After our failure on the Walker’s flank, three weeks of bad
weather passed, and ideas changed. Terry King turned up, and Gordon Smith came
back from Leysin. They directed their considerable charms towards the Croz
Direct. I wanted to do the Dru Couloir and teamed up with Nick Colton, an
‘aristocrat’ from Manchester and one of the scruffiest people on God’s earth.
Once, having just had a vision in which he had cleaned the Fissure Nominé, he
threw away all our hardware except for an ice-screw and a couple of bugaboos. (ever
lost eighteen krabs and twelve pegs at one go!) That night, two ‘enlightened’
persons perched themselves on top of the Petit Dru, to freeze in the teeth of a
north-easterly and study a starlit and by then plastered Jorasses North Wall.
Visions of Armageddon faded, and around midnight we cracked. We decided to go
back for another try.
Which indeed we did, though we nearly didn’t because I left
my head-torch behind and so dedicate this affair to the congenial Froggy who
lent me his, and to the half-roll of Sellotape with which I repaired it. 10.30
pm, on August 6, 1976, found two little lads at the foot of the Walker Spur.
This time we had decided to beat the ‘schrund’ with a short left cross. Water
was still running, but the face was quiet and the night clear. To start the
spur, we took the left-hand rock alternative (the initial ice-slope did not
exist) and followed this as far as the main ice-slope that cuts into the
buttress on the right. Then it was softly, softly rightwards, to slip between the
upper ’schrund and the rocks above, out on to the ice-field for a tense tip-toe
affair, like ants going the wrong way up a bowling alley, with not a sound
uttered lest we bring the house down.
We hung left to avoid
being anywhere below the mouth of the Japanese Gully- vulnerable, so
vulnerable. A roar: hearts in boots, we froze in fear, but it was only a plane
passing low from the south. 2.30 a.m. We hung back on our ice screws, sorting
the gear,roping up, peering and wondering, because it looked steep up there. At
least, it looked steep as far as we could see, which was as far as you can
throw a head-torch. There was no moon and it was dark in the couloir.
There followed five pitches in a grand Scottish illusion:
steep, bulging, demanding, all engrossing, totally rewarding. Up through a
spindrift flow,in the teeth of a biting wind. Belays for sitting, but not for
falling. Few runners- no time-fantastic stuff. We emerged with the daylight on
to the ice-field separating the two rock-bands. Around us, ropes darted
in and out of the ice like frozen umbilical cords. I counted footage, but
thought in cash. We rescued a couple of shiny krabs and took a hefty swing at a
little blue sack, but its coffin was hard and rubbery and it would have taken
an hour to release, so we left it with parting tears.
It was no place to
linger: a sensational, exposed, vulnerable, 50° platform in a vertical sea, a
mean place to quit in trouble. Above, fixed ropes ran up a broad shallow gully
of compact looking rock, but we were hungry for ice and, a little to the left,
there seemed to be a connection with the runnel above. It looked a little like
The Curtain on Ben Nevis, but the first 50ft. or so turned out to be
unconsolidated powder, so we took to the steep and deceptive pile of rubble on
the right. It was loose, a fact to which Nick swore blind as he sailed past for
a sixty-footer on to a hapless second.
“Just hold tight and I’ll monkey up the rope.” He did, and
reached the top of the pitch for a belay. There followed a full and interesting
run-out, on the border between ice,and rock, and finally we were through the
second barrier, with 1,000ft. of sensational climbing behind us. Then it was
away up the cold, blue runnel that broadens out into the second ice-field. We front-pointed.
Audoubert understands:
Now begins that very
special ice dance, a rhythmic ballet in four movements, a mixture of barbaric
and primitive gestures and classical movement. The character before his mirror
of ice makes precise steps with his front points, like a lead dancer
rehearsing. In this special ballet pirouettes are forbidden. The emphasis on
the curve of his calves and the strength
of his ankles equals the fierce, attacking look on his face. The best dancer,
like the best toreador, strikes only once.
It was a long haul. Away to our right we could pick out more
ropes, relics of the mammoth Japanese siege. Somewhere round here Lachenal and
Terray passed by, but I think it must have been in pretty bad visibility. We
heard voices but saw no one. The ice was hard and, after three years’ wear, my
poor Chouinards (God bless him!) let my toes know there was no more curve left.
What had appeared to be three pitches up the ice extended to five, and we regained
the rocks with creaking calves.
The final head-wall is about 800ft. In it, a well-defined
gully system curls up and left in behind the Red Tower, to join the Walker Spur
about two pitches below the summit. For about 400ft. It is backed by a thin ice
weep. But this wouldn’t take the gear, so we kept to the right wall. It was mean
stuff: deceptive, awkward, and inevitably loose. And this was no time for
mistakes, for we were tired now. It seemed a long way from that 9.0 a.m. rise
the day before. In the northerly wind, the rock was bitterly cold. Above,
sunlit walls beckoned, but progress was slow and any thoughts we had dared to
entertain of reaching the heat receded to the summit. Incredibly, we had seen
no stones all day, but Nick made up for that by burrowing away through the
rocks above. In places the second is nastily exposed. I took a slate on the
leg, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Nick solved the problems of getting
back into the gully bed by falling off.
“What’s happening?” “Nowt-just fallen off.” and finally we
arrived at the summit of a dream, a couple of pitches down and desperate for a
brew.We charged on up but then there were these two little ledges just asking
to be sat upon, so much more comfortable than the cold, wet snow on the other
side and so much more convenient. So we sat down, just five minutes short, to dine
on cheese and ham butties, with coffee by the gallon. Rare moments: we were
asleep before the night came. Next morning we woke late. The weather had closed
in and it was doubly bitter.
The stove worked, but the theory didn’t. 20
minutes could only provide water on the rocks. We dozed over this cold brew
until shouts from below drew us out of our lethargy. Two lads appeared, fresh
as daisies, despite their fourth bivi. They were the first party up the Walker
for weeks. We chewed hurriedly at laces and gloves and raced them to the
summit. They had come thousands of miles to climb this hill. It was like
Christmas on top of the Walker.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot...... And they all lived happily ever
after.
Alex Macintyre: First published in Mountain 1977
