Before I
get into recounting the unhappy ending, I want to emphasize that Olivier and I
had a totally kickass weekend from Saturday morning through about 3:30pm on
Sunday. Low snow and cold temps for once made the decision not to ski easy, and
we kicked off the weekend by taking his recently purchased and renovated
Renault Traffic van up to la Grave with our sights set on climbing some ice.
“La colère du ciel” (melodramatically named “anger of the sky”) turned out to
be the ticket, providing six pitches of interesting but relatively comfortable
climbing (photos 1 & 2). I will confess that I forgot my harness in the car
and had to do a quick round trip, dashing through the village in my mountain
boots as the locals smirked from their kitchen windows. All in all things went
very smoothly though, and Olivier and my suspicions were confirmed that we made
for a good rope team on ice as well as in the mountains.
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| Warming up on a 900' grade 3/4 called 'La Colère du Ciel' above la Grave. |
Saturday night we geared up for the weekend’s main event by fueling up on soup and pasta, watching a movie and generally lounging in the van. The camper van is definitely a winning strategy for making winter trailheads comfortable. On Sunday we were up and at it at 5am, heading for our objective: Fantomas, a 500m gully featuring nine pitches of climbing up to grade IV ice. Unfortunately there was too little snow to do the approach on skis, and I discovered an hour into our hike that my rented snowshoes were missing a piece and broken. At this point Olivier saved the day by using a key ring to fix the binding in place, and we marched on. After three hours we found ourselves looking up at the initial ice pitches winding their way through an imposing rock face, looking fat and almost inviting. The next five hours involved thoroughly interesting climbing, made even more so by the low snow (some fixed anchors were actually inaccessible). The route felt like multiple Chouinard’s gully’s stacked one after the other, with some steps of steeper ice and mixed passages reminiscent of Multiplication Gully or Unexpected Pleasure. Needless to say I was in my element, feeling right at home at in the Adirondacks while perched in a full-on alpine setting. Olivier and I shared leads and generally had ourselves a time.
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| At the end of the 3-hour approach with the early crux of the gully in view. |
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| Olivier tunneling up the 2nd pitch. |
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| Enjoying one of the best ice pitches on the route. |
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| At least I didn't break my ankle here - an awkward passage on pitch 8. |
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| Olivier topping out the route around 1pm. |
After the rappels and back at our packs, we found ourselves smugly congratulating one another and transitioning to the 6km walk back to the car. Given the fragility of my snowshoes, and my aversion to keeping crampons on in a low snow cover talus field, I opted to descend in just my mountain boots. Olivier put his snowshoes back on and thus benefitted from some additional traction. After hearing a standard remark about how I couldn’t keep up, I decided I would show him by boot skiing right past him. I gave a quick “coup d’accéleration” and promptly found myself flat on my ass and sliding rapidly downhill on firm snow. I had a picture in my mind’s eye of rocks on the horizon, and after a couple of bounds I did everything I could to stop myself. Digging my heels in, I came to a rapid halt as my left ankle bit down on a rock. “F***!!” Thoughts quickly went to my parents’ arrival in less than two weeks, the ski season, and an unwanted helicopter ride. Olivier arrived rapidly saying he was relieved that I had stopped myself and hadn’t hit my head on any rocks, which was a fair point. I knew however that in some form another I had just joined the messed up ankle club, and it was time to decide how we might get out of there.
Olivier stated a preference for calling the helicopter, which was a pertinent suggestion given that darkness would arrive in an hour and we had about 4 miles and about 2500’ of vertical to cover. Despite some pain, I nonetheless felt alert and physically capable. Olivier’s offer to carry my pack, my ego and pride, and my belief that physically I could get out with Olivier’s help caused me to not call for rescue. At that point we also called Hillary, who fielded the call with grace and was positive and understanding of my urge to get back to the car by our own means. I immensely appreciated that Olivier was willing to support my decision, especially considering that the ensuing hours would be no picnic for him either.
And so it began, first sliding gingerly on my derrière and using gravity to make headway. Then the crux: the low-angle, trail-less, snow covered talus field at the bottom of the basin, which necessitated crawling on all fours and doing whatever I could to get by. After a couple hours we were back on the trail, and I was able to use poles as crutches to hobble down hill. I remember stopping at one point to have a drink of water and a snickers, and feeling as if my body were shutting down as the seconds ticked by – best to keep moving. After a few hours, I remember Olivier asking me a question about return strategy, whether or not he should go ahead to get the van and pick me up a bit higher than our starting point. I replied by saying, “I’m in the now,” totally unable to reflect about anything other than getting down that trail. At last I saw headlights and soon found myself under a blanket in the front seat of the van, off my ankle and taking down multiple cans of Coke.
Hillary and Thibaut came to meet us at the emergency room in Grenoble, bearing homemade soup and Quick Burger fastfood. After a couple rounds of X-rays, some magic pills, lots of waiting and nodding my head to an endless procession of care providers, Hillary accompanied me out of the ER just before 2am. It turns out she had started the Grenoble chapter of the messed up ankle club the previous week, badly spraining her ankle while charging down a staircase at work. And so there we were, both on crutches, hobbling out together as the receptionist asked, “Who is taking who home here?”
And to conclude, here are the facts: the medial malleolus on my left ankle has a clean fracture. I will get routine surgery tomorrow, after which I’m looking at 6-weeks in a cast and on crutches, followed by 6-weeks of taking it easy and PT. In the coming months I plan to log some serious time on the fingerboard and to get super top heavy, and expect that I will be sport climbing like a true Frenchman come spring (I have Jeff Banks to thank for that line). I don’t feel like there is any golden rule to be learned here, other than shit happens, one must always be careful and the adventure begins and ends at the car. I am doing my best not to over-analyze the sequence of events leading up the accident, as is my tendency. I will say that for the price of a stupid mistake things could be a whole lot worse. I feel very lucky to be with Hill and surrounded by good friends who care and are willing to go out of their way to help. I am the most sorry to my parents, who are coming out here next weekend and will have to deal with a gimp for the duration of their visit – restaurants here we come! As I enter the hazy hospital world, at least I am sure of one thing: I have no regrets about Sunday’s adventure, and that goes both for crawling on all fours through the snow and darkness and for feeling like the king of world shouting off belay, already looking ahead to the next pitch.
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| "We got a long way to go this evening, and if you don't like what you hear that's tough. Here's an old song, called Blue Sky." - Greg Allman |
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