ESCAPE FROM LA MEIJE

On January 2005 my climbing partner and I left the endless flatlands of The Netherlands and we drove in a yellow van, fully loaded with climbing gear, towards the French Alps. In our heads a lot of projects, all of them in the boundaries of the National Park of Ecrins: Barre de Ecrins, Pelvoux, La Meije. Very ambitious targets. Maybe too ambitious. This is the story of that climb, and all the things we learned from.



Each minute that passed it was harder and harder to set a step forwards. Independently of my will my whole body just did not want to go further. I was suffering already at 2.500 meters when trying to progress up to the Châtelleret valley. It was clear to me that something was not right when I could not catch up with my companion ( I will call him ‘Dean’). Despite that I am not the strongest and the fittest, I had never had problems going up the hill in the past, but this time I could not even keep my breath. I had drunk far too less water. Since we intended to pass a couple of days up there we had to be cautious with our fuel supply and we were not melting snow. On the top of this, I had never toured on skies before and I was still getting used to walk with them. Even with this perfect snow conditions (it did not snow for weeks) the skies were absolutely necessary: a step without them and we were sinking over the knees. Surely was it so with such heavy backpacks with all our bivouac gear in them. In this bad state of body and mind I reached the 2.800 meters. Our target for the day was clearly on sight: the Refuge du Promontoire. It was so close that it seemed just a summer walk to it, but I knew that it was going to be difficult for me to reach it.

I shouted to Dean asking him to wait for me. When we were together I explained how bad the situation was: “I think I’m not able to make it, Dean. By the way, I have to drink more water. I am out of energies, or so. I don’t know what’s going on with me!”. Dean noticed the anxiety in my words and he began to melt some snow. After a while we were drinking a warm tea which we accompanied with some muesli bars. Despite this short break I was not feeling much better. I was still having difficulty to take breath, and my body was not receiving the liquid very happily. Then, like guessing what was going to happen, Dean told: “…as long as you don’t throw it up it will be okay”. So said so I began to feel worse. “Dean, don’t you think that I may be suffering from mountain sickness? I am neither getting rested nor better with this drink”. My only thoughts now were to descend as quickly as possible. I felt I had energies just to reach the Refuge de Châtelleret. We kept descending till the last light of the day. In the darkness the hut, which roof was completely covered under the snow, proved to be difficult to find but, finally, we reached it full of joy. Already inside, I sill needed half an hour to get back to the world.

After so many years of alpine courses, so much training and climbing at home, finally I was there, on the sharp south ridge of La Meije, the easiest way up this beautiful peak of almost four thousand meters. This route is considered as a AD+ climb with, maximum IV ° passes on, sometimes, mixed terrain. It was the most difficult enterprise I had ever faced , and I was noticing that!! There was a big drop to both sides, which only got bigger and bigger as we were ascending the delicate ‘Promontoire’ ridge. The terrain was not extremely difficult here, the problem was only in my head. When the mountaineer climbs he climbs to the unknown, and thinking what are the difficulties to come is already a mental test. I was all the time thinking in the solitaire Glacier Carré, hanging at 3.700 m, and how the snow conditions could be up there, I worried about the steep walls of the threatening ‘Grand Pic’, I was angry with our slowly progress. And this was not even the ‘real thing’, but only a recognition of the first pitches of the long route. Luckily, there was no problem with my condition any more. Last night, on Chatêlleret hut, I slept relatively good, and this morning I walked up without any problem the same slopes that were killing me the day before. We reached the Refuge du Promontoire at midday and, fit and with enough daylight, Dean and I decided to study the first part of the route already. This should have to allow us to progress quicker in the darkness early next morning, the day of our summit attempt.



During the dinner that evening I did not know how to tell to Dean that I thought that I was not yet prepared for La Meije. Dean was working as professional soldier, and he was some kind of mix between a hard man an a simple child with, sometimes, a strange way of reacting. He did not like what I told. He was very disappointed by the fact that I thought that the Promontoire was over my possibilities and that, in fact, I wanted to abort the enterprise. Dean was, somehow, true: they were his holidays too and he had been trusting me all the time about my skills and courage. After some heavy discussion in an isolated mountain hut at 3000 meters we reached a compromise that we were going start at 4 o’clock next morning, trying to climb as high as possible till midday and then, wherever we could have reached, turn back to the hut. It was very clear to us that, seen the slow tempo that we had that same afternoon during our recognition climb, we were not going to be able to make it to the summit and back in one day. A bivouac at 3700 meters in January was not an option.

That night I slept very bad. In fact I did not sleep at all. I was very concern about next day’s climb but also about an increasing wind that made crack the metal structure of our small house on the mountain. I could not remember any news about bad weather. As far as we understood from some people living at a small cold mountain village 1.400 meters below know as La Berarde, the weather should stay good till Wednesday. It was Tuesday morning.

It took me too much time again to build the first belay of the route. The first third degree pass was looking to me more like a fifth degree with all that gloves, heavy boots and clothes. We were going, again, far too slowly but when we were passing the “Rest of the Ladies” I was beginning to get a better mood. Knowing that Dean had promised to me that we were going to turn back at 12:00 was making me comfortable. Now I was even thinking in doing the best of it and trying to progress as much as possible on the mountain.



I had already noticed that the sun was not shinning that morning, but now it started to snow softly and a small layer of white crystals was covering the rocky ridge. Before we reached the place know as ‘Pyramide Duhamel’ it started to snow harder. After a exposed traverse on the west flank of the ridge trying to approach this point, Dean turned to me and told, very convinced, that we had to turn back. The weather was getting worse by moments.

What followed after that words of him were the hardest times of my short alpine career. Our winter holidays had become a race for survival on La Meije. The expected bad weather arrived one day before and it was catching us on that exposed ridge at 3.400 m high. The excellent rock that we found in the way up was, now, a slippery not trustable terrain under our feet. The wind of the past night came back with renewed strength and it was blowing the snowflakes to all the directions. It snowed from up to down, from down up and from left to right and back. Soon, the steep slopes could not have any more snow and it all came down over us like a shower of white powder that knew how to get through all the layers of our expensive technical clothes. I felt my fingers getting colder trying to abseil towards our salvation, but I was more worried about those rusty pitons staying in their place meanwhile I was hanging from them. Most of the times we were choosing a rocky edge around which we were hanging our 60 meters rope to descend, but sometimes it proved to be a doubtful technique when the rope was getting jammed in the rock. I was the second man in descend and, once we had found that the rope was not running back around the rock, it was my task to recover the whole thing to me and trying to fix a new abseil point in my own. All the rope was, then, with me. Without that symbolic connection that the rope means with my climbing mate I was feeling quite alone up there. I knew that Dean was some 30 meters down, but I could neither see nor hear him in the middle of the storm. After choosing another point to fix the rope (using a bandslinge this time) I could only pray that my construction would hold in its place till I was down to the next abseil point. I repeated this operation for about three or four times, and, each time I had the hart in my throat.

Being so concentrated in the strength and safety of my self-constructed abseil points, I was too careless about my basic abseil body position and I had to get the last surprise before reaching the safety of the hut. There were just two more descends to the Refuge du Promontoire when I lost my equilibrity swinging dangerously to the left. Since we were on a ridge and not on the face, any fall to any side would have meant a huge high-speed swing over the face of the mountain, with seriously unthinkable consequences. At one of the abseils, when I set my foot slightly bended on the rock to stop one of this dangerous falls, my left knee had to deal with a sideward impact over hundred kilos. With a painful lash my knee gave up at one of its ligaments. I could not believe that this was really happening to me. The whole scene seemed taken out one of those Pit Schubert’s books about mountain accidents with tragic ends, and now I was the main character of the story. After some terrible minutes I was on the run again. With my painful knee I finished the two last rappels and there I was, safe on the metallic terrace of the hut.

It continued snowing and blowing to all the directions for the rest of the day. There was nothing we could do but looking the white-out landscape that surrounded our cabin and wondering from where came so much snow. Dean and I were not talking anymore to each other and an embarrassing silence was floating in the room. Our holidays were not exactly how we were thinking they could have been and the mood was not so good. In this situation all the frustrations and fears came out, they were blocking our relationship, and we kept this attitude to each other until the end of our adventure. The silence was interrupted, now and then, by the roaring sound of the avalanches rolling down the mountain and the wind cutting through the construction of the hut. After some desperate hours we phoned Mountain Rescue France to announce the situation: two persons trapped in the Refuge du Promontoire by bad weather, not in life-risk, one not urgent knee injury, food for two days (and some emergency supplies in that we found in the hut), gas for sometime and enough mountain gear to try to come out by ourselves if the weather would allow it. The man at the other side of the line did not sound very worried about us and we got quiet enough to try to go back to ‘normal’ mountaineering life. Some snow melting, some drinking and, without even eating, we made us ready for a cold night. We went very early to the bed. There was nothing to do, nothing to say and it was hell cold in the cabin. The bed was the best place to be. At least, there my knee could get some rest and recover. When the warmth came back to my hands I noticed a burning feeling at the top of some of my finger tips and I thought: “I can show off over my first frostbite”. Luckily, they were superficial and I could sleep deep and good knowing that I was relatively safe in this excellent shelter.



The next day broke and it was still snowing. Here and there were some blue windows but, then, it all became white again. It was bitter cold in the living room of the hut and without possibility of physical exercise it was hard to keep warmth. I red almost all the magazines left there by other mountaineers. To be locked up in that small hut without any distraction but my own thoughts was a short of psychological torture. I was mainly busy with analyzing our precarious situation. Since it looked like the bad weather came here to stay, I began to wonder how many days we would have to stay there. We were having food and water enough. Nevertheless, my biggest concerns were the quantity and quality of snow that I was seeing fall through the big windows of our high living room, a perfect viewpoint over the valley. In one of those mountaineering books that I have red at home it was written over avalanches, snow types, high risk slopes, avalanche risk indexes, etc…I was trying to remember all this and I thought that I could recognize some of the features and circumstances described in those books. With all this in mind I calculated the actual risk’s rate for avalanche, and I believed that we were caught in, at least, a 4th level (of an scale of 5) avalanche’s risk situation. Under these conditions going out there was a suicide.

For being sure about my calculations I proposed a test: I pointed myself volunteer to step out the cabin, with harness and tied to a rope, to try to descend some meters over the Glacier des Étançons and see how the snow conditions were. Meanwhile Dean was securing me to the structure of the hut I began to descend on the snow racquets that I had borrowed in La Berarde. After some steps on the fresh snow it was clear to me that the situation was serious: the big quantity of fallen snow (about 80 cm) was having the consistency of powder milk!!. The slope went down under my feet with me in it and, only thanks to the rope, I did not fell further down. We were trapped.

Very softly came out the last flame of our stove. Now we were out of gas and, therefore, we could not melt more snow. No fire means no water, and no water means no warm food. Almost immediately Dean came with the obvious solution: “We will make a fire with the woods of the helicopter’s platform. There is plenty of wood down there. We could get one of the big logs and cut it in pieces with our ice axes. Then we could have fire for weeks!” What Dean did not noticed is that the house did not have a fireplace and, very quickly, we were in the higher gas chamber of the Alps. Outside it was bad weather and inside the polluted air was
unbreathable. ‘Don’t complaint! I have been cooking for three months this way in Bosnia!’. That was everything that Dean, a professional soldier, thought he could say at that moment. Instead of fighting, I began to build a kitchen outside the house, in a protected place under the metallic structure of the building. Soon after that, to my surprise, Dean stepped out the hut and he came to help. It was a good moment.

My knee had got a lot of rest these past hours and, next morning, I could have tried to escape from La Meije by myself if the snow conditions would have been good. But they were not. The weather was better and we could guess the roof of Refuge du Chatêlleret under the snow but, despite it was looking so close to us, the risk of a ‘white death’ in this beautiful valley was too real to be denied. After a basic breakfast we sat down for a talk. We made a list with pluses and minus over the possibility of having to be rescued by helicopter. Like mountaineers that we were, we were not likening this solution and we had to think about it very well. It was a hit on our proud, the acceptance of our failure. We were playing the game and we lost it.

Mountain Rescue France answered the phone call. They would flight to us when we ‘could see the sky’. And after one hour from the first phone call we could see, indeed, a nice blue sky through the clouds. We phoned the rescue team immediately. Half hour later they phoned back announcing that we had half hour to get ready for the helicopter. Looks like that our adventure was about to come to its end. Very much on time the helicopter appeared down the valley flying like a small black fly. After some recognition rounds over our heads it went down the valley again. There was a strong wind blowing over the Breche de la Meije and I thought that the rescue was too dangerous to be done safely but, to my happiness, the machine came back for the last time to take us out of there.

With a spring out the helicopter we were back on safe terrain, next to our yellow van, now covered under a big pack of snow. The helicopter flied away immediately. In fact, when I looked back to the air it was not there anymore. Then I noticed that I did not had time even to thank to these men for their help. That is why I would like to dedicate this story to the team of people who are working at the Mountain Rescue France. Thanks to them I am here now to remember my first winter mountain adventure.

THE END

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