Hard core (2)

While bivouacking during the first descent of the Aiguille du Dru’s north face, the extreme alpinist André Roch (1906-2002) dreamt that the mountain itself had taken on a personality:

Sitting back to back on some stones we endeavoured to sleep, but in my state of feverish over-excitement my thoughts ran thus:

The Dru is so beautiful, so graceful, so radiant in the sunshine when he thrusts upwards into the blue sky. But now he is terrible, gigantic, furious, as he leans over us. He is a demon—a cyclops perhaps. At times it grew lighter and I could see his head, but I could not make out whether he had two eyes or only one. The black, streaming muscles of his chest, towered over us. How huge and frightening he was! Were he to see us, he would be infuriated and, with one flip, would send us down to the Nant Blanc glacier.

But, old Dru, you can’t see us, and you can’t touch us with your foolish great stones hurtling down some sixty feet wide of us. Hush! not a word—something’s going to happen. He is stirring. A fierce wind howls. It must be the hour when old man Dru takes his shower.

And sure enough, a veritable water spout poured down; and how pleased he seemed to be! Crouching on our perch we caught it full force without daring to move.

Wait a bit, Dru, old fellow; we may be small, but we still have some tricks up our sleeve and among them more than another 300 feet of rope still untouched.

Gradually the moon rose and then dawn broke. The old Dru cannot have slept much and, because of his queer notion of taking a shower at two in the morning, we hadn’t slept at all. But this was no time to argue with him. We tried to swallow some squares of chocolate, but without success. We could see the glacier, which was not far away. Beneath us opened an immense chimney some 300 feet high, down which we resumed our long series of rappels. Weakened by so many trials, feverish, stiff and trembling, we slid painfully down the length of our wet line. Beneath the continuous cascades of water that splashed the entire wall, we discovered a bed of crystals. There on a ledge I espied an enormous smoked specimen. But to get at it I should have had to stride round a tricky crack, and I preferred to give up the gem…

References

André Roch, Climbs of My Youth, Lindsay Drummond London, 1949. Header image is a photo by Georges Tairraz of the north face of the Petit Dru, published in Mountaineering in Photographs by André Roch, Adams and Charles Black, London 1947.