Shambles Amongst the Alps* *Apologies to Edward Whymper Scrambles Amongst the Alps (1871) by Simon Duncan
High above Chamonix the breath of fear collects in the Grand Montets hut. The heaving crowd jostles out of the chair lift and comes face-to-face with the Aiguille Verte. Compared to a Lake District snow gully, with toasted tea cakes in the valley to come, it’s simply deadly. You remember that people die climbing in the Alps. But hey ho you are not going to try and climb that. You have come to climb its puny training satellite – the Petit Aiguille Verte. Guidebooks proclaim this as perfect for your first north face. So here we are. The menace spreads across the hill like poisonous gas.
The nervous throng swells and stamps over the wooden floor, down the staircase, and cascades out onto the hard snow. Your race against time begins. You will lose. Even the guidebook writers lose. The sun is already up. The snow will soften, crampons will ball up. Boots will sink and slide in porridge snow. Crevasses widen, snow bridges weaken. Later, stones whiz past your head, each one a deadly missile. There is a new equation between taking risks and being reckless.
Harness on, is it tight? Uncoil the rope. Tie on with a figure of eight or butterfly knot. Coil alpine loops, maybe six each, secure with clove hitch. Loop into screw-gate carabiner. A few slings over your head, some nuts in the gear loop. A prussik cord just in case. Rescue practice on a tree in the campsite – does it really work in a crevasse?
Crampons, tightening straps, the right sequence, the right tension – a lost crampon, and you’re maimed. It’s gasping, exhausting, labour.
Half an hour gone already. Pink peaks, the sun is getting up. The first teams are already charging out across the frost hard snow, out of the melee.
Helmets on.
A queue forms to cross the bergschrund. How wide is it, will the bridge hold, can you jump it? You teeter, you are across the crevasse. Ice axes out, two pitches to the top of the ice slope. The leaders stab and front-point through the frozen nevé.
No more rope, the leaders pause. Dig a bucket seat, set up an ice axe belay. Traditional, quite weak but quick. One team has a dead man belay plate. Safer, but heavier, clumsier.
As leaders stop, some second climbers don’t lead through. You watch them coiling rope again. That takes ages. Others rush on, cut short as their frozen rope jams. Ropes running over, under each other, loops freeze, stick fast. Strange knots form.
It’s steep, it’s a long way down, it’s getting hot, it’s exhausting. A stone rockets and pings. Wobbling climbers. Some shout they can’t go on; some lower down. More confusion, more twisted, mixed, snagging rope. Someone vomits, you see a crampon spearing through a rope. An ice axe slashes into someone’s thigh. A crampon slides down the nevé.
An older climber drinks his coffee. He waits until the last chastened stragglers return. Then, quickly, solos to the top.
Simon Duncan’s writing is drawn from his lived experience of ice climbing in the alps, as well as life more generally, particularly his time living in Sweden. His works include poems and flash fiction.
Further reading – Edward Whymper Scrambles Amongst the Alps (1871)
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