memories, plans, hopes, friendships, happy and unhappy reminiscences, just to kill time and to keep ourselves occupied.

Oggioni said to me: ‘Do you remember when we said in Peru: Will the day ever come when we shall be together on the Pillar?’ He said it sarcastically, since at that time we thought that everything on our home mountains would be easier. Yet now we were in conditions similar to those we had found on the Rondoy, when we had had to master that peak in the midst of a snowstorm and had been without shelter for two days and two nights. Gallieni was our vitamin man; he gave us pills, especially of vitamins C and A, to make up for our lack of food. He gave them to the Frenchmen by a primitive sort of pulley which we had made out of ropes and added some of our provisions. The Frenchmen were a little short of food.

The problem of passing water then arose. It was not possible to go out of the tent. I suggested to Gallieni that he should sacrifice his plastic cap and we each used it in turn. It was a terrifying experience; we had to make all sorts of contortions and hold fast to one another not to fall over. The whole operation took half an hour; our legs were hanging in space and our clothes hampered us.

It was now Wednesday evening. It was snowing harder than ever. I asked Gallieni, who was near the edge: ‘Where’s the wind blowing from?’ ‘Still from the west,’ he said. That meant a snowstorm. Mazeaud, full of vitality and initiative, shouted to me: ‘As soon as it gets better, you and I ought to go. If you think it would be better to start towards the left, then we will certainly go that way.’ Oggioni, who did not know French, asked me what Mazeaud had been saying and I explained. He agreed but asked: ‘Do you think it possible to get out by way of the summit even in this weather?’ He knew that I could find the way down from the summit whatever the weather, as I had already done it several times before. I said: yes, but that we should have to stay where we were another night, since in my heart I felt almost certain that the snowstorm would end next day.

Our breath in the tent was transformed into watery vapour and we were wet through. I thought with terror about what might happen when the hard frost which always precedes good weather came and hoped I would be able to bear it. We would have to spend an hour or so warming ourselves in the sun before making the last assault. We could not sleep. Night came upon us almost unawares. We were all on edge. Gallieni began to speak of his young children. My thoughts were ten thousand feet farther down, with my loved ones, in the intimacy of my home. Oggioni talked of Portofino. He had never been there and said: ‘We mountaineers are really unlucky . . . with all the lovely things there are in the world, we get caught up in this sort of thing . . .’ Gallieni said: ‘And to think that I have a cosy home in Milano Marittima and such a nice beach: you can jump into the warm water and don’t even have to take the trouble to swim, it’s so shallow . . . You can walk for miles and miles . . .’ Oggioni hid his apprehension with jokes. To look at, he was the calmest of the lot of us. I was sure that he, other than myself, was the only one to be fully aware that our plight was desperate.

The night between Wednesday and Thursday passed. In the forenoon Mazeaud came into our tent, because the plastic cloth over the Frenchmen’s sleeping-bags had split under the gusts of wind. We managed to arrange ourselves after a thousand contortions and so passed the day. We tried to keep up our spirits, telling ourselves that the next day – Friday – would be fine, but we were not greatly convinced. In my inmost self I was already considering which would be the safest manner of retreating down the way we had come; in my opinion it was now impossible to reach the summit of the Pillar. I did not mention this to my companions so as not to discourage them.

Mazeaud told me about the south-west pillar of the Petit Dru which he had made the previous week. We spoke of our pleasure at getting to know one another and in sharing this adventure. We promised to meet again one day at Courmayeur or Chamonix and to talk over today’s experiences. Our thirst was intense and we had to quench it by eating snow. We made pellets of snow and kept gnawing at them. We thought longingly of a tap at home which would give us all the water we wanted at a turn. It was paradoxical that in the midst of so much snow we should have a burning thirst. The frozen snow made our mouths burn and very sore.

Thursday passed and night came. During the long hours of darkness Oggioni and I, who were farthest from the edge, suffered particularly from lack of air. To him alone I confided my intention of descending at all costs. He agreed, but was terrified at the idea. Thursday night also passed. We had to set the alarm for half-past three. When I heard it ringing I shouted to everyone: ‘We must go down at all costs. We cannot stay here any longer, otherwise it will be too late and we will not have the strength.’

When dawn began to break on the Friday morning the storm had been raging incessantly for more than sixty hours. Mist and snow merged into an impenetrable curtain. We dismantled everything and left a certain amount of our equipment behind. I was without an ice-axe which one of my companions had let fall by mistake on the first day. We began the descent by double rope. We had decided that I must lead, preparing the rappels. Behind me came all the others: Mazeaud, whose task was to help anyone who needed it, then the others and finally Oggioni who, strong in his experience, would be last man and recover the ropes.

At exactly six I lowered myself into the grey and stormy void almost blindly, without knowing where I was going. I felt as if I were in a stormy sea. The snow flurries gave me a feeling of dizziness. I had to watch every detail and try to recognise every fold of the rock to find out where I was. The manoeuvre took a long time and waiting for the ropes and pitons to come down from above in order to make the next rappel took even longer. Sometimes we were all bunched together, belayed to a piton, four or five of us hanging in space. About halfway down the Pillar I was unable to find a place to stop when the double rope came to an end. With some difficulty because of the snow flurries I managed to make myself understood. I needed another rope to attach to the one I was holding on to. There were no holds; the snow had packed tight even under the overhangs. I tied the two ropes together with my bare hands and continued my descent into space. There was now a four-hundred-foot rope down which I was sliding like a spider.

It was now no longer possible to talk with any of the others. I was completely suspended, looking for a hold which I could not find. I was worried, partly because I did not know where I could halt in my descent, partly because an enormous overhang cut off all possibility of communicating with my companions who, higher up, were waiting for my signal. At last, after some acrobatic swings in space, I managed to land on an outcrop of rock. I shouted repeatedly through the storm, hoping that my companions would understand that they could begin their descent. At one moment I saw the rope ascending and thought that one of them was on it and had begun to descend. Then, suddenly, the rope slipped away from me and dissappeared from sight. I was left there, on an outcrop, secured by a cord to a piton, in the heart of the Pillar, without any means of continuing my descent and wondering if my companions would be able to find me or would descend in some other direction. I went on shouting at the top of my voice, hoping to be heard, so that, if nothing else, they could tell me where they were. Several moments of anxiety passed. At last a dark patch appeared near me; it was Mazeaud who had realised where I was and had come to join me.

Our rappels continued with the same rhythm. We were getting closer to the foot of the Pillar. We were frozen and soaked through. Then, hearing the dull thuds of some snowfalls. I realised that we had reached the base of the Pillar. But by now it was late in the afternoon and all we could do that night was to prepare a camp on the Col de Peuterey, which forms the base of the Pillar. We set foot on the level but the snow was extraordinarily deep; sometimes we sank into it up to our chests. I made Mazeaud take the lead for a bit, followed by all the others. I stayed where I was to give the direction. At one time the group seemed to have foundered in a very deep snowdrift. I joined them and then took the lead again, setting out by instinct towards the spot I thought suitable for a camp. Though I could not see it, it was imprinted on my mind. Behind me was Oggioni with whom I discussed whether it would be better to chance the protection which a crevasse could give us rather than build an igloo, since the snow was unstable. This was not so important for us who had our tent as for the four Frenchmen who hadn’t one. We decided on the crevasse and told the Frenchmen, who accepted our advice.

We made arrangements for our camp before the night between Friday and Saturday fell. We had been making rappels for twelve hours. Kohlman seemed the most exhausted of all of us. We put him in our tent. With what was left of a butane gas cylinder Guillaume prepared some hot tea and gave it to him. The cold was atrocious. The wind was blowing continually and made the snow whirl around us. That was the worst night of all. We divided what was left of the provisions; prunes, chocolate, sugar and a little meat, now frozen. Oggioni refused the meat, preferring the sweetstuffs. All the others, however, nibbled at it. Kohlman showed me his fingers; they were livid. I thought it a good idea to massage them with cooking alcohol, of which we still had plenty. I passed him the alcohol flask, but he put it to his mouth and began to gulp it down. It was a most ill-advised action, but I thought he must have mistaken it for drinking alcohol. I took the flask away from him, but not before he had swallowed a couple of gulps. Were we already on the brink of madness?

It was pitch dark. We were in an inferno. Everyone was moaning and shivering with cold. The wind howled and the snow fell more and more heavily. Every now and then we would shake the snow off the tent, otherwise it would have smothered us. I tried to light the spirit-stove but had to give up for lack of air and, as in the last few days, we had to eat snow to quench our thirst. We were desperate, but no one said a word. Finally Oggioni said to me: ‘Let’s make a vow: if we get out of this safely, let us forget that the Pillar even exists.’ I said, ‘Yes.’