"Rocks ... rocks! ! ! "
I just have time to go head in my shoulder and try to stick me a little more to the wall, as if that could be used for something that already deafening roar is heard. Sneaking on my right, I see two large blocks that go bouncing break into pieces ... Stones? Duh, the mountain, yes!
I was hot, it's not gone away: a few meters beside ... My first rock fall, my baptism. I would go so far as to say that is worth celebrating, but I now know what it feels like nothing, you do not feel anything, we did not have time: either you are on the path, or you did is not. The "objective dangers" they call it, you speak ...
- "Oh oh, it's going up there? For answer ....( a grunt from the author of the landslide). Me okay, thank you for asking ... "And this
jerk who does not respond. I venture to take a look carefully, it is safe but fear retroactive arises, to find a rope, the yellow, is severed. It's boring, one of two strings cut off, amputated twenty yards; not really a problem, but still ... The rope load also is cut, one that hoisted him, "his" bag. And the bag is somewhere in the rubble of the scree, one hundred forty, one hundred fifty meters below. I was almost in a smile. Because the history of the bag is a stumbling block between us Môssieu decided he would not his bag and should be hoisted, with the argument: "Since I'm here to make me happy, it is beyond question that I climb like a weighted ass, you know ... matter of principle "he told me at the foot of the wall leaving a string of his bag, intended to raise.
No, no .... The rope will get stuck at one time or another, not counting the time that we will lose to hoist the bag at every stage! "I'm
try to reason with him, I even started to get angry, Mr. did not budge ... Then go for a charging cord, goes to waste time and of course, as expected, it has already caught three times .... Three times he took down to disengage.
So I take a look and I see that the block above the relay has gone .... and for good reason, this one just brushing against me. In fact, apparently there were two blocks ... This con has managed to turn two blocks of a hundred kilo each, that way, just by moving up above .... He has not even looked to see if they were unstable or firmly secured to the wall. And most importantly, the presence of these blocks to a relay is the ultimate confirmation - from crossing the previous length, I have a near certainty - that one is not in the right direction: at no time did I read in the guidebook describing the progress of the escalation, there was talk of unstable blocks in a relay, a journey of about thirty meters under an overhang that is frankly the kind of Something You forget to write a guidebook or so the author wrote it on a day when he was mistaken in its mushrooming.
"-Vache! "
Finally, he tells me. Vache, that means I'm self-assured, a cow is a strap that passes through the harness and after which is a snap.
- Ok, I get the yellow is off, hold me on the red.
- No, I go down (it's how it goes? To do what?). Releases the red, I put a reminder with.
- No, I go.
- I do not promise you, I say to release the red!
He assures me no, he does not want to make sure this idiot! The worst is that I have no doubt, I have no choice.
"My bag, should get my bag, I have my camera inside."
- me or, Your device: oh, for what he must stay, eh? ... And then we will not back down, crossing the other way should not count on was a choice that come out on top.
- Do as you want, I get off.
This guy is really starting to break me. I should have been suspicious, even for me. Yet he seemed nice and competent. I met him a year earlier, in the Gorges du Verdon. They had exchanged addresses noted when we lived in the same region. Oh sure, there had been two or three lanes together to test themselves, talked about our achievements and our hopes of climbing, in short it was tame. All that to say that the day he asked me for this escalation, I said yes without hesitation.
must say that climbing is not easy, I mean organizing a climb, especially for me, because the "jumps" in my case, only two, in three months this year. The rest of the time I can not, my other sport, with four workouts per week takes me all my time. So once you have eliminated the so- would like but we can not point at issue it remains to find partners who have the same desires. And that is not always easy.
And me, this way she held my heart. Is that this is not any race is the great René Desmaison himself who opened it, then walk in the footsteps of the great René, even if it is a way of difficulty modest ... Its only flaw is that she is not busy: first because it is nothing extraordinary, and secondly because it is far from all it takes a good day to just get to his feet. But for me it has great quality: it is a "Desmaison" affordable by average climber.
Desmaison, Kid, I fed her stories. Me, the boy from the valley I had tinkered with a harness of leather straps, I even painted over Lafuma; rope as a rope, a doll or a teddy bear acted as "clients", a as a hoe pickaxe, a mason's hammer, nails and pegs for files, plus the hessian bag and an old blanket for every down, and helmet ... one of my great grandfather, one of the war of fourteen, too great helmet, its board continued to fall on my nose. The scene of my exploits: the old walnut tree in the garden of my grandparents. Ways I have opened hundreds of its trunk, its branches: Ravanel and Mummery, short, straight lines, the Walker, the Grand Dru ... I repeated them all, so much so that I finally turned his trunk colander with my nails and my files.
I feel that we will soon, as I'm about to get angry for good ...
yesterday afternoon at the shelter ... Refuge, finally rather hotel-restaurant. It is a few tens of meters below the chairlift. Peter is the boss. I knew the year I made the "boomer" in the station to pay me my studies. Like all employees, I took my meals (benefits), and my beer, my money on personal home. It leaves marks, it creates links, five months dutifully spend their pay in booze in a purlin. M'enfin Pierre looks happy to see me. Must say I have a little "bump" in his view, the capacity barrels of beer being inversely proportional to my wallet, and paying its debt ... even if it is enriched with elbow grease!
Except that Peter did not really like my sidekick - my alcoholic smoky, just like it's more qualifiers.
It started on the terrace: Môssieu it rolled a tarp ... The tarp is fun .... It's the cool guy ... And with its large brown curls, his blue eyes that look washed out without seeing, eyes that sail in the distance, the look of one who has exceeded the contingencies of low our world, my toto had the full panoply of the trap and cons connes.
Well, the Pierrot he had seen others. Just think, in the resort! but there, on the terrace of his crowded bistro, right in July, it started as a way presentations. Where he blew me was when he ordered a bottle of Crépy four o'clock in the morning. Then a second an hour later, a small tarp from his store and more and Toto is transformed into what it is: a Tartarin crown ... And ears to listen to his tartarinades Sure enough: come therefore, open July 1 neophyte audience there to stoop to pick up ... So much so that the third bottle I found the local dives, local familiar as I already explained. It was better for anything this time, wash dishes, bowls and make sprigs longer than undergo the shame that his presence imposed on me.
"- Do as you want, I get my bag back down."
This guy is sick. The passage that we just completed is impassable in the other direction, except cone and go to "aid climbing" and again - and anyway there was no stirrups, so ...
So it's simple: I have five or six peaks, five nuts and a dozen slings; with my rope I'm going to make a loop of approximately ten meters by way of self-insurance and I will continue alone. It will take me time, up-to-end loop while posing pitons and nuts, I detach posing a fixed rope, go down to retrieve these pitons, cams and slings, hoisting me up onto the rope, and redo my loop and now, ten feet in ten meters ... I will not be out of the way tonight, I went to a camp ... Bast, in July the nights are cold, and then do not I start to think about it ... No, it is urgent to remember. To remember what I know of that wall.
I'm not in the right direction, and there are three other tracks here. I removed a row, she is on the spur southwest, well away. Rest the other two. Will: which is the crossing at the ninth length under an overhang? It's funny but it's always when you have to remember that nothing comes back to me .... It school, blackboard, looking how much nine times in September and poems ... .. and conjugations ... ouch, ouch not think about that. My
gray blouse, the smell of chalk, desks with their inkwells and master ... How he was already known? I see his face, his rule has left me with painful memories at your fingertips, but his name? no, nothing, nothing at all ... Ah yes: I believe Mr. Marchand ... His mustache handlebars and navy blue blouse full of tasks. He had to cycle to school, an old biclou he'll always be against the chestnut tree in front of the yard And even one day we had flat tires with safety pins and it was caught of course ... Damn! ! ! not think that God, the way, reminds you what you've read about it! Nothing, no memory .... nine times seven? uh ....
And then I feel guilty: Toto let alone in the journey ... Shit ... Not too bad, when it is con con is: all this for a camera that no longer have that name ... Oh, oh, there must be a hash in the bag too ... That must be it, hash, yeah that's right, he wants to get his shit .... what tip this guy!
Good, and Rene, he would do what Rene, he would think about what? Rene, he would laugh and say: "In the mountains we not stand still, it rises or descends, but still not swallow flies to the moon ... bober "Well, c'mon ... Yes, but ... There's no "yes but" ... growing! ! ! Yes but the Toto alone in the crossing ... In fact it began, peg it dry there.
Actually I was scared to continue as one that I feel guilty, and if it is I do not even feel guilty at all, I just need an excuse to join ... And then it myself returns, this is it I remember, I remember everything, everything I've read on this wall: there is no crossing under an overhang! ... So ... so I'm doing a first without my knowledge? true, no one in the walnut from my childhood?
I open one lane, me ... Dom ... and alone at that! A first solo - at last in part, but still - the holy grail of the climber ... I will have my name next to a track, my name engraved in the firmament of the greatest mountaineering ...
not get excited, man, must first get out "your "Way, because otherwise your name will be engraved on a tombstone you will get it. Oh, oh ... but I'll find anything earlier? because ... it's still not quite normal that there is no way here, since the time I hear that everything has been done has been done ... Damn
and rezut, anxiety returns. "In the mountains we not stand still, it rises or descends. Yes that's it, thank you Rene, I'm going. Sort this out and it is only the Foo: all this for a piece of shit ... And then the glory will not share it, two roosters in a henhouse that makes one too. No need to excuse it : Full steam ahead ...
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Another yaw right and I will leave the forest, there I see the hotel stone. I walk whistling, my heart is light, I have a name for my way, a name to the con, it's likely it will be "the piglet suspended" as a tribute to Foo ... It will be much obliged to know it is for him once I said. And then my guidebook, I already wrote it in my head ... Well, the first nine lengths I have a little trouble remember, but the other ten ... Ah .... the remaining ten! ... Maybe even an article in "Mountain Magazine"? Surely even! Come, nineteen lengths TD (very difficult) it is trumpeted, to hell with modesty.
Here, Peter is on the terrace, it scans. He looks at me, puts a hand over her eyes to see better, hesitates and then decides to walk to meet me. I always whistle, I'll play small.
- Ben .... what are you doing here? I thought you were back down, at least that's what your friend said.
- Hein ... but you're talking what Peter? "
- Well, your friend ... He told me that you had waived off the track, not that you felt that you were right back down the scree and you'd have followed the cascade to reach the car park. So he climbed alone, and he says he opened a new channel, ED (extremely difficult) "
Buddy, as he says, he is on the terrace, a bottle of Crépy before him his audience around. On seeing me he gets up, comes to me by opening his arms wide and said
"sacred day, eh? ..." And it
: kickin ball eh? ... Toto is lying and pissing blood. I also piss blood, I opened the front on his teeth. But damn, it feels good.
Ranta
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