MountainZone.com Home

Search
MountainZone.com



Google


CHECK OUT:





Chasing Scarves and Jumping Crevasses
Discovering Alpinism on the Massif du Mont Blanc
August 11, 2004

Pages »1  2

Traversing Glacier d'Argentiere
Photo by Pam Inverarity

"Are you mad?!!" I thought as Frédéric calmly stepped forward and straddled the seemingly bottomless crevasse which gaped before my feet like serene blue jaws of death. I had hesitated because, diminutive as I was, crossing the crevasse was beyond a mere step for me. It was a leap. A big one. And I was just a bit daunted. I had excuses of course. It was my first day in crampons and I was still getting used to the spiky contraptions. In truth, I was just a fair-weather rock climber from sunny Australia. Really, what did I know about ice? I hadn’t even seen real snow until my 19th birthday.

I was unroped - no one in our small group was roped - and I’d hesitated as my imagination pictured all too vividly the deadly consequences of a simple mistake such as tripping, slipping, misjudging the distance or landing badly. Frédéric, an ultra-experienced alpinist, stood with one foot on either side of the yawning chasm in the ice, smiling and holding out his hand for me. I was simultaneously embarrassed and horrified. My cruel imagination pictured me falling and pulling the unfortunate alpinist down into the crevasse after me. But by force of sheer embarrassment I could hesitate no longer. I took the proffered hand very lightly, more out of respect for the sheer insane chivalry of the offer than from any belief in the security it represented, and made the leap.

That was my welcome to the world of alpinism on a cold, wet day on the Mer de Glace.

Despite my somewhat disquieting introduction to cold, white stuff at altitude, it wouldn’t be long before I was back in the Chamonix Valley trekking up another glacier and leaping over crevasses. Some of my all-time favorite books were tales of mountaineering and the romance and adventure of it all drew me like it had drawn so many other moths to the flame.

This world of sparkling white snow and ice and steep rock spires resembled some kind of fairy-tale land to me. It was so distant from the arid, red landscape of my childhood that it might as well have only existed in books had I not now seen it firsthand. And here, walking up from the Chamonix Valley in France, I was surrounded by peaks and routes that were legend in the history of alpinism. Over there were the Drus, and back there, the Grands Jorasses, all impossibly steep and intimidating, yet all were scaled back in the 1800s with little equipment and amazing boldness. Somewhere out of sight was the Pic de Roc where Gaston Rebuffat had stood on top of an impossibly thin and narrow needle of rock for one of mountaineering’s most memorable photographs, and not far away, the summit of Western Europe’s highest mountain, Mont Blanc, whose first ascent in 1786 heralded the dawn of alpinism in this part of the world. This was a land of great adventure that I’d only read about in books, and now here I was in the midst of it all.

"The European Alps are anything but wilderness..."

We’d been invited on this alpine weekend by friends who were off to climb the north face of the Aiguille d’Argentiere. We had no real plans, but there was bound to be something we could do, inexperienced though we were.

We arrived at the Refuge d’Argentiere in the late afternoon after a warm eight hour hike up from the town of Argentiere on the valley floor. The European Alps are anything but wilderness. Normally it’s possible to gain most of your altitude by cable car, but at this time they weren’t running and we had to resign ourselves to walking. But it was the luxury of the mountain hut which particularly surprised me. Large enough to accommodate up to 150 climbers and skiers, heated and fully catered, with soft mattresses and thick blankets on the dorm-style beds, it was almost like turning up at a hotel. And to our surprise, we were greeted by still more friends from the French Alpine Club who had come to climb the Aiguille Verte.

After a rich, three course meal culminating in caramel cream puffs in the huge communal dining room we discussed our plans and Dominique, our trusted alpine guru from the Club, poured through the guide book. She eventually decided that our most entertaining option would be to do Les Trois Cols, a classic tour which took us over three cols and four glaciers, returning to the valley down the Glacier du Tour. We were lent a map and shown the route to take. With nothing to judge by, anything she might have suggested was fine with us. Then all and sundry were in bed early to be up for an alpine start the next morning.

Compared to the sunny warmth on the glacier the previous day, the temperature seemed glacial at 2 am when we left the hut with Marco and Susannah. We’d accompany them as far as the Col du Chardonnet.

Dominique had decided that I should take the upper end of the rope. I couldn’t help but wonder whether such confidence might be misplaced, since Roger already had some alpine experience in New Zealand and the Alps before I arrived in Switzerland and I really had nothing but a two day training-cum-refresher course with Dominique’s section of the French Alpine Club. Nevertheless, I secretly relished this little one-up on Roger who was a harder rock climber than me and didn’t mind rubbing it in when he got the chance.

But Roger was more than happy to go second. No one had really mentioned it, but going through the concept of moving together up big snow slopes led me to the rather unsettling conclusion that the upper end of the rope was no safety net. If I slipped on a steep, hard slope and didn’t manage to self arrest, surely I’d have so much momentum by the time the rope became tight on my partner that I’d simply pull him straight off his feet and we’d both go for a plummet. Helpfully, one of my trusted reference books confirms these suspicions.

I was wearing soft, light hiking boots. Marco had assured me that my boots would be fine and lent me some flexible crampons to strap to them. I was a bit sceptical, but since I was no experienced alpinist and Marco had scaled scores of summits in various parts of the world, who was I to argue? In truth, they were very comfortable for the climb up the Col du Chardonnet. I was feeling confident, despite being on the upper end of the rope. I couldn’t be daunted by the steepness of the slope or any cliffs or crevasses below me. It was too dark to see them.

It was sunrise already by the time we reached the col. Marco and Susannah, deciding that we weren’t moving fast enough for them, said their farewells there and headed down with great, plunging strides to the base of their route. Fair enough, really. At least that meant they couldn’t see our own less than happy and confident strides down the steep snow on the other side of the col. I quickly realized the disadvantage of light, soft trekking boots. They seemed to be a complete failure when it came to kicking solid steps downhill and did nothing for my confidence or my technique, let alone my speed. Even more of a save of face was that they didn’t see me when I let out a small shriek and landed one leg in and one leg out of the small ´shrund at the bottom of the slope. The snow at the edge had collapsed as I was stepping down to it. It was an inelegant way to cross a ´shrund and a technique I hope not to be caught using again.

Page 2 »