Page 33 - RAFMA Winter 2003

The testosterone was flowing on JSAM this year; we were sat around the campsite, having already achieved a great deal but Colin wanted to do a traverse of the Drus. The traverse of the Petite and Grand Drus is not an easy undertaking. The route is 12 hours long (at best) and involves quite sustained climbing for a long way with complicated route finding. If that's not enough, there is a certain amount of objective danger and a far from straightforward descent.
Anyway, despite my reservations I found myself with Colin Scott, Andy Mudiman and Neil Greenwood getting the train up to Montenvers (for the 3rd time that week!) to walk up to the Charpoua Hut. O u r guidebook omitted to inform us that the old path had collapsed in a landslide and had not been used for about 5 years. So after descending those wretched ladders, we set of up the Mer du Glace in vain search for the path which no longer existed. As we could not find the path, we made our own and clawed our way up some hideously loose scree towards some red paint high above us. After a very dodgy river crossing and some VS scrambling we arrived at the red paint and picked up the path. This was exceptionally overgrown and had not seen human traffic in years. Eventually, we arrived at the Charpoua Hut, a fantastic place with more character than any other hut I have slept in. It sleeps only
14 people and has one hut warden who is imprisoned there for the entire season. The food is excellent and the atmosphere is very friendly. We ate our dinner, watched the sun set and then got our heads down in anticipation of an early alpine start.
I hate alpine starts, one is normally always dehydrated, tired and cold. The hut breakfast of stale bread and jam never seems that appetizing either! We ate what we could and headed up the glacier along the route we had recce'd the evening before. Crossing the glacier was like circumnavigating a maze. Such a labyrinth of crevasses and snow bridges interlinked with false trails leading to deep and cavernous pits. Finally, we made it across to the snow tongue, which joins the rock of the Petit Dru but we had already lost valuable time. We quickly moved together up the lower gully to the shoulder of the Flammes de Piere Ridge and a large gendarme. Here, we passed two British climbers who had spent an uncomfortable night on the mountain on their way down - was this an omen?
The climbing started proper now and we broke down into our climbing pairs and had to start pitching. The climbing went on and on and the route finding was quite contrived. It is amazing how the time is eaten up when a difficult pitch absorbs you. After what seemed like an age, we found ourselves in a very loose chimney, which led onto a shoulder. Ahead lay the hardest climbing of the day and without Andy to lead us up it I'm sure we would not have made it much further. Sustained grade V pitches, which would have been hard in stickies, were a major effort in big boots and a rucksack. Andy did a sterling job and we summited on the Petit Dru at 3pm. Fantastic views of the Chamonix Valley greeted us - it was as if we were perched on a 3500m step ladder. But, we still had to get down and had already resigned ourselves to the fact that we would not make evening meal in the hut. We universally agreed that traversing to the Grand Dru and climbing the infamous Z Pitch was a non-starter and so we headed off on our descent.
To save weight we had brought just 2 ropes between the 4 of us; we came to regret this decision as it was taking us an inordinate amount of time to descend. Andy headed off first on each abseil and probed a route, trying to find a
suitable anchor every 100 ft or so.
Then, once we had all got down and
joined him we had the heart stopping
moment of pulling the ropes through
- each time praying hard that they
would not get stuck. At one point, as
the ropes jammed, we pulled hard in
desperation. The relief we felt at the
rope freeing was soon surpassed by
fear as a huge pile of large rocks
cascaded down towards us - we were
lucky and managed to seek shelter under a large boulder.
Eventually, we reached the shoulder and elected to cut straight
By Dave Tait
down to the glacier as opposed to retracing our steps. This seemed to reduce the distance but meant that we were in uncharted territory and unsure of a plentiful supply of anchors. By now it was getting dark but the storms that had been forecast for that afternoon had kept at bay. Route finding was becoming almost impossible as Andy leapt into the unknown at the top of each of these interminable abseils. The anchors were getting harder to find and it was getting later. At one point, the four of us were hanging from a suspect spike in a vertical corner having reached the end of the rope; then, the rain started. By now we were paranoid that we might miss the ledge system that would take us back to the relative safety of the glacier and it was about 1 am . A further abseil took us to very loose and steep ground with no anchors in sight. It was also pitch black and Colin's head torch had given up. Neil headed off, unroped into the darkness in the vague hope that he would find some solace in a way ahead. After what seemed like an age he shouted back that he had found some abseil tat. Relieved we coiled in the rope and moved very carefully over the wet, loose ground and abseiled once more into the unknown. By now, I was harbouring reservations about continuing in the dark and thought we may too suffer a similar fate to the British guys we had met on the way up. I prayed
hard, one more time, in the vain hope that this might be the last abseil of our endless descent. We landed on a large terrace system, scanned around us, and there in the torchlight saw a cairn. This was by far, the most beautiful cairn I had ever seen in my life.
We coiled the ropes and moved quickly along the terraces, more cairns revealed the route back to the glacier where we once again roped up for the complicated journey back to the hut. We were all pretty exhausted by now, I had eaten only 2 maxim bars all day and I had drained the last drop of water from my 2 litre camel back hours previously. Getting through the ice fall proved to be nerve- wracking; crossing delicate snow bridges and jumping bottomless crevasses - would this night ever end? Finally, we saw a light in the distance - could this possibly be the hut? No, it was 2 climbers at the beginning of their day's outing. But, they had not been long gone and shortly, we stumbled into the warmth of the hut, finding room to lie down wherever we could. At 8 am I woke to a fierce
storm raging outside, the rain lashed against the windows and the roof rattled as the wind tried to wrench it from its rafters. I snuggled into my blankets and smiled; I was glad that we had not sat the night out on the
mountain.
On the descent.