Part 5 (1/2)

A few moments later a shock, similar to the one we had already experienced, but even more violent, nearly threw us off the face. Amid the commotion and shouts I could hear one voice clearly. I heard: 'We must get away!' I don't know if it was Oggioni or Gallieni. The words were born of despair and mirrored our state of mind. I thought that we were lost and I believe that we all thought the same. I relived my whole life and in my mind's eye saw all those dear faces and places which I should certainly never see again. Though by now resigned to my fate. I felt sorry that during my life I had not been able to do all the things I had intended. These are sensations which last only for seconds, yet they are clear and seem incredibly long.

Miraculously, however, the storm seemed to be dying away in the distance. Now we could only hear the drumming of the frozen snow on the rubberised cloth which covered us. We remained inert and apathetic; we did not even look outside the tent, for outside it was already dark. No one spoke. We did not eat. We were indifferent to everything. The snow which was falling though it was a very serious matter for us, almost gave us a sense of relief. We had been saved from the lightning and were still alive. I had never before been on such a face in such a storm: there was no skill and no technique which could have saved us.

Our complete immobility and the long stay in the tent had stifled us. We tore away a piece of the cloth and breathed avidly. Our tent was now buried in the snow, and the warmth of our bodies had created inside it watery drops which were transformed, by the sudden changes in temperature, now into water and now into ice crystals. I did not want to look at my watch, so as not to be disappointed by the slow pa.s.sage of time. We did not speak to one another. All that could be heard were moans due sometimes to the discomfort of our positions, sometimes to the cold and sometimes to the feeling of suffocation which tortured us. We knew nothing about the Frenchmen, but we could often hear similar noises from them.

The night pa.s.sed and a milky radiance heralded Wednesday's dawn. Only then did we emerge from the tent and were amazed at the amount of snow which had fallen during the night. The Frenchmen beside us were quite buried in it. Kohlman, on the wider ledge, was already standing up and looked like a dark blotch against the incandescent horizon, which seemed to announce a splendid day. We were overcome by a feeling of joy; the enormous quant.i.ty of fallen snow and the terrible frost were harbingers of good weather. Soon all of us were out of the tent, ready to begin the last stretch. I took a few snaps and we dismantled the little tent. But just as we were packing it up we found ourselves I still do not know where those mists could have come from again enveloped in the snowstorm. The very strong wind made the fresh snow whirl around us; we could not tell if it were snowing or whether this was the work of the wind.

We once more took refuge in our tent and the Frenchmen did the same. This time we went farther down, to Kohlman's ledge, which was larger and where the three of us Oggioni, Gallieni and myself could be a little more comfortable. Kohlman climbed up a few feet to where we had pa.s.sed the night. He took his own bivouac equipment with him, a down sleeping-bag covered with plastic cloth, which wrapped him like a mummy. We belayed ourselves to pitons and settled down to wait.

During a short break a little earlier I had noticed that the snow had fallen even at a low alt.i.tude. We could scarcely believe that after snowing so long, the storm could come back once more. The Frenchmen asked me what I intended to do. I replied that we would wait, always in the hope of being able to get to the summit, the shortest way to safety. We were not short of provisions or equipment and could stay where we were. At this time of year the bad weather could not last very much longer and the idea of so dangerous and complicated a descent in the midst of a snowstorm terrified us, since we could reach the summit in less than half a day.

Mazeaud and his companions were belayed to a piton about twenty feet above me. Kohlman was alongside them. Mazeaud, who had a certain leaders.h.i.+p over his companions, exchanged a few words with me and proposed that we two should set out together as soon as a break in the weather made it possible. Our job would be to fix pitons and ropes up the last two hundred and fifty feet of overhang, so that our five companions could come up after us. We agreed on this, but the break never came. We ate a little ham, some roast meat and jam, but we could not drink anything because the storm made it impossible to light a fire to make tea with melted snow.

It went on snowing, hour after monotonous hour. Amid the thoughts which jostled one another in my mind, I tried to remember other occasions, similar to this, when I had been trapped in the mountains by bad weather. I remembered that snowstorms had never lasted more than a day or two. So I said to myself: 'One day has gone already. The snowstorm cannot last more than another twenty-four hours. It is only a question of lasting out one day longer and then we shall be able to start.'

To remain in this very uncomfortable position squashed one against the other in a s.p.a.ce which could hardly hold a single person, became more and more intolerable. We could not turn our heads, we could not lie on our sides and the constant slope made it seem that our spines would crack. In such conditions it is easy to fall prey to irritability. There were moments when we would have liked to tear off our covering, but woe to us had we done so! Oggioni, Gallieni and I talked; we talked of everything; memories, plans, hopes, friends.h.i.+ps, happy and unhappy reminiscences, just to kill time and to keep ourselves occupied.

Oggioni said to me: 'Do you remember when we said in Peru: Will the day ever come when we shall be together on the Pillar?' He said it sarcastically, since at that time we thought that everything on our home mountains would be easier. Yet now we were in conditions similar to those we had found on the Rondoy, when we had had to master that peak in the midst of a snowstorm and had been without shelter for two days and two nights. Gallieni was our vitamin man; he gave us pills, especially of vitamins C and A, to make up for our lack of food. He gave them to the Frenchmen by a primitive sort of pulley which we had made out of ropes and added some of our provisions. The Frenchmen were a little short of food.

The problem of pa.s.sing water then arose. It was not possible to go out of the tent. I suggested to Gallieni that he should sacrifice his plastic cap and we each used it in turn. It was a terrifying experience; we had to make all sorts of contortions and hold fast to one another not to fall over. The whole operation took half an hour; our legs were hanging in s.p.a.ce and our clothes hampered us.

It was now Wednesday evening. It was snowing harder than ever. I asked Gallieni, who was near the edge: 'Where's the wind blowing from?' 'Still from the west,' he said. That meant a snowstorm. Mazeaud, full of vitality and initiative, shouted to me: 'As soon as it gets better, you and I ought to go. If you think it would be better to start towards the left, then we will certainly go that way.' Oggioni, who did not know French, asked me what Mazeaud had been saying and I explained. He agreed but asked: 'Do you think it possible to get out by way of the summit even in this weather?' He knew that I could find the way down from the summit whatever the weather, as I had already done it several times before. I said: yes, but that we should have to stay where we were another night, since in my heart I felt almost certain that the snowstorm would end next day.

Our breath in the tent was transformed into watery vapour and we were wet through. I thought with terror about what might happen when the hard frost which always precedes good weather came and hoped I would be able to bear it. We would have to spend an hour or so warming ourselves in the sun before making the last a.s.sault. We could not sleep. Night came upon us almost unawares. We were all on edge. Gallieni began to speak of his young children. My thoughts were ten thousand feet farther down, with my loved ones, in the intimacy of my home. Oggioni talked of Portofino. He had never been there and said: 'We mountaineers are really unlucky . . . with all the lovely things there are in the world, we get caught up in this sort of thing . . .' Gallieni said: 'And to think that I have a cosy home in Milano Marittima and such a nice beach: you can jump into the warm water and don't even have to take the trouble to swim, it's so shallow . . . You can walk for miles and miles . . .' Oggioni hid his apprehension with jokes. To look at, he was the calmest of the lot of us. I was sure that he, other than myself, was the only one to be fully aware that our plight was desperate.

The night between Wednesday and Thursday pa.s.sed. In the forenoon Mazeaud came into our tent, because the plastic cloth over the Frenchmen's sleeping-bags had split under the gusts of wind. We managed to arrange ourselves after a thousand contortions and so pa.s.sed the day. We tried to keep up our spirits, telling ourselves that the next day Friday would be fine, but we were not greatly convinced. In my inmost self I was already considering which would be the safest manner of retreating down the way we had come; in my opinion it was now impossible to reach the summit of the Pillar. I did not mention this to my companions so as not to discourage them.

Mazeaud told me about the south-west pillar of the Pet.i.t Dru which he had made the previous week. We spoke of our pleasure at getting to know one another and in sharing this adventure. We promised to meet again one day at Courmayeur or Chamonix and to talk over today's experiences. Our thirst was intense and we had to quench it by eating snow. We made pellets of snow and kept gnawing at them. We thought longingly of a tap at home which would give us all the water we wanted at a turn. It was paradoxical that in the midst of so much snow we should have a burning thirst. The frozen snow made our mouths burn and very sore.

Thursday pa.s.sed and night came. During the long hours of darkness Oggioni and I, who were farthest from the edge, suffered particularly from lack of air. To him alone I confided my intention of descending at all costs. He agreed, but was terrified at the idea. Thursday night also pa.s.sed. We had to set the alarm for half-past three. When I heard it ringing I shouted to everyone: 'We must go down at all costs. We cannot stay here any longer, otherwise it will be too late and we will not have the strength.'

When dawn began to break on the Friday morning the storm had been raging incessantly for more than sixty hours. Mist and snow merged into an impenetrable curtain. We dismantled everything and left a certain amount of our equipment behind. I was without an ice-axe which one of my companions had let fall by mistake on the first day. We began the descent by double rope. We had decided that I must lead, preparing the rappels. Behind me came all the others: Mazeaud, whose task was to help anyone who needed it, then the others and finally Oggioni who, strong in his experience, would be last man and recover the ropes.

At exactly six I lowered myself into the grey and stormy void almost blindly, without knowing where I was going. I felt as if I were in a stormy sea. The snow flurries gave me a feeling of dizziness. I had to watch every detail and try to recognise every fold of the rock to find out where I was. The manoeuvre took a long time and waiting for the ropes and pitons to come down from above in order to make the next rappel took even longer. Sometimes we were all bunched together, belayed to a piton, four or five of us hanging in s.p.a.ce. About halfway down the Pillar I was unable to find a place to stop when the double rope came to an end. With some difficulty because of the snow flurries I managed to make myself understood. I needed another rope to attach to the one I was holding on to. There were no holds; the snow had packed tight even under the overhangs. I tied the two ropes together with my bare hands and continued my descent into s.p.a.ce. There was now a four-hundred-foot rope down which I was sliding like a spider.

It was now no longer possible to talk with any of the others. I was completely suspended, looking for a hold which I could not find. I was worried, partly because I did not know where I could halt in my descent, partly because an enormous overhang cut off all possibility of communicating with my companions who, higher up, were waiting for my signal. At last, after some acrobatic swings in s.p.a.ce, I managed to land on an outcrop of rock. I shouted repeatedly through the storm, hoping that my companions would understand that they could begin their descent. At one moment I saw the rope ascending and thought that one of them was on it and had begun to descend. Then, suddenly, the rope slipped away from me and dissappeared from sight. I was left there, on an outcrop, secured by a cord to a piton, in the heart of the Pillar, without any means of continuing my descent and wondering if my companions would be able to find me or would descend in some other direction. I went on shouting at the top of my voice, hoping to be heard, so that, if nothing else, they could tell me where they were. Several moments of anxiety pa.s.sed. At last a dark patch appeared near me; it was Mazeaud who had realised where I was and had come to join me.

Our rappels continued with the same rhythm. We were getting closer to the foot of the Pillar. We were frozen and soaked through. Then, hearing the dull thuds of some snowfalls. I realised that we had reached the base of the Pillar. But by now it was late in the afternoon and all we could do that night was to prepare a camp on the Col de Peuterey, which forms the base of the Pillar. We set foot on the level but the snow was extraordinarily deep; sometimes we sank into it up to our chests. I made Mazeaud take the lead for a bit, followed by all the others. I stayed where I was to give the direction. At one time the group seemed to have foundered in a very deep snowdrift. I joined them and then took the lead again, setting out by instinct towards the spot I thought suitable for a camp. Though I could not see it, it was imprinted on my mind. Behind me was Oggioni with whom I discussed whether it would be better to chance the protection which a creva.s.se could give us rather than build an igloo, since the snow was unstable. This was not so important for us who had our tent as for the four Frenchmen who hadn't one. We decided on the creva.s.se and told the Frenchmen, who accepted our advice.

We made arrangements for our camp before the night between Friday and Sat.u.r.day fell. We had been making rappels for twelve hours. Kohlman seemed the most exhausted of all of us. We put him in our tent. With what was left of a butane gas cylinder Guillaume prepared some hot tea and gave it to him. The cold was atrocious. The wind was blowing continually and made the snow whirl around us. That was the worst night of all. We divided what was left of the provisions; prunes, chocolate, sugar and a little meat, now frozen. Oggioni refused the meat, preferring the sweetstuffs. All the others, however, nibbled at it. Kohlman showed me his fingers; they were livid. I thought it a good idea to ma.s.sage them with cooking alcohol, of which we still had plenty. I pa.s.sed him the alcohol flask, but he put it to his mouth and began to gulp it down. It was a most ill-advised action, but I thought he must have mistaken it for drinking alcohol. I took the flask away from him, but not before he had swallowed a couple of gulps. Were we already on the brink of madness?

It was pitch dark. We were in an inferno. Everyone was moaning and s.h.i.+vering with cold. The wind howled and the snow fell more and more heavily. Every now and then we would shake the snow off the tent, otherwise it would have smothered us. I tried to light the spirit-stove but had to give up for lack of air and, as in the last few days, we had to eat snow to quench our thirst. We were desperate, but no one said a word. Finally Oggioni said to me: 'Let's make a vow: if we get out of this safely, let us forget that the Pillar even exists.' I said, 'Yes.'

The night pa.s.sed slowly and despairingly. At the same time as on the day before, at half past three, at the sound of my little alarm, we rose from our uncomfortable resting place. We wanted to save time and to get out of that terrifying situation which seemed as if it would never come to an end. The night had added another eighteen inches of snow to what had been there before. We set out in the midst of the storm. We all seemed to have endured that terrible camp well enough. Now I no longer had to take counsel with my companions; they left everything to me and I felt the heavy responsibility of a guide who must bring everyone back safely by the only possible route, the very dangerous Roches Gruber. We had to get to the Gamba before evening, otherwise it would be all over for all of us.

Before starting, Robert Guillaume gave Kohlman a coramine injection. Meanwhile, I, followed by Oggioni and Gallieni, began to clear a burrow through the very deep snow in the direction of the route chosen for our descent. We were now on a single rope in this order: Bonatti, Oggioni, Gallieni, Mazeaud, Kohlman, Vielle and Guillaume. The face which precedes the Roches Gruber was heavily laden with fresh snow which might avalanche at any moment. I told my companions to hurry up and join me and to get into shelter so that I could hold on to a rope if an avalanche should catch me while I was cutting the channel which would lead us to the Roches Gruber. I managed to do so and called to the others to pa.s.s, one by one, but when it came to Vielle's turn he could not do it. He kept falling and rising again, with every sign of exhaustion. Guillaume was beside him and encouraged him. He took Vielle's rucksack which he had thrown away on the slope, but Vielle seemed deaf to all our appeals which became rougher and rougher.

Meanwhile I went on to prepare the first of a very long series of rappels down the Roches Gruber. The sky had cleared for a moment, but the fine spell only lasted a short time. I could hear my companions inciting Vielle who had still not got across the couloir. I shouted to them to hurry up and begin the descent if we didn't want to die up there. I was the farthest down and was waiting for Kohlman who had followed me. Half an hour pa.s.sed. Not understanding the delay. I again went up the rope for a few feet to see what was happening. Gallieni told me that Vielle was exhausted, that he was unable to cross the couloir by himself. He asked me if it would be possible to slide him along the snow to lighten the fatigue of walking. I agreed and told him to act quickly, adding that at this pace not only would we not get to the Gamba hut, but we would not even get down the Roches Gruber.

I went down again and rejoined Kohlman. I gathered from the excited voices of my companions that they were putting their plan into effect. I went on waiting for one of them to lower himself to me. Another half hour pa.s.sed and not only did no one come down to join me, but their voices began little by little to die away. I didn't know what to do. Must every rappel take as long as this? Once again I s.h.i.+nned up the rope a few feet, far enough to be able to see my companions. I asked them: 'Why don't you come down?' A voice, possibly Gallieni's, followed by that of Mazeaud, told me: 'Vielle is dying!' I was petrified. I could see before me the little group of friends gathered around Vielle's body, which looked like a dark, inert bundle on the white snow. He was belayed to the rock and wrapped in our tent-cover to prevent the crows from getting at him.

I went back to Kohlman without telling him anything. Several more minutes, perhaps twenty, pa.s.sed; now I knew it was all over with Vielle. There were no more voices to be heard, only the sound of the wind. It had begun to snow again. This agony unbroken by any human word was terrible. I went up the rope again and saw my companions busy securing to a piton Vielle's body and Galleni's rucksack, full of superfluous things. There were no laments. It was then ten o'clock. I went back again to Kohlman and told him to hold fast. Then Mazeaud arrived, who told him in broken phrases what had happened. Kohlman was deeply affected, and wept.

We continued the rappel. Taking advantage of a moment when all six of us were hanging on the same piton, I advised the greatest possible speed if we did not want to share Vielle's fate. Oggioni, as always, was my right-hand man and took the rear. Like Mazeaud, Guillaume and myself, he was carrying a full rucksack. Mazeaud, the strongest and the acknowledged leader of the Frenchmen, had the job of keeping the others up to the mark.

Not quite an hour had pa.s.sed when we heard voices. I was the farthest down the rope at the time and I thought they must be the voices of my companions above me. Soon, however, I was convinced that someone was searching for us on the glacier below. I shouted back and asked my companions to shout all together, so that they could hear us. From the cries which came from below I understood that they wanted to tell me something, but the gusts of wind prevented me from understanding. For my part, I was quite certain that down there they would not be able to understand what I was shouting, which was: where were they and could they hear us. We went on in better spirits. When we reached the end of the Roches Gruber; about half past three, I calculated that from the morning before, when we had begun the descent, we had made at least fifty rappels.

A brief break in the storm allowed us to see the whole surface of the chaotic Freney glacier. What a lot of snow had fallen! There were no furrows in the snow, which meant that no rescue party had pa.s.sed that way. Where had the voices come from? We could see no one and fell into a mood of the blackest despair. Perhaps it was all over for all of us. We had been sure that the voices had come from the foot of the Roches Gruber and that had given us strength to overcome the terrible difficulties and dangers of that exceedingly difficult pa.s.sage. We were, however, alone at the foot of the rocks and we still had before us many unforeseeable dangers on our way to the Gamba hut.

The slow and exhausting descent of the glacier began. We refused to accept our bad luck. The snow was still very deep. Not even in winter climbs could I recall having met with so much. We left behind us not a trail but a burrow. Fortunately the mists were beginning to rise and visibility gradually improved. That made it possible for us to enter safely the labyrinth of creva.s.ses which led to the Col de l'Innominata, the last serious difficulty on our way to safety. But the deep snow so slowed down our advances, that we despaired of being able to reach the base of the col while there was still daylight.

I felt faint with fatigue, physical suffering and cold, but refused to give up.

Our file grew longer. Oggioni was stumbling every few steps, at the end of his tether. He was without a rucksack, which he had handed over to Gallieni. Sometimes he was last man, sometimes last but one. We groped our way on to the glacier in complete disorder, drunk with fatigue. We were roped together, but each went his own way without heeding anything. I realised that in such conditions it would be very hard for us to reach the foot of the Col de l'Innominata in daylight. Gallieni, behind me, seemed the least exhausted. I decided to unrope myself and him in order to go ahead as quickly as we could and prepare the couloir of the Innominata, otherwise our companions would no longer be able to climb it. This task would have to be completed by nightfall.

Our companions followed in our tracks. Meanwhile I attacked the terrible ice which had encrusted the Col de l'Innominata. Guillaume had remained behind. Within half an hour it would be dark and we were still struggling to reach the col. Now we were again all roped together; myself, Gallieni, Oggioni, Mazeaud and Kohlman. Our only hope was to reach the rescue parties while we still had a little strength left. They alone might be able to save those left behind. It was pitch dark when I reached the Col de l'Innominata. It was Sat.u.r.day evening, after nine o'clock, and we had been out for six days. The powdery snow driven by the wind had begun again and in the west we could see the flashes of an approaching thunderstorm. There was nowhere to fix a piton to anchor the rope which supported my four companions and I had to hold it on my shoulders. I urged them to hurry. But the operation was very long and desperate. Orders mingled with cries of pain and desperation. Behind Gallieni, Oggioni seemed unable to grip the rock. Gallieni tried to help him in every way he could, supported in his turn by the rope which I held on my shoulders. The two Frenchmen down at the end of the rope were shouting and raving.

It was chaos. Three hours pa.s.sed and we were still at the same point. I could not move. Every so often there were tugs at the rope which nearly pulled me into s.p.a.ce. The pain of the rope and the cold made me feel faint. But if I collapsed it meant the end for everyone. In all those three hours Oggioni had not been able to move. All encouragement was in vain. Now and then he would reply with a wail; he seemed to be in a sort of trance. He was attached by a karabiner to a piton, and would have to free himself from it to give us a chance of hauling him up. But he hadn't the strength and he was so exhausted that perhaps he was incapable of thinking. I would have liked to go down to him but that was impossible since I had to keep the rope, which was holding him as well as Gallieni, firmly on my shoulders. At last, not being able to do anything else, Gallieni made sure that Oggioni was firmly fixed to the piton, undid the rope that bound him to Oggioni and the Frenchmen and came up to join me and was thus able to carry on rapidly towards the rescue parties. Oggioni remained roped to the strong Mazeaud, to whom I shouted to wait and look after the others who would soon be rescued.

While we were doing this we saw Kohlman fumbling his way along the rope in the darkness on the ice-covered face. He was unroped. He came towards us and pa.s.sed Mazeaud, Oggioni and Gallieni with an energy born of desperation which bordered on madness. Gallieni, guessing his state, managed to grasp him and tie him to the rope. Soon all three of us reached the col. Kohlman told us he was hungry and thirsty and then went on: 'Where is the Gamba hut?' He was completely out of his senses, but we could not abandon him.

We roped him between us. Gallieni was the first to begin the descent, followed by Kohlman who seemed to have forgotten all the rules of prudence. The slope was very difficult, steep and covered with ice. For the first hundred and fifty feet we let ourselves slide along a fixed rope evidently left there by the rescue parties searching for two Swiss on the Pointe Gugliermina. Then we went on as best we could. But Kohlman became more and more dangerous. He let himself slide on his back, hanging on to the rope and without using his crampons. At the end of the rope he continued to hang there and I had to support him, which made it impossible for me to catch up with him. When at last the rope became lighter, after he had found some sort of foothold, an unexpected tug told me he had again broken away and exposed us all to the risk of falling.

Neither threats nor encouragements moved him. He shouted disconnected phrases, gesticulated, raved. We thought we should have managed to get down in an hour; with Kohlman, now delirious, that hour became three.

With G.o.d's help, we reached the bottom. We still had an hour before us to reach the Gamba hut over snowdrifts which presented neither dangers nor difficulties save for their depth. We began to recover our spirits and our only thought was how to reach the hut quickly when an unexpected incident delayed us. Gallieni had dropped one of his gloves. He bent down to recover it and tried to keep his hand warm by thrusting it into his jacket. Kohlman, who interpreted this movement as an attempt to draw a pistol, spread his arms and rushed on Gallieni, clasping him tightly and making him roll down the slope. Gallieni managed to break free and I tried to check their movements with the rope. Kohlman then hurled himself at me. I dodged and he fell and began to roll, writhing in delirium. He had completely lost his senses. Then he rose again and tried to rush at us. By pulling both ends of the rope, we managed to keep him at a distance. We were all three roped together and one of us could break free. We could not drag him with us and it was essential not to lose a minute.

To untie ourselves from him, we had first to undo the iced-up knots. We had no knife, yet we had to get away from our poor crazed companion. He was watching every movement, ready to launch himself at us. One at a time, keeping the rope taut with our teeth, we lowered our breeches so as to be able to slip the noose of rope about our waists over our hips. We succeeded in this without Kohlman realising what we were doing. Then I shouted to Gallieni: 'Let go and run!' and we rushed off, rolling on the snow. There was only one thing to do: we must get to the hut in time to tell the rescue squads. Kohlman, up there, was in no danger of falling. But, as it happened, the first squad only arrived in time to see him draw his last breath.

In this way we covered the last twelve hundred feet which still divided us from the Gamba hut. It was pitch dark. We only managed to find it because I knew this area as well as my own house. Gallieni followed me unhurt. We circled the hut, hammering on the windows with our fists. We had just reached the door when we heard heavy steps inside and a hand raised the latch. The door burst open; we saw the interior of the hut dimly lit by a small lamp. It was full of sleeping men. We stepped over several bodies without recognising anyone. Then suddenly one of the men leapt to his feet and shouted: 'Walter, is that you?' and there was a rush of people and we were suffocated by embraces.

'Be quick!' I shouted. 'There's one man still out there! The others are on the Innominata! Be quick!' It was three o'clock on Sunday morning. The storm was still raging. We stretched out on the table in the middle of the hut and the others took the frozen crampons from our feet, undressed us and gave us dry clothes and warm drinks. I fell into a heavy stupor. When I awoke about three hours had gone by. The bodies of my companions had been found, except Vielle. They told me that Oggioni was dead and I was filled with uncontrollable grief. Dear Mazeaud, the only one of them to be found alive, embraced me and wept with me.

English explorer. Despite no previous climbing experience he scaled both Chimborazo (20,500 feet) and Cotopaxi (at 19,650 feet the world's highest volcano) in Ecuador in 1953.

At the base camp about 15,800 feet we met four other Ecuadorians all very youthful, and a.s.sociates of the Neuvos Horizontes organization, who on hearing of our plan to spend the night on the crater-lip of the volcano decided that opportunity was too good to be missed. This decision was frightening; we tried hard to dissuade them for there was a good chance of them freezing solid before morning could come again. They had only one tent too awkward to carry up to the summit, and there were then that auspicious evening still four of them.

'What will you do then when you get up there?' we asked.

'We will dig ourselves foxholes and curl up in our sleeping-bags.'

'You won't last the night, you won't wake in the morning. It's your responsibility; we'll have nothing to do with it.'

Next morning at eight o'clock we set out in two parties, on two separate ropes. My own party carried only emergency equipment a little two-man tent, which one enters on all fours through a hole in the side; some preserved fruit, a thermos of coffee, chocolate biscuits and barley sugar. The other four had thin sleeping-bags and iron rations.

For the first half-hour after leaving camp climbing was of the scrambling nature, amounting to no more than a breathless trudge over loose, volcanic shale. The first moment came when we arrived at the snow-line here both parties solemnly sat on an outcrop of rock and started getting out crampons ice-spikes and ropes. This was frightening, for neither of these articles had to my conscious knowledge graced either my feet or waist.

Edmundo led, with myself in the centre and Pepe in the rear. We climbed cautiously along a traverse in steady relays, Edmundo employing his ice-axe with dexterous precision to cut steps for those behind by which we made the slow ascent.

With infinite care he would cut steps ahead of him, climbing sometimes thirty feet at a time while Pepe and I would pay out the rope I was not good at this and would frequently hold up progress by getting it entangled around the spikes in my crampons. When this happened I perspired with frantic embarra.s.sment and that in its turn meant that moisture obscured my spectacles and goggles and before we continued I had to take them off and wipe them both. This happened many times.