Safety in Alpine Climbing and Associated Risks
Text updated on July 12, 2007
Can one risk one’s life?
...Obviously, one runs more risks while flying a hang glider or a paraglider than on a tennis court. What attitude should one adopt toward sports and activities where a certain level of risk simply cannot be eliminated?
...Forty years ago, my friend Jean-Claude and I were at the Refuge du Plan. We were both only twenty-three years old, yet we already had considerable climbing experience, gained in the Belgian Ardennes and the Calanques of Marseille. The previous summer, Jean-Claude had climbed the North Face of the Drus in Chamonix, together with our mentor and friend Jean Lecomte, an excellent mountaineer. The following summer, we decided that we might both attempt a relatively easy classic climb in the Chamonix Valley: the Grépon. We couldn’t afford a guide, but at least we had excellent gear well suited for high mountains: good down jackets, sturdy boots, “Charlet” ice axes, bivouac hoods, solid crampons, helmets, and warm wool clothing. This route isn’t considered very difficult. But the approach from the Refuge du Plan involves crossing the Nantillons Glacier. One must go to bed early in the mountains—around six p.m.—to set out before daybreak, using headlamps for illumination.
...We were about to crawl into our sleeping bags when we heard screams coming from that massif. From such a distance, it was impossible to make out anything, but one thing was certain: people were shouting. We went to see the famous guide Raymond Lambert, who was also staying at the refuge and was scheduled to lead a climb the next morning with a client. He was easily recognizable thanks to his custom-made mountain boots. In fact, he’d lost all his toes to frostbite when he was younger, and his bootmaker had had to take that into account.
“If they’re climbers in trouble,” he told us, “it’ll be easy to tell. Since it’s impossible to understand anything at such a distance, these people will shout at regular intervals—say, every minute. All you have to do is record their shouts by noting those moments on your watches. If there’s no periodicity, it’s just people yelling ‘pass me the bag,’ ‘pull the rope,’ or something similar. In the mountains, one often has to shout when one’s climbing partner isn’t within sight; sound doesn’t carry well.”
...That’s what we did for about half an hour. But we found no periodicity in those shouts, which eventually stopped. So we went to bed. The next day we set off under the stars. Dawn broke as we crossed the Nantillons Glacier. There was a path through the ice, beneath a large wall of seracs.
“Guide Vallot says that, on average, one serac falls per day,” Jean-Claude told me.
...So, beneath those serac walls, one doesn’t dawdle. With rope loops in hand, we jogged along to minimize risks. We were halfway across when I heard a sinister cracking sound. Then hundreds of tons of ice swept away the spot where I’d been just ten seconds earlier.
“One can slow down the pace: the daily serac has fallen...”
...Then began our ascent of the Grépon. We had excellent glacier goggles that protected our eyes well, with leather eye flaps on the sides. The straps wrapped around our ears. But we’d forgotten to add a thin nylon cord running behind our necks. Early on the route, a clump of snow hit my face, flung by my partner, who took my only pair of goggles with him. I then risked getting snow blindness. We hadn’t anticipated this risk—that tiny detail that can turn a trouble-free climb into a tragedy.
...I tried to protect my eyes as best I could. At the summit, a drama awaited us. Alerted by other climbers, a mountain rescue helicopter had already arrived, carrying the bodies of two Swiss climbers wrapped in two rubber bags; they’d died of hypothermia during the night. It was they who’d shouted in vain the previous evening. But they didn’t know. Otherwise, a rescue team would have reached them within hours, or the Chamonix helicopter, alerted from the refuge. The weather was lovely.
...One of those two climbers had fallen off a slab. His partner, who was belaying him, stood on a small ledge.
When the first climber, weighed down by his pack, plunged into the void on that overhanging section, he dragged the entire rope along; his partner couldn’t hold on, and, carried by his accumulated kinetic energy, he was flung upward, ending up with his feet in the air and his belly pressed against the rock.
...There was no way he could pull his partner back up by hand. The other man didn’t know how to climb back up a rope either. They could do nothing but scream. Then night fell and the cold did the rest.
...Yet they could have saved themselves. Every climber carries “rope loops” with them. Back then, these were three-strand nylon cords, spliced together. Nowadays, sewn webbing slings are also used. With such a loop, even in such an awkward position, the person above could easily create a link between a carabiner attached to the piton holding them both and the rope, using a “Prusik knot”:
...Then he would cut the rope, using the Opinel knife he should have kept around his neck, tied to his sweater with a lanyard. His partner would have suffered only a bit of fright and a fall of a couple meters. But Prusik knots don’t slip, and it’s easy afterward to secure everything by tying the rope. Once that maneuver was done, the second climber would regain control. He could stand on “foot loops,” reinforce his position by driving in another piton, then pull a thinner, shorter rescue rope from his pack, which he could use to help his companion—perhaps lowering equipment to him.
...That person would then have to climb back up the main rope using two or three Prusik loops (at the time, “Jumars” hadn’t been invented yet). In an hour everything would have been resolved. Apart from some fear, both would have been able to rappel down, bivouac, or complete their ascent. Anything except hanging there until frozen to death.
...But those two didn’t know. Just as I didn’t know that one absolutely must fasten one’s glacier goggles.
...That summer, I decided to limit my activities to rock climbing. A matter of choice. High mountains are sublime; there one sees “stars at noon.” Up there, there’s the Moon, a completely mineral world where everything is enormous: dihedrals, ridges, crevasses. Fascinating, but it’s like walking on the back of a sleeping giant. Yet if that giant decides to turn over in bed, we’re dead—flattened, pulverized, even if we’re very strong. That summer, I read Walter Bonatti’s book “To My Mountains.” Among other things, he recounts an attempt to climb the “Red Pillars of Mist” on the Italian side of Mont Blanc, overlooking the Brenva Glacier. I believe there were four of them. A French climbing team joined them, and they agreed to tackle this “first” together. Bonatti was a force of nature; he’d once spent a whole day alone at 7,000 meters on K2 in the Himalayas, without a tent, and survived. He’d climbed the Drus solo, self-belaying with his pack.
...Bad weather caught them less than a hundred meters from the summit. The four decided to bivouac in the storm. Well-equipped, they felt capable of handling such a situation. But it lasted longer than expected. On the fourth day, they decided to descend. Two of them died of exhaustion; they had to be left behind on the trail—a Frenchman and an Italian. And yet these four were among the most experienced climbers in the world.
...High mountains mean this too: an unavoidable margin of risk, even with experience and top-notch gear. A season in the Chamonix Valley with zero deaths, even if everyone behaved sensibly, is impossible. The mountains have their unpredictabilities, their whims, their unforeseeable serac falls. But there are all the other risks—those faced by the ignorant, the poorly equipped—like those we rescued from the Géant Glacier two days after that tragedy: four teenagers wandering around in light anoraks, inadequate shoes, and a short rope. Yet those aren’t places for strolls. The Géant has crevasses a hundred meters deep. They were glad to meet us. Thus, despite very limited experience, we managed to act as “guides” by bringing those reckless folks back, in the manner of “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
...The Mountain Rescue Service deals each year with many reckless people who, through ignorance or carelessness, find themselves in dangerous situations. There are deaths. Some rescuers also lose their lives trying to save others. So, what should be done? Officials waste their breath every year warning these reckless individuals via the media. Often, the people needing rescue haven’t reported their plans beforehand. First, they must be found. These rescue operations also cost a lot of money; each intervention costs tens of thousands of francs.
...What to do? Ban high mountains, or populate glaciers with police on snowmobiles who’d ask for IDs, inspect gear, check competence? What worries people most is that their wallets might be touched—more sensitive than their bodies, which they’re willing to expose to risks that could leave them disabled for life.
In all risky sports, there are libertarians—lots of folks who loudly claim the right to risk their lives however they please, without helmets, without parachutes, without technical checks, without any safety measures, “provided,” they add, “they don’t endanger anyone else’s life.” But what do we do with them when they’re broken, crippled, helpless, costing society a fortune for the rest of their lives in medical care and surgeries?
...Whenever constraints are mentioned in the ultralight world (as in many others), enthusiasts cry out “you want to police these sports!” My wife believes that if our “libertarians” were told that in case of accident, if minimum safety measures weren’t taken, they’d be required to pay part of their medical and treatment costs, they’d be less eager to demand their glorious freedom.
...When one’s robbed, insurers balk if valuables weren’t properly protected. Same goes if a motorcyclist lacks a helmet or a vehicle has no seatbelt. Pressure could thus come from insurance companies. Sadly, in ultralight sports, there’s little hope, since it’s the federations themselves that insure their members.
