place

Berkeley

La Haute Route

This morning was so much easier than the others. I've discovered there's a velcro on the leg straps of the climbing harness I wear at all times whenever we are en route. We wear this so we can clip into the carabiners tieing us into the rope and to each other at a moment's notice, should either of our guides sense the presence of hidden crevasses under the crust of snow we tread. These velcro things are no minor discovery. They allow you to leave on your harness and use the toilet too. Once on the go, you cannot stop while travelling, disrobe and take a dump on a 50 degree incline that's sliding out from under your feet in howling wind. You must go before you put on your skis. From the time we get out of bed, to the time we are climbing is one hour. In that time you must dress, pack, eat, and visit the long line for the toilets. All 30+ people staying at the hut must use the bathroom too before the day's ascent, and you must perform your duties there for the day "Achtung! Jetz und Hir", while the long line of others stomp in their boots outside the door checking their watches and the angle of the rising sun. Before I discovered these velcro straps, I had to put the harness on all over again after visiting the toilet which slows one down. Even the trip to the toilet required wearing the harness because the approach to the toilet is exposed and precipitous. With the velcro discovery, I was ready along with the rest of my crew on time for the first time, and ready to go.

We knew that today was to be short but with a steep climb -- and that it was. The light was gorgeous as it filled the Tsena Bowl, the Dix Hut behind us getting ever smaller. As we climb we now enter the ultramarine blue shadow. Deep kundalini breaths take me higher. I am like a furnace and though it's very cold, well below freezing, I strip down to just my long sleeve shirt and I vent my goretex pants. I'm eating the whole time while climbing on my skis. They are strapped into artificial seal skins, or peau de phoque. The grain of the fur allows the skis to slide forward but not backward. They do not glide. Ski crampons are on so that we slice into the hard pack and cannot slip sideways off the steep wall we are climbing. They add resistance. Harder work in return for safety. I eat when I am cold and stripped down and climbing like this -- my lungs about to explode. I'm overheated and cold in the same moment. A whole packet of Turkey Jerky to refuel the calories burnt for just 15 minutes of climbing and keeping the kundalini-breathing fire stoked. How many calories am I burning per minute? Half a chocolate bar, half a bottle of water. It's burned before it even reaches my bloodstream. Less to carry so good, but will I run out of calories before our next fuel-stop?

I knew it was as high a climb as the Col du Chardonnet which we accomplished days back when we first crossed out of France. But when I felt as if we had already climbed that vertical, Dick Jackson our guide said we were only about halfway up the col. As we reached the glaring light at the top of the bowl, and then crossed to the left ascending the Serpentine, we got hit by wind. It had snowed half the night and the snow was styrofoam pellets, very light. It had blown into fantastic shapes looking like little hunched over monstrosities at a midway -- sastrugi. Between the sastrugi was hard ice, between the ice and steepness were some major crevasses which we crossed unprotected, that is, not roped together, skiing over snow bridges. Because you are wearing skis, the weight is displaced over their length and you are less likely to punch through one of these snow bridges to become dinner for the crevasse-bumbles. And if you hussle, then you lessen your chances even more.

The Italian climbing club from Piemonte, comprised of men, women and children of all ages, adopted me as I was neither at the front of the long assault with the rest of "les boys", or with the stragglers. I was in the middle of the queue, as were they. They coached me through the difficult sections warning me where to hurry, Pronto amici, pronto!, so as not to tread too long on time or down on gravity or my luck, on the boy-hip narrow bridges leaping across death. The Italians. Once this morning they blocked my slide out of control down a 50 degree inclined windblown dome, from a loss of balance during an ascending "conversion" turn. Made dizzy by lack of oxygen and with my head necessarily lower than my torso executing this contortionist's turn when the pitch is that steep and wearing long skis, I got vertigo just for a second and that was just enough. To save some friction and to get more glisse, I was not wearing ski crampons. As I faultered, the snow slid away beneath my skis and I slid sideways down the icefield up on one leg, the other caught mid-conversion like a stalwart flamingo sleeping with one leg hiked up, with his head awkwardly tucked under wing. This is when Bugaboo-Mario lineblocked my flirt with death. Grazie Mario!

The wind gusts 40-50 miles an hour as I strain uphill carrying a 30 pound pack and 20 pounds of equipment appended to my body. I make it up to the top of the Pigne, and find that everyone in our group is on their way out. I'm late, they're cold. It was just a viewpoint and great one at that. The Matterhorn was in-view for the first time -- a blesssed view indeed, and all of the peaks of the Alps, from France, Italy and Switzerland at our survey. Until now charging up and down lower cols, we could only see the peaks in our direct path. Now we are on top of the world. Mont Blanc, Aiguille d'Argentiere, Aiguille du Chardonnet, Monte Rosa, Matterhorn, Mont Collon, Dent d'Herens, etc. We are on the Pigne d'Arolla being blasted by 50 mile an hour gusts at 20f degrees. 3796m. Our highest elevation on the Haute Route. I stay for 2 minutes. The Italians hand me shot glass of something stiff and perfumed. I raise it to my lips in honor of the mountain king. I swish it in my mouth but don't dare imbibe. My blood carries little oxygen as it is. No alcohol now. They exclaim to me something like A forze!

We rendez-vous just below in the protection of the valley for the 700 ft. descent to the Vignettes Hutte, (we're now venturing into the German speaking part of the Valais which they spell Wallis). Sylvain our guide from Chamonix is bummed. These people are different. They are not his kin like the Piemontese Italians. He will not stay in Zermatt. He will take the first train home to be with his people.

I'm the only one on long skis. The snow is fantastic and we do spooned SSSSSS turns down the glacier. Here is where I excel. I am the strongest client skiier and I feel like a black raven dancing a tango. We turn hard to the left down a swooping crud field and are warned to stay far away from the right -- and to ski in control at all times. We see why -- a 1,000 ft drop on the right, but we are headed left after a high traverse over across a small span which connects us to the Vignettes Hutte. It is inconceivable how it is moored to a spit of granite -- gingerly placed there up on the only place in the whole valley big enough to sleep some fools and their dreams. The hut, moored to that oblique ridge, has no snow field directly above. It is thus protected, out of reach of the claws of marauding avalanches. It's a marvel of Swiss-ness with a helicopter landing pad and a legendary toilet that is open air, dropping your Schiese 1,000 feet below. Bombs away! Choucas, alpine ravens the size of a helicopter, swirl in the abyss that calls like a siren when at night you negotiate a catwalk connecting to the toilets. We invent ways to hang up our gear to dry -- attaching it to guy wires, or to ice axes driven into snow banks -- anything so the wind doesn't fly it up and away. I then retire to the interior of the tightly crafted Vignettes Hutte, named I assume for the framed window views from the stone arcade. I splurged ordering a bowl of soup and eat lots and lots of crackers and sausage. The rest of the day I spend talking with the Italians, specifically Piero, about life -- Italian and American. He is a soft sensitive man who literally cries about a society which has no more place for friends getting together, voices united in song, up in these stone chapels, he calls them. Singing is now considered old-fashioned by his club, so no more. The club is shrinking. So to keep the fashion conscious young people as active members, the adults have voted, no more old style singing. He tells me America is crass but all Italy is in love with America because it is like an innocent wayward child -- while Italy is a hopelessly romantic thief-killer, and all Italians are hiding this criminal. Dinner is meat and potatoes. We are now in the German part of Schweizerland.