Survivor: The Autobiography Part 5

A few moments later a shock, similar to the one we had already experienced, but even more violent, nearly threw us off the face. Amid the commotion and shouts I could hear one voice clearly. I heard: 'We must get away!' I don't know if it was Oggioni or Gallieni. The words were born of despair and mirrored our state of mind. I thought that we were lost and I believe that we all thought the same. I relived my whole life and in my mind's eye saw all those dear faces and places which I should certainly never see again. Though by now resigned to my fate. I felt sorry that during my life I had not been able to do all the things I had intended. These are sensations which last only for seconds, yet they are clear and seem incredibly long.

Miraculously, however, the storm seemed to be dying away in the distance. Now we could only hear the drumming of the frozen snow on the rubberised cloth which covered us. We remained inert and apathetic; we did not even look outside the tent, for outside it was already dark. No one spoke. We did not eat. We were indifferent to everything. The snow which was falling though it was a very serious matter for us, almost gave us a sense of relief. We had been saved from the lightning and were still alive. I had never before been on such a face in such a storm: there was no skill and no technique which could have saved us.

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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed 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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.sed 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 alt.i.tude. 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ce 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, friends.h.i.+ps, 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sault. 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sed 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 Pet.i.t 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed. 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sed. 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 creva.s.se 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 creva.s.se and told the Frenchmen, who accepted our advice.

We made arrangements for our camp before the night between Friday and Sat.u.r.day 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 ma.s.sage them with cooking alcohol, of which we still had plenty. I pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+vering 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.'

The night pa.s.sed slowly and despairingly. At the same time as on the day before, at half past three, at the sound of my little alarm, we rose from our uncomfortable resting place. We wanted to save time and to get out of that terrifying situation which seemed as if it would never come to an end. The night had added another eighteen inches of snow to what had been there before. We set out in the midst of the storm. We all seemed to have endured that terrible camp well enough. Now I no longer had to take counsel with my companions; they left everything to me and I felt the heavy responsibility of a guide who must bring everyone back safely by the only possible route, the very dangerous Roches Gruber. We had to get to the Gamba before evening, otherwise it would be all over for all of us.

Before starting, Robert Guillaume gave Kohlman a coramine injection. Meanwhile, I, followed by Oggioni and Gallieni, began to clear a burrow through the very deep snow in the direction of the route chosen for our descent. We were now on a single rope in this order: Bonatti, Oggioni, Gallieni, Mazeaud, Kohlman, Vielle and Guillaume. The face which precedes the Roches Gruber was heavily laden with fresh snow which might avalanche at any moment. I told my companions to hurry up and join me and to get into shelter so that I could hold on to a rope if an avalanche should catch me while I was cutting the channel which would lead us to the Roches Gruber. I managed to do so and called to the others to pa.s.s, one by one, but when it came to Vielle's turn he could not do it. He kept falling and rising again, with every sign of exhaustion. Guillaume was beside him and encouraged him. He took Vielle's rucksack which he had thrown away on the slope, but Vielle seemed deaf to all our appeals which became rougher and rougher.

Meanwhile I went on to prepare the first of a very long series of rappels down the Roches Gruber. The sky had cleared for a moment, but the fine spell only lasted a short time. I could hear my companions inciting Vielle who had still not got across the couloir. I shouted to them to hurry up and begin the descent if we didn't want to die up there. I was the farthest down and was waiting for Kohlman who had followed me. Half an hour pa.s.sed. Not understanding the delay. I again went up the rope for a few feet to see what was happening. Gallieni told me that Vielle was exhausted, that he was unable to cross the couloir by himself. He asked me if it would be possible to slide him along the snow to lighten the fatigue of walking. I agreed and told him to act quickly, adding that at this pace not only would we not get to the Gamba hut, but we would not even get down the Roches Gruber.

I went down again and rejoined Kohlman. I gathered from the excited voices of my companions that they were putting their plan into effect. I went on waiting for one of them to lower himself to me. Another half hour pa.s.sed and not only did no one come down to join me, but their voices began little by little to die away. I didn't know what to do. Must every rappel take as long as this? Once again I s.h.i.+nned up the rope a few feet, far enough to be able to see my companions. I asked them: 'Why don't you come down?' A voice, possibly Gallieni's, followed by that of Mazeaud, told me: 'Vielle is dying!' I was petrified. I could see before me the little group of friends gathered around Vielle's body, which looked like a dark, inert bundle on the white snow. He was belayed to the rock and wrapped in our tent-cover to prevent the crows from getting at him.

I went back to Kohlman without telling him anything. Several more minutes, perhaps twenty, pa.s.sed; now I knew it was all over with Vielle. There were no more voices to be heard, only the sound of the wind. It had begun to snow again. This agony unbroken by any human word was terrible. I went up the rope again and saw my companions busy securing to a piton Vielle's body and Galleni's rucksack, full of superfluous things. There were no laments. It was then ten o'clock. I went back again to Kohlman and told him to hold fast. Then Mazeaud arrived, who told him in broken phrases what had happened. Kohlman was deeply affected, and wept.

We continued the rappel. Taking advantage of a moment when all six of us were hanging on the same piton, I advised the greatest possible speed if we did not want to share Vielle's fate. Oggioni, as always, was my right-hand man and took the rear. Like Mazeaud, Guillaume and myself, he was carrying a full rucksack. Mazeaud, the strongest and the acknowledged leader of the Frenchmen, had the job of keeping the others up to the mark.

Not quite an hour had pa.s.sed when we heard voices. I was the farthest down the rope at the time and I thought they must be the voices of my companions above me. Soon, however, I was convinced that someone was searching for us on the glacier below. I shouted back and asked my companions to shout all together, so that they could hear us. From the cries which came from below I understood that they wanted to tell me something, but the gusts of wind prevented me from understanding. For my part, I was quite certain that down there they would not be able to understand what I was shouting, which was: where were they and could they hear us. We went on in better spirits. When we reached the end of the Roches Gruber; about half past three, I calculated that from the morning before, when we had begun the descent, we had made at least fifty rappels.

A brief break in the storm allowed us to see the whole surface of the chaotic Freney glacier. What a lot of snow had fallen! There were no furrows in the snow, which meant that no rescue party had pa.s.sed that way. Where had the voices come from? We could see no one and fell into a mood of the blackest despair. Perhaps it was all over for all of us. We had been sure that the voices had come from the foot of the Roches Gruber and that had given us strength to overcome the terrible difficulties and dangers of that exceedingly difficult pa.s.sage. We were, however, alone at the foot of the rocks and we still had before us many unforeseeable dangers on our way to the Gamba hut.

The slow and exhausting descent of the glacier began. We refused to accept our bad luck. The snow was still very deep. Not even in winter climbs could I recall having met with so much. We left behind us not a trail but a burrow. Fortunately the mists were beginning to rise and visibility gradually improved. That made it possible for us to enter safely the labyrinth of creva.s.ses which led to the Col de l'Innominata, the last serious difficulty on our way to safety. But the deep snow so slowed down our advances, that we despaired of being able to reach the base of the col while there was still daylight.

I felt faint with fatigue, physical suffering and cold, but refused to give up.

Our file grew longer. Oggioni was stumbling every few steps, at the end of his tether. He was without a rucksack, which he had handed over to Gallieni. Sometimes he was last man, sometimes last but one. We groped our way on to the glacier in complete disorder, drunk with fatigue. We were roped together, but each went his own way without heeding anything. I realised that in such conditions it would be very hard for us to reach the foot of the Col de l'Innominata in daylight. Gallieni, behind me, seemed the least exhausted. I decided to unrope myself and him in order to go ahead as quickly as we could and prepare the couloir of the Innominata, otherwise our companions would no longer be able to climb it. This task would have to be completed by nightfall.

Our companions followed in our tracks. Meanwhile I attacked the terrible ice which had encrusted the Col de l'Innominata. Guillaume had remained behind. Within half an hour it would be dark and we were still struggling to reach the col. Now we were again all roped together; myself, Gallieni, Oggioni, Mazeaud and Kohlman. Our only hope was to reach the rescue parties while we still had a little strength left. They alone might be able to save those left behind. It was pitch dark when I reached the Col de l'Innominata. It was Sat.u.r.day evening, after nine o'clock, and we had been out for six days. The powdery snow driven by the wind had begun again and in the west we could see the flashes of an approaching thunderstorm. There was nowhere to fix a piton to anchor the rope which supported my four companions and I had to hold it on my shoulders. I urged them to hurry. But the operation was very long and desperate. Orders mingled with cries of pain and desperation. Behind Gallieni, Oggioni seemed unable to grip the rock. Gallieni tried to help him in every way he could, supported in his turn by the rope which I held on my shoulders. The two Frenchmen down at the end of the rope were shouting and raving.

It was chaos. Three hours pa.s.sed and we were still at the same point. I could not move. Every so often there were tugs at the rope which nearly pulled me into s.p.a.ce. The pain of the rope and the cold made me feel faint. But if I collapsed it meant the end for everyone. In all those three hours Oggioni had not been able to move. All encouragement was in vain. Now and then he would reply with a wail; he seemed to be in a sort of trance. He was attached by a karabiner to a piton, and would have to free himself from it to give us a chance of hauling him up. But he hadn't the strength and he was so exhausted that perhaps he was incapable of thinking. I would have liked to go down to him but that was impossible since I had to keep the rope, which was holding him as well as Gallieni, firmly on my shoulders. At last, not being able to do anything else, Gallieni made sure that Oggioni was firmly fixed to the piton, undid the rope that bound him to Oggioni and the Frenchmen and came up to join me and was thus able to carry on rapidly towards the rescue parties. Oggioni remained roped to the strong Mazeaud, to whom I shouted to wait and look after the others who would soon be rescued.

While we were doing this we saw Kohlman fumbling his way along the rope in the darkness on the ice-covered face. He was unroped. He came towards us and pa.s.sed Mazeaud, Oggioni and Gallieni with an energy born of desperation which bordered on madness. Gallieni, guessing his state, managed to grasp him and tie him to the rope. Soon all three of us reached the col. Kohlman told us he was hungry and thirsty and then went on: 'Where is the Gamba hut?' He was completely out of his senses, but we could not abandon him.

We roped him between us. Gallieni was the first to begin the descent, followed by Kohlman who seemed to have forgotten all the rules of prudence. The slope was very difficult, steep and covered with ice. For the first hundred and fifty feet we let ourselves slide along a fixed rope evidently left there by the rescue parties searching for two Swiss on the Pointe Gugliermina. Then we went on as best we could. But Kohlman became more and more dangerous. He let himself slide on his back, hanging on to the rope and without using his crampons. At the end of the rope he continued to hang there and I had to support him, which made it impossible for me to catch up with him. When at last the rope became lighter, after he had found some sort of foothold, an unexpected tug told me he had again broken away and exposed us all to the risk of falling.

Neither threats nor encouragements moved him. He shouted disconnected phrases, gesticulated, raved. We thought we should have managed to get down in an hour; with Kohlman, now delirious, that hour became three.

With G.o.d's help, we reached the bottom. We still had an hour before us to reach the Gamba hut over snowdrifts which presented neither dangers nor difficulties save for their depth. We began to recover our spirits and our only thought was how to reach the hut quickly when an unexpected incident delayed us. Gallieni had dropped one of his gloves. He bent down to recover it and tried to keep his hand warm by thrusting it into his jacket. Kohlman, who interpreted this movement as an attempt to draw a pistol, spread his arms and rushed on Gallieni, clasping him tightly and making him roll down the slope. Gallieni managed to break free and I tried to check their movements with the rope. Kohlman then hurled himself at me. I dodged and he fell and began to roll, writhing in delirium. He had completely lost his senses. Then he rose again and tried to rush at us. By pulling both ends of the rope, we managed to keep him at a distance. We were all three roped together and one of us could break free. We could not drag him with us and it was essential not to lose a minute.

To untie ourselves from him, we had first to undo the iced-up knots. We had no knife, yet we had to get away from our poor crazed companion. He was watching every movement, ready to launch himself at us. One at a time, keeping the rope taut with our teeth, we lowered our breeches so as to be able to slip the noose of rope about our waists over our hips. We succeeded in this without Kohlman realising what we were doing. Then I shouted to Gallieni: 'Let go and run!' and we rushed off, rolling on the snow. There was only one thing to do: we must get to the hut in time to tell the rescue squads. Kohlman, up there, was in no danger of falling. But, as it happened, the first squad only arrived in time to see him draw his last breath.

In this way we covered the last twelve hundred feet which still divided us from the Gamba hut. It was pitch dark. We only managed to find it because I knew this area as well as my own house. Gallieni followed me unhurt. We circled the hut, hammering on the windows with our fists. We had just reached the door when we heard heavy steps inside and a hand raised the latch. The door burst open; we saw the interior of the hut dimly lit by a small lamp. It was full of sleeping men. We stepped over several bodies without recognising anyone. Then suddenly one of the men leapt to his feet and shouted: 'Walter, is that you?' and there was a rush of people and we were suffocated by embraces.

'Be quick!' I shouted. 'There's one man still out there! The others are on the Innominata! Be quick!' It was three o'clock on Sunday morning. The storm was still raging. We stretched out on the table in the middle of the hut and the others took the frozen crampons from our feet, undressed us and gave us dry clothes and warm drinks. I fell into a heavy stupor. When I awoke about three hours had gone by. The bodies of my companions had been found, except Vielle. They told me that Oggioni was dead and I was filled with uncontrollable grief. Dear Mazeaud, the only one of them to be found alive, embraced me and wept with me.

English explorer. Despite no previous climbing experience he scaled both Chimborazo (20,500 feet) and Cotopaxi (at 19,650 feet the world's highest volcano) in Ecuador in 1953.

At the base camp about 15,800 feet we met four other Ecuadorians all very youthful, and a.s.sociates of the Neuvos Horizontes organization, who on hearing of our plan to spend the night on the crater-lip of the volcano decided that opportunity was too good to be missed. This decision was frightening; we tried hard to dissuade them for there was a good chance of them freezing solid before morning could come again. They had only one tent too awkward to carry up to the summit, and there were then that auspicious evening still four of them.

'What will you do then when you get up there?' we asked.

'We will dig ourselves foxholes and curl up in our sleeping-bags.'

'You won't last the night, you won't wake in the morning. It's your responsibility; we'll have nothing to do with it.'

Next morning at eight o'clock we set out in two parties, on two separate ropes. My own party carried only emergency equipment a little two-man tent, which one enters on all fours through a hole in the side; some preserved fruit, a thermos of coffee, chocolate biscuits and barley sugar. The other four had thin sleeping-bags and iron rations.

For the first half-hour after leaving camp climbing was of the scrambling nature, amounting to no more than a breathless trudge over loose, volcanic shale. The first moment came when we arrived at the snow-line here both parties solemnly sat on an outcrop of rock and started getting out crampons ice-spikes and ropes. This was frightening, for neither of these articles had to my conscious knowledge graced either my feet or waist.

Edmundo led, with myself in the centre and Pepe in the rear. We climbed cautiously along a traverse in steady relays, Edmundo employing his ice-axe with dexterous precision to cut steps for those behind by which we made the slow ascent.

With infinite care he would cut steps ahead of him, climbing sometimes thirty feet at a time while Pepe and I would pay out the rope I was not good at this and would frequently hold up progress by getting it entangled around the spikes in my crampons. When this happened I perspired with frantic embarra.s.sment and that in its turn meant that moisture obscured my spectacles and goggles and before we continued I had to take them off and wipe them both. This happened many times.

When Edmundo had proceeded about ten yards he would drive his ice-axe into the snow, belay the rope around it and again around his body for double security and then take the strain while I climbed up the steps towards him. Reaching him I would belay and he (Edmundo) would proceed upwards for another thirty feet hacking out further ice-steps until he would belay once more to allow Pepe to join me. Then the manoeuvre would be repeated all over again and in this way we painstakingly ascended the dome of the world's highest volcano. It was very tiring for Edmundo.

Although it was toilsome work, it was also dangerous, for we all knew that one moment's relaxation or carelessness might plunge all three of us a thousand feet headlong below. I was just beginning to properly understand what mountaineering meant.

We had been climbing in this manner for perhaps half an hour when suddenly there was a cry from the party behind. Turning, I expected to witness someone falling. But no! they were all on their feet. Pepe shouted a question across the intervening furrow between the two parties his voice sounded strangely sinister in the silence of the Andean mountain air. A very few seconds later a voice replied, 'Snow blindness', and the next moment two of them one leading the other were taking the first steps down towards the Base camp. Now there were two. The hand of Providence must have been upon us, for if this incident had not occurred when and where it did this account would not have been written. But we did not then know what the future held.

We watched the two going slowly down for a few minutes then we turned and faced what would lie ahead. Now, as we started again, my leg muscles began to ache intolerably and I thought I could never go on. But I did, I did . . .

At about 18,000 feet we came upon the first of the two creva.s.sed areas most dangerous part of the climb.

The first creva.s.se loomed up ahead a six-foot fissure which doubtless went down into unimaginable depths.

We halted. Pepe drove his ice-axe hard into the frozen snow, tested it, hitched the rope around it, and took the strain. A second later Edmundo had leapt across the gap the soft vibration of his landing on the far side caused the snow overhangs at the treacherous and uneven edge to crumble and fall in little sparkling lumps into the creva.s.se. It was fascinating. Then came my turn. I waited while Edmundo had me belayed on his side. I was trembling as he looked up from his work and nodded. I jumped. A leap of six feet is nothing at sea-level, it's an exertion at 18,000 feet with crampons encrusted with frozen snow to weight one's feet. I had never jumped a creva.s.se before. All across, we struggled on again, placing our feet carefully in the steps Edmundo cut, with such toil, ahead; the temperature was below zero, the wind was rising, the weather worsening. Where the slightest slip meant the loss of life, we crawled warily.

At this stage I called for very frequent rests for my lungs heaved like the bellows of the hearth, and my heart, wholly unaccustomed to extreme elevation, thundered, like an express train entering a long tunnel, my legs ached intolerably, as if I had a chronic fever. Edmundo and Pepe were very patient but I sensed, rather than saw, through their dark goggles that they were worried for time was running out, and it was absolutely essential we gain the crater before darkness came. I wondered if I would stick it out, but I had to these men were risking their lives at my invitation, I could not let them down now.

Then suddenly, as so often happens when one is at the end of one's tether, something happened. Edmundo had come to a halt frozen in his steps like a pointer in the snow. His experienced eyes had detected an unusual darker patch in the snow ahead which showed where frozen snow had formed a flimsy treacherous snow-bridge across the depths of a creva.s.se. To put foot on that bridge would have invited disaster. Again we jumped.

Now the snow was getting deeper, often above our thighs. The wind was still mounting; it moaned now. I wondered what it would be like on the crater, for down here it was almost the force of a gale as it drove frozen particles of snow into the uncovered parts of our faces like the points of a thousand pine-needles. The protective cream with which I had smothered every unprotected part did nothing to alleviate the pain. I had some more in my rucksack, but couldn't make the effort to do anything that was not automatic. At this point I believe all three of us were feeling the strain, resting every few yards, climbing up and up in a series of traverses, like an ambitious cyclist up a very steep gradient, tacking three or four yards one way then three or four back the other. So sheer was the climb that it was impossible to take it in a straight line. Our rate of ascent must have been well under 500 feet an hour slower than that when the snow deepened.

Later the all-encompa.s.sing darkness began to close down upon us. The gale, still rising, whipped up the snow from the face of the mountain in a fury blizzard, blotting out everything ahead.

Edmundo was himself now stopping frequently lying like a waif in the snow smitten with the unpredictable soroche (mountain sickness) that made him vomit continuously. Bravely he insisted on retaining the first place on the rope. But it was a mistake for isolated in his world of sickness he went off the course and all sense of direction left us. This was really my fault, for it was I who had insisted on frequent stops which initially had wasted the precious hours of light now we were paying for my mistake.

I staggered on blindly wherever Edmundo was leading in a world of gloom, wind and drifting snow that to me was very sinister. All my extremities were frozen numb, they somehow seemed to obey like robots. I thought my face was going to be marked, horribly, for life.

We were all near to exhaustion, struggling like automatons, our breath coming in short, deep gasps as the alt.i.tude increased. But we had to go forward. To stop and rest meant collapse, dying of exposure in the white graves our warm bodies would imprint for themselves too easily in the ever-deepening snow. I did not know how the others felt but I was now desperately alarmed grateful for the darkness as it withheld the sight of my tears from the eyes of Pepe Edmundo would not have noticed, he was too ill. My one desire was to sit and never to rise; I wanted to leave my bones where we were, but I lacked the courage. Fear, coupled with the encouragements of Pepe, kept me going. Pepe was wonderful.

Suddenly there was a shout of triumph from Edmundo. Through a gap in the curtain of the blizzard he caught sight, momentarily, of the craggy outlines of the crater-lip itself. A wave of extreme jubilation swept through the party. Cold, fatigue, irritation were temporarily forgotten. We almost ran those last few yards . . . or what seemed at first to be the last few yards.

But our run quickly became a walk again, the walk a drunken stagger. Another five . . . ten . . . fifteen minutes pa.s.sed, and still the elusive silhouette of what we so longingly sought eluded us or was it that our eyes could not properly focus?

Again I fell over the frozen lengths of rope to lie spreadeagled, hopelessly, in the deep snow. I knew I had to make the effort to get up . . . to get up and go on . . . to get up and go on. I repeated the simple phrase over and over again for my brain had become irrevocably fixed in one groove and the gramophone kept playing . . . 'Get up and go on,' with unbearable monotony. I got to my feet and was just starting again when through the howling gale another shout came from Edmundo. He had reached the crater of Cotopaxi.

We struggled to join him on the marginal strip of loose, black lava, some thirty feet wide, where there was no snow.

Now, with the external side of the volcano no longer providing shelter, we caught the full force of the gale that came from the east.

Pepe and I struggled to pitch the two-man tent among the boulders and stones on the black patch of lava which separated the unpredictable depths of the volcano from the icy, snow-covered slope we had so painfully ascended.

The only way we could erect the tent was by Pepe crawling in through the hole like a partic.i.p.ant in an obstacle race and pus.h.i.+ng up the hollow aluminium tent-pole from within. While outside, I, at the same moment, pulled out the base flaps to their full extent and hammered in the skewer-like stays. Poor Edmundo, too ill to take any active part, watched fascinated as though in the throes of a nightmare.

Somehow we got the fragile-looking shelter up at a ridiculously uneven angle, about five feet below the edge of the volcano, just sufficient to allow the worst of the raging wind to pa.s.s over the conical top of the canvas. Even so the pressure on the ground pegs was exacting, and before entering I dragged some heavy boulders into position to weight down the edges of the tent as I considered it probable we might find ourselves halfway down the way we had come before dawn. This was a great work at 19,650 feet, and once the boulders were in place, the hitherto two-man tent was reduced internally to a one-man dimension. Nevertheless we all three managed to ease ourselves inside together with our rucksacks, rope, crampons, etc. We scarcely expected sleep. Edmundo, ill with mountain sickness, lay in an inert heap. Pepe and I huddled close together, cramped, cold, and exhausted. The only food we had was a small carton of dried prunes the ascent had taken much longer than antic.i.p.ated and we had eaten everything else. We had no stove to 'fabricate water'.

Meanwhile the remaining two of the other party had also reached the crater, and even now we could hear sounds like a blacksmith's forge some ten yards away. They were digging their graves with vigour, their ice-axes crunching into the frozen, stony lava. Would they be able to dig deep enough holes? I wondered.

Some ten minutes after the noises of human endeavour had altogether ceased there was a cry almost theatrical in its tragic intensity, brought to us as it was through the moaning gale. I nudged Pepe.

'They'll freeze to death out there,' I said. Whereupon I untied the flap by which we entered our tent and shouted. A minute or so pa.s.sed before a wretched apparition dragging a sleeping-bag after him appeared in the doorway. Unceremoniously Pepe and I helped him in; he was almost on the verge of collapse. He was only eighteen and, I noticed, had no gloves. Why did he come? A few minutes later there was a further cry, and a little later another figure appeared at the entrance we got him in as well. How we did so I don't know.

It was then about seven o'clock in the evening and for the next sixteen hours the two-man tent (reduced to one-man in capacity) bulged with five frozen human beings. It was suffocating, yet freezing, and I kept making involuntary little lunges at the roof in quest of oxygen. If I'd had a knife I would have cut a hole and stuck out my nose. Instead I ran my fingers over the cold, moist canvas and applied them to my forehead. It helped for a few short seconds it was like a self-baptism. But a little later I stood it no longer and dived bodily for the entrance flap, untied it, and ejected my head dartingly like a cobra in the act of striking, but brought it back into the tent as suddenly for outside the cold was equally insupportable. When circulation died in our feet we rubbed each other feverishly; two of us were too ill to bother. Perhaps they were fortunate rubbing is very painful. We attempted two songs they died as soon as they came to our lips. Two of us devoured the prunes, one did not want them and the other two did not know, I suppose, we even had them. Oh, the la.s.situde!

Even when dawn came again and the wind had dropped we could not get out for a blanket of mist enveloped the entire mountain. We had to wait until nearly eleven o'clock before the sun broke through.

By this time Edmundo had slightly recovered. It was decided now that we were on the crater we must try to scale a dangerous ice and snow pinnacle that rose some 150 feet above the lip. It has never been climbed. Accordingly, after an intense struggle to separate and find our various 'dismembered' limbs, we crawled out and put on our boots and crampons. How hateful they were! Fearful objects that no longer seemed part of us.

Leaving the tent and the other two within it, we climbed the few feet to the crater, in enforced slow motion, and then walked carefully along the lip. The wind was unbelievably painful on our right cheeks. There was nothing to see within the 'chimney' nothing but scurrying mist and general murkiness. We moved for perhaps a hundred yards before the eminence that was our immediate goal came into view. It looked horribly sheer and full of predatory cornices. Soon we reached its base, but the mist, suddenly, totally obscured it. We couldn't remain where we were the wind cut through as if we had no bone structure. We took cover behind a low line of frozen seracs as though we were in a slit trench preparatory to a final a.s.sault. We remained crouched in this manner for twenty minutes without moving the mist did not lift for more than a few seconds at a time. At last we could stand it no longer and we made our way back to the tent and hustled the others.

With the visibility again getting worse, we struck camp and started off down the mountain in two parties as before. We came upon the creva.s.sed areas again; more dangerous this time for there had been a fresh fall of snow in the night and consequently many new 'bridges' had been created.

Suddenly I felt the snow move underfoot, shuddering and sliding away. Stupidly I had ventured on to one of the 'new bridges' although Edmundo ahead had missed it. I tried to throw myself forward to safety. Too late. I felt myself dropping, then happily came an agonizing jerk around the ribs, and the rope held.

It was Pepe who had saved me. Even as the snow gave way, expectant as ever, he had stopped dead in his tracks, driving his ice-axe hard into the ground, twisting the rope like lightning around and at the same time leaning back on his heels to take the strain.

But all I knew then as I hung suspended was an urgent shout from Pepe. I didn't understand all the words but knew well enough what they meant.

'Don't move! Whatever you do don't move!'

I felt rather like a marionette on a string until I at last managed to get a firm grip on the marginal snow.

We reached the Base camp at 15,800 feet at about three o'clock on the same afternoon, spent the night, went down to Hacienda Ilitio next day, and from thence we walked on to the main trunk road at La.s.so and there picked up a long-distance bus for Quito where we arrived at about ten o'clock the same evening. It had been a hectic thirty-six hours. I nearly broke down in the street outside the bus terminus while I awaited the arrival of a taxi. It was a very, very short wait perhaps of only fifteen minutes but something within me broke and I lost the faculties of direction, decision, and initiative. I swayed towards the ground, but just as I was about to drop a cab appeared and I fell within into the back seat.

The residents of the Residencia Lutetia were not all in bed as I groped my way through the hall. Paul Feret extricated himself from a group of people collected around the warmth of the fire.

'Did you do it, Sebastian?'

'Yes.'

'The bit of the top?'

'No.'

Then Paul gave me an arm and I went to my room and fell into bed with all the clothes that had been around me on the crater. When I awoke to strong sunlight, I found someone had taken off my boots.

American rock-climber. In 1972 Drummond made the first ascent of Arch Wall on the North Face of Trollrygen. The climb took twenty days.

We reached Oslo in two days, nudging in under the shrouds of cloud spreading a thin fine rain upon toast-faced Norwegians and palefaces alike. It was the first rain for a month. Burning up to Romsdal on the bike, I found my cagoule was promiscuous in the rain, but Lindy, at the back of me, kept dry and fed me on chocolate and made me hum with her big hugs. I couldn't lean on her as I could my cold companion of other years who pulled on my neck: my rain-slimed haul bag, my meticulous Humpty Dumpty. She was continually delighted at new waterfalls; she flew oohs to my ears and near the end of the journey, my goggles crying with rain, I raised a soggy arm at the alp of cloud shearing up a white mile. 'That's the wall,' I roared. She gripped her hand on my arm, and yelled about the coming bend.

Where am I? I'm cold. Thin mists s.h.i.+ft past, touching me. Where is she? She must have got out of the bag. I shake my head out, struggling to look. There is another near me, raw-red in the white air. Hugh! A dream. I'm not on the Romsdalhorn. That was a week ago. Lindy isn't here. This is the wall.

So. Three nights. Almost 1,000ft. Our second ledge, Luckys. Seven pitches and a paper-dry cag. Hugh's still in the bag, sleeping the sleep of the just, sound as a foetus, on his first wall. During the past three years I had, in three summers and a spring, snailed the mile-long approach scree twenty-three times and twenty times I came back. Not this time. 'The Northern European Wall'; 'The Mourning Wall'; 'The Rurt Wall' (Realised Ultimate Reality Troll); 'The Lord of the Walls'; 'The Drummond Route' (if we said nothing they'd call it this); 'The Royal Wall', naw, what has Robbins ever done for you? You'll never level with him.

On our first cralk up to the wall the scree is so steep that it's like trying to ski uphill we had climbed the first slabs, 200ft or so, gritty, nasty, wobbling to extreme. There had been the snow pitch, cricket size, and the jokes about forgetting the ice-axes, using skyhooks and etriers as we had no crampons and the ice was marble. Then the 'schrund and my little leap; it was all fun. After three trips we'd brimmed the hauls and I'd climbed the third, a squirrelly free up a great crooked slab, funnelling to an upside-down squeeze chimney that made me squeak. Then we went down, Lindy, who'd come up to watch, and I, slowly, like two old people, while Hugh flew off to the river where he swam among the salmon; the fishermen had all gone home. We just promised us a swim when it was all over.

Returning, two days later, Hugh went first and the hauls went after, quite a while after. His first haul; his first artyfishyl; first hamouac; first air jumar (barring one from a tree in Mexico). Hugh was, slowly, going up the wall. So it was noon when I set out on the fourth pitch.

And it was seven in the evening when Hugh's jumars gritted their teeth to follow. What pa.s.sed in those seven hours is unforgettable: my mouth, sock-hot; my larynx strangling for spit; a fine trembling as of a thin wind trembling through me. It began with a layback of 20ft, wonderful but for the iron stone around my neck it was a struggle, favourite uncle, was it not? Then the footholds faded away and I muttered on nuts under this thin roof until the only way up was up.