When your weekend adventure plans put Dan into an existential crisis, you know you’re on to something. Turns out we were on to something great and we live to sandwich another day. Crampons now included.
Ok, let’s take a step back and see how we got to this state of Dan. Round abouts Monday or Tuesday of the week leading up, I received the following information from Claire, our resident cartographer (“Claire-tographer”) and meteorology expert:
With this I came a step closer to understanding the early American forefathers in their wish to go West (disregarding any genocidal notions) for with this it was no longer our choice where or what we were to do that weekend. For this, this was Manifest Destiny writ on the largest of scales. The scales of the Alps.
Throughout the week it was rainy and grey in the Geneva area, though we weren’t deterred. We knew the weather was just “getting it out of its system”. In addition, Dan’s birthday was this week and at dinner, when we were all there meeting a group of Dan’s lovely friends and getting to know Dan a bit better through their own eyes and warmth towards him, it was a tacit assumption that he would be joining us and we all silently pretended to not hear when the topic of him climbing elsewhere that weekend came up. They say your mid-life crisis comes in the middle of your thirties. This split-decision for the now thirty-four year old Dan happened to be the seed of what was to become his.
The understanding was that we were to go to the Refuge Gervasutti. The “airplane fuselage” stuck on the side of a moutain, serving as a bivouac for fellow alpine adventurers. Come Friday evening, when plans were solidifying and it was becoming clear that Dan would not be joining us, our nerves began to be tested. The trek up to Gervasutti was rated as one of the more difficult hikes – the borderline between hiking and mountaineering becoming grey – and Dan was clearly worried that we might be getting in over our head. We would be starting relatively late on this 5 hour trek and the unknown dangers of glaciers, snow, and climbing that may have been coming disquited him. That evening, Dan got no work done, secretly researching on camp-to-camp and elsewhere what the conditions, difficulty, and exposure risks were for the trek up to Gervasutti (I say secretly because in our office his computer screen faces me directly). His unease had its effect and I too began researching alternatives. Dan even proposed that, after his day of climbing, he would “meet up with us” at Gervasutti. His plan would be to finish climbing, go through the Mont Blanc tunnel, put on his headlamp, and “start walking”. This was somewhat ridiculous and Claire did not agree with it, it being more dangerous for himself to start a thousand meter trek in the late afternoon with the sun soon going down behind the mountains. He should go climbing, do what he had already agreed to before this. This, added with Sam’s “can-do” attitude and our need to stop by Vieux Campeur to pick up everything for Josh on the way to Aosta, only aggravated Dan’s unease. He paced back and forth.
Nevertheless, the fuselage prevailed and come nine o’clock in the morning on Saturday we head out. I picked up Josh from Lafayette and we head to CERN to pick up Claire who had to return the back-up RC phone to the ACR. I parked at the kiss-and-fly zone of Entrance B, headed to the front entrance of 104 to gather the whereabouts of Claire. She was spotted at the bike racks with a sullen look and as I turned the corner lo and behold a Dan! Dan had apparently woken up at the crack of dawn to go climbing and made it somehwere to buy credit for his phone only to then use that credit to call his climbing partner to tell him that he would not be climbing. What a goon! Was he sitting at CERN for 2 hours waiting for us? We’ll never know. I still wonder if he had slept that evening – the question of climbing versus a difficult mountain trek to a unique bivouac weighing on him in the night.
So then we were off, Claire and Dan in Dan’s Renault and Sam (picked up in Meyrin), Josh, and I in my Yaris. On the way to Vieux Campeur the transition from Josh not knowing what SYSK is to being a fan took place. He now knows how SPAM works. At Vieux Campeur we picked up the needed gear:
- 1 pair of crampons (for my boots)
- 2 pairs of ice-toothed Yak-trax for Sam and Josh
- 1 sleeping bag for Josh
- 2 Platypuses for Sam and Claire (no more wet sides for Claire)
- 1 climbing harness for Josh
- 1 macademia nut Clif bar (for my stomach)
All of which Sam paid for in order to take advantage of de-taxe, fulfilling one of the benefits of having friends that live in Switzerland who adventure in France :)
Before hitting the road again, we stopped at the Intermarche just down from Vieux Campeur to pick the other provisions. Sam was on beverage duty, of course, and Dan on dinner duty. I arrived a few minutes after and upon entering, Dan, with a box of pasta and a bottle of olive oil in hand, had dinner settled in less than five minutes. Sam was a bit longer looking for the night’s beverages. Once we had settled the cheese, bread, and meat situation and other sandwich-related items we hit the road, this time for the Mont Blanc tunnel and beyond.
Josh had never been to Italy before and on our exiting the tunnel and into Italy we stopped at the rest-stop just on the other side that lets out onto the view of Courmayeur and Aosta valley before turning left into Plancipeux and past the starting point of a previous adventure, Rifugio Boccalatte, which we spotted perched up there beneath the Grande Jorasses. This time we were to start further down this valley, Gervasutti being beneath the Petit Jorasses.
We parked at the edge of the river, began apportioning the food between our packs, “relieved” ourselves in the water, and began the hike. Gervasutti could not yet be spotted from the valley floor. We walked for about fifteen minutes before questioning our certainty of the trail, Sam and Dan already disregarding clearly marked paths (that were also on our map) for trails off-piste but in a more direct way towards the mountain. Within an hour we were out of the woods and traversing the bouldery moraine on the left edge of the valley-inlet at the vertex of which, some 700 meters above our heads at this point, lay the still out-of-sight hut. We had clearly diverged from the trail that Claire’s map had for us, but there were plenty of cairnes around. Being themselves built up of small rocks they were difficult to spot from afar amid the moraine, so we hopped from one to the other in a fog-of-war of sorts in the warm Italian sun. We crossed to the right side of the valley-inlet and soon we knew we were on the correct path to the hut.
Not so long after we approached the first technical portion of the hike, a series of blue ropes with arrows pointing up the rock wall:
Not such a difficult traverse up but not so short, Dan supposing it to be on the order of 70 to 80 meters up. At the top it flattened out to a grassy area and our juices were really pumping (at least mine were) after the awesome climb. And with this the refuge came into sight! I stupidly said we had roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours left until reaching our home for evening. Boy was I wrong.
Walking just a bit further up we encountered the other bivouac in this area, Le bivouac de Frébouze, which was little more than a boulder propped up with a wind-break on one side made of piled up stones and room enough for 2, maybe 3, people at most inside its grassy cavern. I thought it would be cozy with a camping lantern and jet boil a’goin with coffee and steam. Although someone would run the risk of getting frost-bitten feet in the night. Definitely not Claire’s. Claire-length ÷ Frébouze-length « 1.
From here on it was pretty smooth-sailing until we reached the snow-line. It wasn’t soo bad until it started getting relatively deep and we were fence-posting it up: every few steps sinking down as our feet land in holes between the snow-hidden rocks. What’s more is that the yellow trail markers’ trail was becoming less and less traversable with with the snow and ice so our path began to become more meandering and crossing around and over boulders that would not typically be traversed except for the boost provided by the height of the snow. At this point the sun had been behind the mountains for about an hour and the light was becoming more and more diaphanous.
At this point, too, Sam and Josh were slowing down a bit. From Claire’s perspective, looking up to the refuge whose rate of approach had been decreasing, this was not acceptable: having been able to have been at the hut “ages ago”. She said this out of ear shot of the others, of course. Only later did we realize, and things became more clear, that the frequent stops and taking on and off of shoe spikes of Sam and Josh were also pit-stops to take swigs out of the whiskey-filled flask that Josh had on him.
We were toying with the notion of being on a snowy mountain in the dark and, argh, the hut was just out of reach! Were Dan’s premonitions and mid-life crisis fears were becoming true? We dared not speak it, but thunk it, the echos of Claire’s “…ages ago…” reverberating off the valley walls. Here, too, we had apparently reached an impasse. The trail of the two people ahead of us had petered out – either we go up and over a steep, icy boulder that didn’t seem possible, go around this boulder on the left, coming dangerously close to the crevasse, or go to the right and climb up an icy and snowly rock at the base of small waterfall. I tried climbing up over the boulder, my pack trying to push me off as it knocked against the overhang , and a few scrambly feet up it became clear that this was not the way. So I back-scooted slowly down. Claire, having walked to the right a bit to no avail, also gave this up-and-over a try – doing the smart thing and taking off her giant pack first. Soon she was back down. This did not look good. How the hell did they other guys get up? Where were their trails?
As Sam and Josh arrived, Sam saw the obvious path was the path that Claire and I had just determined impassable. So two minutes later, as he was scooting backwards down, me becoming “testy” in my angst and dehydration to get to the refuge, we decided to tackle the rightward path. This did not prove as difficult as at first glance, having cleared out the snow and be careful on the ice Dan was up quickly and we all were up soon after. Though one small miss… Phew. At this point we were at the foot of a long flat snow-field, and the two ahead of us were roped up walking across. We could very well be at the edge of a glacier.
This notion in mind, Dan pulled out his rope and began laying it out, handing us each a length with which to tie in with our harnesses to link us all together. Dan first, then Josh, myself, Sam, and Claire taking up the rear. If we all fell before she started out on the potential glacier, we had the smallest of us to hold us in place. Lords be with us. So we started out across the snow-field retracing the foot-steps of the two ahead of us, who were now climbing up the rock wall at the base of the hut which was now only some ~150 meters away. It officially became dark just after starting this slow traverse and Dan, Claire, and myself switched on our headlamps, Sam and Josh left at the mercy of the lamps’ unpredictable swing.
We reached another set of blue ropes, this time a steep, almost vertical, ascent up icy rocks in the dark. The refuge leaning out over the cliff-edge above us. The lights now illuminating the windows. Dan hooked some climbing draws into the holds of the blue ropes to attach the rope that connected us all, giving us some extra measure of safety, though creating for some moments of confusion for the exhausted Josh who, in his dehydrated double-vision, was about to unhook himself from all protection half way up the wall before we all simultaneously yelled “No, not that rope!!” I think I heard the two strangers in the hut exclaim as well, they must have been peering out through the window, sizing up their house-mates for the evening.
Soon enough we were all up and what a sight!
But where did Josh go? As I entered the hut, struggling with the rope and my boots and switching into the pair of always-comfortable mountain-hut-loafers I “ciao’d” to the two strangers and saw to my right, in the bunk-room, Josh sprawled out on a bunk bare-foot and face in the crook of his arm. I think we broke Josh into mountain adventures, which means more stops at Vieux Campeur for us!
I think we were all a bit in shock after such a long hike up, cutting it close in the dark, for we kind of all just sat in the dining area of the hut in a daze reminiscing about what we had just done. The two strangers, known only as Antonio and Andrea (or some other Italian name starting with A!), offered us some lemon tea. This was absolutely delicious. Topped off with some of Claire’s “Grandpa’s” aspirin, half of which ended up on my pants and face-not-mouth, my daze began to settle and the warmth of the room soon took over. With a stupid smile on my face, looking at the goofy christams ornaments and paper christmas tree hanging on the wall, I exclaimed that we should have Thanksgiving here! Why not? Who, other than us, would be willing to carry a turkey and wine up a mountain? We just need the larger sized pots for Claire’s and Sam’s jet boils.
We sat and chatted with each other and the two others for a bit before our appetites began to rise. We broke out our food. Sam took out all of the wine: some 3 liters (1.5 of which in a big plastic bottle) and a small bottle of champagne for Dan’s birthday (Dan was not impressed at Sam’s sacrifice of light baggage) and I looked questioningly at the Italians. As it turned out our fellow house-mates were also not going to continue climbing up in the morning – for once we were not the noisy mountain goers keeping everyone up and could while away the time at ease! – and they, too, had brought a bottle of wine. All was put on the table on offer.
We cut up the block of cheese that we had brought and put it in a bowl on the table. The Italians cut up a block of their own cheese, from their region in Italy I believe, and put it in a separate bowl. This, in addition to the slices of sausage and wine that both parties put out and some nice olives with pimento were a great way for Sam to attempt to inform Italians, from Italy, about what an “apertivo” refers to. Much disgruntlement was seen on their faces. We then made dinner: Claire cutting up the hot peppers and remaining olives to add with the olive oil as sauce for the pasta noodles that Sam had begun boiling in his jet boil. All to be topped off with a healthy serving of olive oil from the bottle we had lugged up – “It’s worth it, it’s calorie dense!”
The pasta was delicious and Claire was not shy with the peppers! Having nothing to cool off the spice we had to resort to cheese for a stand in for milk. This strategy is recommended above 3000 meters. After dinner, Dan was obviously in a bad way, exhaustion settling in his body was forcing him into a reclining position against his will. With great will and the aide of the life-giving pasta water left from dinner his spirits were relieved and he was once again able to sit straight with limbs under full control.
After dinner and sitting in the dining area talking and drinking a bit of wine we all slowly prepared for bed, breaking out our travel tooth brushes and going outside to spit the tooth paste down off the cliff just below the hut’s front door. In the night it seemed as though none of us slept too well. I kept dreaming, in the vibrations of the hut, that it would dislodge and slide down the mountain or that the Italians, leaving early in the morning would steal our boots. Dan was apparently dreaming about hash sums. Claire about all of the work in the coming week that was hers to do. Josh, most likely about being squished since the bunk was a bit short for him. Sam, as always, slept soundly. Snoring. It may have been the Italians, but it can’t be coincidence: everytime we’re in a hut someone is snoring: Italians aren’t always there, but Sam is…
I had set my alarm for 7am – the sunrise was not to be missed at this spot. So I got down, put on my clothes and boots. As I entered the dining area Claire was just coming in (of course she was already up, getting up early is a South African thing, she tells us) from looking at the sunrise coming over the mountains across the valley. “There’s a rope going up!” she tells me. So I go outside, grab hold of the fastened rope and climb up the snowy/icy rock further up above the hut. The view is absolutely golden. Perhaps one of the better sunrises I have seen. A picture is at the top. And a picture is here, with the hut and Sam and, if you look closely, a pair of Italians marching downwards on the ice.
Back in the hut it was time for coffee. We gathered some snow and started boiling it on Sam’s jet boil and prepared the mugs, broke out the sachets (“sah-shays”) of instant coffee, and poured in the brown powder. It was a nice cup of joe in a pretty OK place, to say the least.
For breakfast, Claire and I prepared mountain-fuel sandwiches. On baguette, banana chunks with true, 99% Lindt chocolate pierced inside of them, with Seeberger (aka crack) “SuperFruit” berries (acai, cranberry) on top. Simple but delicious and a perfect partner to this view.
After another cup of coffee and attempts to toast a banana with chocolate inside of it over the flame of the jet boil we began to clean up the mess we made and to pack up for the hike back down the mountain. It took us about four hours to get back down to the valley floor. When we got to the trail and reached the river, the other side of which full of walkers and families, and on our side the trail continuing quitely through the woods Claire was obviously grumpy when the majority opinion was to cross the river. Dan, et al. having crossed over already. As I slowly jumped across the wet rocks, falling and catching myself amid them on the last hop, I got up and looked around. Did Claire continue down the trail? I got to the others and Claire was their with wet boots and wet pants up to her shins. She was not enthused about crossing and aparently just trudged across it goonishly.
It was here that we discovered that day light savings had ended (begun?) and that it was in fact one hour earlier than I had thought! This meant so much more for us to do, for us to do all of the things. So we skidaddled back to the car, lazed about in the grass beside the river, and opened up the cragging guides. The best bet, given that it was so close to where we could park, was La Joux in Chamonix. We got in the cars, and after stopping at a cafe beneath Boccalatte for an espresso, we crossed through the Mont Blanc tunnel, turned right and head through Chamonix, turning off at La Joux.
It is here where we got to break out the blue bi-weave rope that we had split and for which I am so chuffed about. After a few climbs, and Sam and Josh (whiling away watching us and drinking some whiskey to stay warm) growing antzy, we packed up and head into Chamonix for dinner at Poco Loco for some baguette-burgers and a beer.
I think at some point at this dinner I said that I did not think that anybody else at CERN had done anything as cool as what we had done in the past 36 hours. This was quickly rebuffed by Dan and Sam. I am naive, I suppose. But I am still a firm believer in the statement I made, in my bellyful, body-tired happy state. For it is not just about the where: it is about the who, the where, and the wich! And what a rarity it is to have them all as we did here!