CLIMBING IN TWO WORLDS

AAMIR ALI

IN ISSUING HIS IRRESISTIBLE invitation to write for the Millennium Aissue, the editor suggested as possible subjects Climbing in the Last Hundred Years (I'm not that old) or Climbing in the Next Millennium (I don't expect to live that long). However it occurred to me that since this year, 1999, is the 50th anniversary of my first Alpine summit and almost the 60th of my first excursion into the Himalaya, I could use my modest personal experiences to illustrate the differences between climbing in these two worlds.

As thousands have discovered, climbing in the Alps and climbing in the Himalaya are two different experiences. The differences include the approach, the accessibility, the time scale, the altitude scale, the huts, the setting up of camps, the guides, the tourist infrastructure, the numbers, the information available — and there are others. Some of the differences have been narrowed during the last five decades. For instance, the agencies which now exist to make all arrangements eliminate all the planning, purchasing, packing, negotiating with porters etc. that was part of the Himalayan scene in the old days. Could it be that the next millennium - or rather the next fifty years — will see these differences further reduced?

The Alps cover 240,000 km², are some 1000 km long and between 130 and 250 km wide. People have been climbing in them for fun for over two hundred years. Peaks of over 4000 m are considered a special category.

The Himalayas cover 3.4 million km², are some 2500 km long and lie between latitude 20 and 38 degrees N. People have been climbing in the Himalaya for fun for less than a hundred years. Peaks of over 8000 m are considered a special category.

On my way to Geneva to join the International Labour Office (ILO), I spent a fortnight in Istanbul working on the secretariat of a regional meeting, then on to Geneva in December 1947, my neighbour Archie Evans pointed out the major peaks of the Alps below us, including of course the Matterhorn. Archie was a long time official of the ILO and a keen mountaineer and indeed my first summit was with him; he was also my sponsor for the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC). He died early this year (1999) aged over 90.

I spent most of 1948 in Montreal so I didn't really get to settle in Geneva till 1949. I had met Loulou Boulaz, one of Geneva's elite climbers and a former member of the Swiss National Ski team, also at the Istanbul meeting (who says international meetings don't serve a purpose?). She introduced me to Raymond Lambert in the spring of 1949; Raymond introduced me to the Saléve, that rock climbing face of infinite variety and easy access, the cradle of all Geneva's climbers.

The Saléve

We in Geneva look on the Saléve as our private playground. That it is entirely in France and you have to cross an international frontier to get to it is easily ignored. It was a severe shock to us when the war closed the border and the Saléve became inaccessible. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814, the Genevese representative Pictet de Rochemont, wanted Geneva's frontiers to be extended; but this would have meant a Catholic majority for the Canton and the politicians at home were not ready to accept that. A pity; life would have been simpler if the Saléve were Genevese. The border presents no problem to Europeans, but for me it was a thorough nuisance, as I needed a visa which had to be renewed regularly. Not so bad as it sounds because the border police seldom check.

You can get to the Saléve in about 20 minutes from the centre of Geneva, a walk of 10 to 20 minutes, and you can rope up. The limestone rock face, about 200 - 300 m high, offers passages of every degree of difficulty starting from easy scrambles to extremely difficult passages, including artificial. My guide-book of 1965, describes 122 passages; one could now add several more. There is the regular Route Nationale, a round trip which might take a couple of hours as you pass the Schmolitz (where most beginners begin), the Pas d'Aral leading to the Couloir de la Mule offering half a dozen different passages to the next stage. Further on, there are two spectacular passages: the Saute de la Mule leads you to the knife-edged top of the leaf separated from the main mass by a deep cleft. You stand on this edge, airy-scary, and jump across to the main rock face. It is a bit lower but quite unreasonably, slopes steeply; if you flex your knees as you land - the right and proper thing to do - you bang them painfully against the rock. Rene Dittert who first made me take the jump, warned me but this didn't help. No one listens the first time, he said philosophically. You'll be more sensible the next time.

The second piece of fun is the Grotte de la Mule; you approach a wall with a beetling overhang and wonder where on earth you're going. As you climb, you suddenly find a small aperture; you let yourself in feet foremost and you are through to a large cave, easily accessible by a path from the other side.

Well, there's a lot more to the Saléve than that. You meet many other climbers in the early morning or evening and over weekends. You can spend the whole day meandering up and down. And if you're lucky, you can come face to face with a chamois - one of a herd that found asylum here in 1944 when a fierce fight took place between Germans and the Maquis on the nearby plateau of Glieres.

I used to pick up Raymond Lambert¹ at 4.30 and we would be climbing by 5. We would spend about three hours on the rocks, then get home in time for a shower and the office by 9. This was a routine I followed with many other companions over the years.

 

Loulou Boulaz took me up the Arete Jaune the first time on a Saturday afternoon. It's a long chimney with spectacular views between your legs as you move up. It so happened that Raymond Lambert was ahead of us with a client: 'Raymond', shouted Loulou, 'je t'ai vole ton client!' (I've stolen your client!) Rene Dittert took me up the Grande Arete one morning without warning. He knew that if he had told me where we were headed, I would have baulked.

I have been on the Saléve in the early mornings, in the evenings after work, on weekends; with a single companion, with a group of friends or a group from the SAC; and often by myself. Now that I am too old for la varappe (this term for rock climbing actually originated on the Saléve) I am a devotee of the several paths that lead to the top - and to several pleasant cafes from where you can admire the whole Mt. Blanc range.

While I cannot imagine that any other city has such climbing on its doorstep as the Saléve, many do have quite exciting possibilities. During a week I spent at Arnold Glatthard's climbing school in Rosenlaui, I met two Danish girls. When I was in Copenhagen a few months later, they put me in touch with the Danish Alpine club and I was invited to join their outing on Sunday. We drove to Helsingfor (Elsinore, where Hamlet's ghost was wont to walk the battlements, revisiting thus the glimpses of the moon) and took the ferry across to Sweden. There are some lovely cliffs rising straight out of the sea; after a few hours on them - who would have thought that the dour Scandinavians could have so much fun in them? - We had a swim in the clear, cold water. Back in Copenhagen in time to explore the restaurants of the Tivoli gardens.

Interesting how people from the mountain-less countries become avid climbers. Belgians and Dutch abound in the Alps; the first climbing hut I stayed in was the Albert I, named after the King of Belgium who was killed in a climbing accident.

The Access

But of course, the Saléve is not the Alps.

While the Alps are not quite on the doorstep, most ordinary climbs - in the Mt. Blanc range, the Oberland, the Vaudois and the Valaisan Alps - are feasible over a weekend; this was so even before the increase of roads and mechanical lifts in recent decades. Every climb is different but if one may speak of a 'typical' one, it went something like this. You drive to your starting point (or take the train) in about 2 - 5 hours. You may have a téléphérique, telesiege or mountain railway to hoist you up a few hundred metres. You climb up to a hut in 3-4 hours. You will probably be between 2500 and 3200 m. You do your climb the next morning, get back to the car in the late afternoon, and are home that evening.

You can do quite respectable climbs in a single day. Chamonix is only about an hour and a half away; téléphériques and a train can whisk you up to a number of one-day climbs. There is, for instance, the Aiguille de I'M and the Petit Charmoz. A téléphérique takes you to the foot of the Aiguilles and in about an hour or so you're on the breche that separates the I'M from the Petit Charmoz. You can do both in 3-4 hours and be home for dinner. I had done this a couple of times before I took my son, then about 14, there and to my chagrin found that he went up much more easily than I did.

My first experience - 1943 - of getting to the high Himalaya was rather different. From Bombay, it took us three days by train and bus to get to Garur via Almora, from where we could start walking. And another 8 - 10 days to get to the high mountains. Of course things have changed since 1943; as they have done in the Alps.

Let me digress. Rusi and I went to Satopanth when we were about 19 years old. Our only knowledge of climbing was from books and the bowline was the only knot we knew that could be vaguely useful. We spent three days on the Satopanth glacier which could hardly be considered 'climbing'. It was our 'porter' Khim Singh, better called guide, friend and philosopher who made this possible. Yet, this first venture remains engraved in my memory: why? No question of because it was there, as we didn't climb anything. But I believe it was the solitude, the fact that for three days we saw no one except ourselves, the silence was complete, the realisation that we are a species - and not by any means the most admirable - and therefore a part of nature, akin to the Tibetan doves we saw sweeping across the gauze like falls where the Ganges falls from the foot of Vishnu, like the slender thread of the lotus flower, or the primulas in the grassy patches, or the snow leopards which we didn't see but were always conscious of.

At first I hesitated to join the Swiss Alpine Club. Firstly I felt that as a beginner I would be a drag on the others; secondly, I felt as a very visible foreigner - I didn't know of any coloured people being or ever having been in the Club before - I might be an oddity. (Even in Geneva, there were not too many of us from developing countries in those days; when my mother came to visit me during my first summer, her sari was a cause of much staring and wonder. Now, of course, there seem to be more people of all shades and hues than natives.) I needn't have worried; from my first outing, my colleagues accepted me without trouble. I felt at ease; the natives were definitely friendly.

But even in the Alps, the approach can provide its own difficulties. My first visit to Zermatt has left an indelible memory of the drive back. I had a colleague who was imbued with the desire to say that he had climbed the Matterhorn and Mt. Blanc. He joined me a few times on the Saléve and on a couple of climbs in the Alps and declared himself ready to tackle the Matterhorn. Raymond Lambert agreed to take us. We drove to St. Nicholas on a Saturday in 1950 (you couldn't drive any closer to Zermatt in those days, now you can drive up to Tasch; luckily Zermatt itself is still free of cars); and walked to the Hornli hut in about four hours. Today you would take the téléphérique up to Schwarzsee and walk to the hut in about an hour.

The Matterhorn, luckily not so crowded then as it is today, went without incident and was a surprisingly enjoyable climb; we were back at the hut by about 4 p.m. after 12 hours on the mountain. We were looking forward to a restful evening and a long sleep when Raymond suddenly said, 'Why don't we go down right away? We could catch the 8 p.m. train to St. Nicholas and be back in Geneva tonight.'

A stupid idea but once it was aired, it caught on. So, instead of savouring the glorious day we had and working out some lurid accounts to relate to our friends, we rushed down with only one thought in mind : get to Zermatt in time to catch that train. Which we did by the skin of our watches. We got to the car by 9 p.m., there remained the 6-7 hour drive to Geneva (three hours now with autoroutes). I was the chauffeur but even I had forgotten this in our stupid rush to catch that train. We had a quick meal and set off. No need to say that keeping awake was more difficult than the Hornli ridge; about half way back to Geneva, there was a thunderstorm that even Bombay's monsoon would have been proud of. We had to stop till it passed. We got to Geneva in the early hours and slept through the day. A most foolish ending to a fine climb.

A few weeks later, my colleague hired a guide in Chamonix and climbed Mt. Blanc by the voie normale; he never climbed again, saying that as he had climbed the Matterhorn and Mt. Blanc, there was no further challenge left! It takes all sorts...

Another fearsome drive back from the Valaisan Alps was in 1957 after doing the Jagigrat ridge with the SAC. We left the cars at Saas Grund (about 5-6 hours from Geneva then; about 3 hours today) went to the Weismies hut, a pleasant walk of 2-3 hours. Once again, the climbing was glorious, the drive back was tiring. First the Jagihorn, which had been much in the news recently because Tom Bourdillon of Hunt's Everest expedition had just been killed on it. Then there was a long ridge with several pillars of good granite. On the tallest of these we were treated to another terrific thunderstorm for about half an hour. The wet manila ropes of those days became stiff and unwieldy and rappelling was hard work.

The drive back was a replay of the one from Zermatt some years ago; heavy rain, inordinate lengthening of driving time; overpowering sleepiness.

That was my first climb with Richard, who was in Geneva to learn the watch industry, and we became a regular duo for his remaining years in Switzerland, rarely missing a weekend. It's a special pleasure when you climb with someone on the same wave-length as you, mentally and physically. He still visits Switzerland regularly, and though our climbing days are long over, we usually manage some bird-watching outings.

Heavy rain in the Himalaya can be even more disrupting. Far and away the pleasantest and most exhilarating expedition I've had to the Himalaya was to Mrigthuni with Gurdial and two other close friends. All the bundobust had been made by Gurdial - food supplies, porters, and so on; a most congenial party of four; a virgin peak, glorious campsites, cheerful porters: and all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But I was left with one regret. An unfortunate porter had lugged a pair of skis which I had brought from Geneva up to base. The day after we came down from Mrigthuni, it poured and continued the next day. My friends saw no joy in sitting around in the wet just because I wanted to use the skis that had been carried there with so much labour; we packed up and the skis remained unused.

That was a minor setback. Again the memories that remain are of delectable campsites, wonderful views, beautiful country, wildlife, rushing streams, and good fellowship. The summit was almost incidental; in the Alps, the summit would have been the primary focus.

Rain played a far more important role on a trip two years previously, in October 1956. Six of us had set off from Bombay for Trisul. At Rishikesh it was raining hard. The monsoon seemed unaware that it should have ended weeks ago. The road had been washed out in several places, the bus could not go. Perhaps tomorrow, we were told. After being marooned for several days, this mantra lost its power to convince. A visit to Gurdial in Dehra Dun to seek advice and consult his maps, and we took the bus to Chakrata; this road had been washed away as well, in two places; luckily a bus had been trapped in between the two landslides, so acted as a ferry. With two time consuming transshipments we made it to Chakrata. A day spent in finding mules and porters and it must have been over a week since leaving Bombay that we could begin walking. We went to the Ruinsara valley - Jack Gibson's favourite haunt -and one of the loveliest campsites imaginable. We were enormously unsuccessful on the Black Peak (Kalanag) but the trip to and from Ruinsara -where the solitude of the mountains was a reality and not a cliche - was delightful.

Climbing huts

The biggest difference between the Alps and the Himalaya is the climbing hut. In Switzerland alone, there are about 160 huts and bivouacs; except for a few private ones, each is under the care of a local section of the SAC. Most huts can be reached within 3-4 hours of a train or bus station, a resort or a parking place. The accommodation provided varies from 8 persons (Schalijoch) to over 130 (Konkordia and Britannia), they are placed on strategic sites; each offers access to numerous climbs.

No mountaineer in his right mind will pretend that huts are pleasanter than a tent, or the open air. A tent in an isolated valley, in a meadow covered with flowers and a stream nearby, has nothing to equal it. A climbing hut with several other people in it, a gardie to supervise it, tiered bunks with blankets often used before they're washed, a certain discipline, cannot even begin to compare with a campsite. (Though if some of the things written about the crowded base camps of the Big Ones are true, a hut sounds a better bet.)

But everything has its advantages and disadvantages, its pros and its cons. For climbing, the hut is head and shoulders above the romantic tent.

It is more secure, it's warmer, there is a gardie to help with household chores, you can stand up properly to boil the water, cook the food, dress and undress (if you want to), find your socks without scrabbling around, use a toilet, retrieve your rucksack and equipment from its ordered place, put on your boots sitting down comfortably. And put on boots which aren't frozen hard.

And of course, it means that you don't have to carry tents, sleeping bags, masses of food, stoves and gas cylinders.

The atmosphere in a hut can vary immensely. And there's no need to say that the quality of life in them has declined sorrowfully - where has it not? In the old days, the gardie was usually a retired guide who knew the region inside out, who would advise you on conditions, tell you stories of his past adventures. Those who came to the hut were climbers who had to make an early start; they usually brought their own food relying on the gardie only for hot water for tea and soup. Today, many of the more easily accessible huts have become mini-hotels; families come up for a cheap weekend, trekkers come on their way from one hut to another or who've come up just for the 'ride'. They want prepared meals and wine; the gardie is no longer a retired guide but a hotelier catering to the paying public and making his living out of meals, wine and drinks sold to clients. No controversy excites as much heat and dust as: are the huts to cater to climbers, members of the SAC, or are they to become commercial enterprises, ignoring the low spending climber and swarming over the non-climbing tourist?

Bowing to new needs and realising that most huts had been built 50100 years ago and needed renovation, the SAC has, after much discussion, introduced new rules from 2000. The huts remain the responsibility of individual Sections of the SAC but there will be enhanced central responsibility; for example, for marketing (the new mantra of our era), publicity, leases. Huts will be classified in different categories . There will be training courses for gardien; these will be compulsory for newcomers. Sections will conclude leases with gardien of the larger huts and charge a tax on profits on food and drink. Guides will be accommodated free; Sections can fix different daily rates for categories of visitors (members, non-members, youngsters); a tax of Frs. 4-7 is payable to the Central Committee which subsidises constructions and renovations etc.

What a difference a pleasant and friendly gardie makes. I remember Salamin, the retired guide who was the gardie of the Oberaletsch hut where I once spent a week. He and his wife seemed determined to look after our SAC group as if we were their family, to feed us well, to be up and about at 2 am if an early start was needed, and to welcome us with a smile when we came back exhausted. (The Sherpa touch?) And we usually did arrive exhausted because the hut was about 200 m above the glacier where every climb seemed to end; this meant a hot, tough climb just when you felt that the hard work should have been over.

Equally pleasant memories of the Piacenza couple who kept the Remondino hut in the Italian Maritime Alps where I also spent a week with a group from the SAC: a wonderful series of climbs in the Argentera massif.

Zeebruggen, the gardie of the Britannia hut, came on at least two occasions with us as guide - the Britannia belongs to the Geneva Section of the SAC so we got special treatment. In the evenings he would regale a fascinated audience with his stories, particularly of his smuggling activities during the war. He used to take a rucksack full of cigarettes into Italy; when the border guards became too vigilant, he would go up the Matterhorn by the Hornli ridge from the Swiss side and down the Furggen into Italy.

Quite different from this was the gardie of the Diablerets hut. The son of a colleague had become a keen climber and had accompanied me on the Saléve several times. I undertook to do a real climb with him and thought the Diablerets would be an easy weekend. In those days, the hut was a 3 hour climb from the Col du Pillon where you left your car, lovely wild open rocky country. Not a soul did we meet on the way to the hut. When we arrived, the gardie came out and peered at us suspiciously. It was strangely quiet for a Saturday evening. 'Nous sommes seules?' (Are we alone?) I inquired, surprised. Yes, he said. There's no one else. Without thinking, I said Alors, tant mieux (So much the better).

Comment? he cried out. I depend on people coming here for my livelihood and you say tant mieux? Our relations never warmed up after that. I should add that this was one of the rare private huts in the Alps, not belonging to the SAC. When the Diablerets téléphérique was built, it ended the usefulness of the Diablerets hut; I wonder what the gardie had to say about that.

Even in the most hospitable huts, you can get hostile glances from those already comfortably established, if you arrive late in the evening drenched from a storm, eager to spread your soaked clothing - and yourself. The camaraderie of the mountains does have, after all, a limit - for a while, anyway.

One advantage of being accompanied by a guide is that he usually knows the gardie well, probably comes from the same region or village. For instance, when I went a couple of times with Fabian Avanthey to the Suzanf hut, I found that the gardie was his brother; this made it all very cosy.

Some of the huts have really become hotels. I first went to the Torino hut on the Col du Geant in 1956, I think. The SAC had planned to climb the Dent du Geant that weekend; Richard and I went a couple of days earlier, hoping to do some climbs before the group came up on Saturday. We were foiled on the Mt. Blanc du Tacul, the second day saw snow and fog, so we rented skis (yes, the Torino hut had everything), scores of trippers come up from Courmayeur by téléphérique right to the hut. With the telecabine coming across the Vallee Blanche from the Aiguille du Midi (3800 m) where you arrive comfortably by téléphérique from Chamonix, it became even more of a hotel.

Saturday, the weather was worse. Our companions very wisely didn't come at all; on Sunday it cleared up enough in the afternoon for us to decide to walk down the Vallee Blanche and the Mer de Glace to Montenvers, where we could take the train down to Chamonix. We started late and though there is only one part of the glacier which necessitates caution (skiing down this a few years later, one of our party fell in a crevasse luckily breaking nothing but his skis), it took longer than we had bargained for. A fault in communications led us to miss the last train. I was in front and whenever Richard said anything, I had to stop, turn around and ask him what he had said. At one point, Richard called, 'Shouldn't we leave the glacier here and cut across to the station?' I was in too much of a hurry to ask him to repeat what he had said. So we missed the path, and found ourselves a 100 m or so below the station. We neatly missed the last train. It was dark now and there was nothing left but to walk down to Chamonix; for some weighty reason which cannot now remember, we thought it would be quicker to walk along the railway line rather than take the path.

There were a large number of tunnels; we negotiated these by dragging our hands along the sides; we got down to Chamonix with deep black, sooty hands which took ages to clean.

The Torino hut seemed to be determined to make us miss our transport. The following year, I was back at the hut with Monica Jackson for a few days. Again, we aborted our attempt of the Mt. Blanc du Tacul as the snow conditions were bad. The next day we did the Tour Ronde up a steep gully in excellent conditions, and were down on the glacier before noon. There was another peak in front of us; we didn't know the name but rather than go back immediately to the hut - sorry, hotel - we climbed that as well. The following day was our climb of the Dent du Geant; another beautiful day, and one of the pleasantest climbs I've ever had. We were more or less of equal strength but because of my longer reach, Monica allowed me to lead which I appreciated immensely; finding the route adds tenfold to the pleasure of a climb.

It happened that Rene Dittert and Ernest Hofstetter were climbing the Geant that day as well. They passed us on the way up, crossed us as they came down. We got back to the hut about 4 p.m. terribly pleased with our climb and quite ready to tackle the three-hour crossing of the Vallee Blanche to get to the téléphérique station at the Aiguille du Midi. Rene and Ernest were sitting at ease, drinking tea. 'Relax', they said to us. 'The last cabin leaves the Aiguille du Midi at 6; we haven't a hope of catching it'.

So we spent a most agreeable evening with them, with piccata au citron and a good dollop of Chianti, then another dollop, while watching the television (yes, television) news of the survivors of the shipwrecked Andrea Doria arriving in New York, and Rene telling me that the Geant was one of the few 4000 m peaks he hadn't climbed so that's why this was important, and my telling him and Ernest that Monica had been to the Jugal Himalaya with the first Women's Expedition in 1955 and her success on what they decided to call Gyalgen Peak and her father was a great naturalist and her family was one of the most hospitable and open hearted families I knew and Monica looking properly modest when I mentioned the Jugal but perhaps pleased nevertheless and saying wasn't it a pity that when I had wanted to come to England to climb in Wales with her and Richard they discovered that the dates I was suggesting were the Easter weekend and I said, 'heavens' alive I'm an international civil servant and what other dates would I be suggesting anyway' and they both had said that Easter was impossible, the rocks were so crowded every time you put out your hand for a hold you were grasping someone else's boot, and every time you plonked your boot down it wasn't on firm piece of rock but someone's podgy little hand but I came anyway and we went to Stratford and saw Paul Robeson in Othello and maybe that was just as thrilling as climbing in Wales on over-crowded rocks and staying in huts bursting with human hustle and bustle and Rene and I said what would the ILO say when we both failed to turn up on Monday morning and I said not to worry no one would notice and of course I was right and Monica said what about her husband waiting at the London airport Monday morning and what would he think, well why don't you phone him, good heavens is there a phone here ? Yes of course, so she did and was much relieved.

Surely, this ending of a climb was more civilised than the rush after the Matterhorn and isn't a convivial evening with good food and drink and talk heightened with the exhilaration of the day's excitements a part of the climb itself ?

Incidentally, some 20 years ago there had been a lively controversy about telephones in huts. Some of the larger huts had telephones; some were insisting that all huts should have phones as these were important in cases of accident. Others, purists, objected that huts were becoming far too hotel-like and phones were the beginning of the end of peace in the mountains. Needless to say, the pro-telephones won.

The SAC has recently launched a programme for getting volunteers to help gardien. Youngsters can spend a week or two in a hut to help the gardien; they get valuable experience, a mountain holiday with some climbing, and some advantages in other huts in the months to come.

Alps and Himalaya have one problem in common: garbage and toilets. When huts in the Alps received a moderate number of climbers, neither of these was a problem: a handy crevasse or a hole, or a fire solved the disposal problem. With the exponential growth of visitors, this is no longer acceptable. Experiments of chemical and solar toilets have been made, containers flown in and out by helicopters have been used; these are also being used for garbage. The problems haven't been solved but are being tackled.

Guides, Written and Human

For the beginner, there are climbing schools and there are courses organised by clubs and associations such as the SAC. In fact, one of the huts, the D'Orny, is specially equipped for courses with a meeting room and facilities. It is also, alas, a very popular hut with day-visitors as it is easily accessible by the telesiege of La Breya.

And then there are of course the guides, men of the mountains. I imagine that a hundred years ago, these guides were much at the stage that Sherpas and other peoples of the Himalaya are today: tough mountain people, natural climbers, willing to earn their living by helping clients to get up their mountain, enjoying their adventures at the same time. It is a risky and vulnerable occupation; no wonder that they are obliged to have a second occupation as well.

As with everything else, the costs of guides has rocketed; the practice of hiring a guide for a group has grown. Thus, on difficult climbs, limited to 6 or 8 participants, the SAC sometimes engages a guide who leads the first rope.

Some idea of the costs can be gained from the following current rates of guides in Chamonix, Grindelwald and Zermatt. The costs are given in Swiss francs. Chamonix: for a day, Frs. 370; for a ½ day: 270; Mt. Blanc by the normal route: 900; Aiguille de Geant: 450; the Aiguille deI'M and the Petit Charmoz: 370; the Clochetons: 320. If you take a Chamonix guide to the Matterhorn: 1000. From Grindelwald, the rates are: Eiger (Mittelligi ridge, not the North Face): 890; Jungfau: 750 (or 450 each for two persons); 5 days in the Oberland: 980 per person, maximum of 6 persons. A helicopter tour of the Eiger North Face: 120; of the Eiger-Monch-Jungfrau: 200. Staying in huts costs roughly Frs. 60 for the night with dinner and breakfast. The rates for Zermatt guides is being revised but at present they are: Matterhorn (by the Hornli ridge) 730; Castor and Pollux: 630; Dent Blanche: 850; Allalinhorn: 590.

Like huts, guides vary. Raymond Lambert was the first guide I knew and we became friends, our contacts continuing long after he had ceased being a guide. When I was preparing to go to the Himalaya, he accompanied me to Ernest Hofstetter's sports shop to advise me on the material to get. When he decided he was too old to be a guide any more, he qualified as a pilot and began another career. Raymond was a celebrity not only in Geneva but also in the climbing community the world over. Indeed, I count myself fortunate that through mountains, I could count three Genevese celebrities as friends: Raymond, Loulou Boulaz and Rene Dittert.

Another guide who became a personal friend was Bruno Schaerer of Geneva, who accompanied a group from the SAC for a week in the Oberland one summer. When we were rained in one day, we played chess and he won every game. He was in the construction business and when we moved to a new apartment in 1980, he re-did it for us.

The guide that I got closest to was Fabian Avanthey of Champery. A tall, distinguished looking man, he had a wide variety of interests: birds, animals and nature. His collection of minerals and fossils was a museum in itself. I learnt something of the guiding profession and its difficulties from him. When we were on the way to spend a week at the Trient hut, we heard cries for help. Just above us, a man lay prone on a steep scree slope. Fabian went up, got him to his feet and brought him down to our path. The man was unhurt; he had been on a slightly higher path, had slipped and fallen on the scree. Whenever he tried to get up, stones rolled under him and scared him. He had not been in any danger but was frightened to death. When he had stopped gasping, Fabian gave him a severe dressing down. 'You're not even equipped for walking in the mountains,' he said. 'Look at your shoes. Do you think you're going dancing? If you aren't used to the mountains, get a guide to take you or stay at home.'

After we had gone on a while, I asked Fabian why he had been so severe with the poor frightened tourist. 'Oh', he said. 'These people annoy me. They are too mean to hire a guide; they cause accidents and get the mountains a bad name. I shouted at him because I wanted him and his kind to realise that mountains are not for fooling around in but must be taken seriously.'

On the other hand, a few days later in the hut, an English couple asked us for information on the climb they were hoping to do. We were going to another peak but part of the way across the glacier was the same. Fabian invited them to join us for that section, pointed out just where they had to go and what they should look out for. Incidentally, that couple - both school teachers - had an interesting solution to an unexpected problem. One day, snow and fog kept us hut-bound. They had only one paperback between them; so he would read a couple of pages, tear them out and hand them to her.

On another occasion, we left the Salanf hut for the Tour Saliere at 4 a.m; the first part was a tortuous way among rocks and boulders. Just after we left, Fabian said, 'We're going to go very fast for a few minutes; don't lag behind.' Our burst of speed lasted about 15 minutes and he then explained. 'Those two men who were talking with us last night were behind us. It's difficult to find one's way here, so they were following us. Let them pay for a guide if they need one, otherwise let them find the way themselves.' I made several other climbs with Fabian and when I wanted to take my son on the Aiguilles Blanches, I naturally asked Fabian to come with us; Fabian's last days were unhappy; he spent many months of sickness in hospitals and homes.

I've been with guides in the Oberland, the Grisons, the Valais, the Haute Savoie, but there was only one, a Chamonix guide, with whom I established no rapport. He was surly and obviously in a great hurry to finish the climb and rush down to his next client. Towards the end, I paid him off and told him I would go down at my own speed.

Then there are the guide books. Every climb has been described and documented, and guide books will tell you almost every hand and foot hold you must use. This doesn't make climbing quite as easy as it sounds, because I have never found anyone who could climb and read his guide book at the same time. Having got some idea of the climb through a guide book is very helpful but you still have to work out your own route.

Here is an extract (translation mine) from Vol. IV of the SAC Guide to the Alpes Valaisanne (the series was prepared originally by Marcel Kunz; the 4th edition of 1970 from which I quote was revised and enlarged by Maurice Brandt²). These are extracts from the description of the Jagigrat ridge :

 

From the Weismies hut, get to the foot of the couloir Puiseux (20 min.; itinerary 1061 on the sketch). Go up the steep but easy couloir to the little col (3093 m) at the NE foot of the Jagihorn (I hr.) With two rappels (can be avoided) and a very narrow and airy ridge, you go down to a breche at the foot of the Jagiturm (3370 m) (III +). This tower can be climbed easily. From the summit, descend again (III) (a rappel) to get to the foot of the Grand Gendarme, a double needle

I've chosen the Jagigrat because of the very pleasant day I spent on it. Incidentally, isn't there something particularly pleasing about a ridge? With a summit, you go up and then down and sure, it's great fun. With a ridge, you go up and down and up and down again and again; somehow there is more of the excitingly unexpected in it. It doesn't sound so impressive when you recount your climb, and this is another source of perverse pleasure.

In the Himalaya, apart from the prestigious peaks at high season, the route is not usually tracked. For me, half the fun of climbing Mrigthuni was that we had to work out our own route. Even if you are on a peak that has been climbed before, the chances are that there would be no trail to follow. Perhaps next to the ubiquitous hut, that is the major difference between the Alps and the Himalayas. In the Alps, most climbs are marked in some fashion or the other. On glaciers and snow, there are tracks where people have preceded you; even after a heavy snowstorm, tracks are quickly established. On rock, countless boots - originally with tricounis and later with vibram soles - have marked the rock.

Which doesn't mean that you can't get lost. I can remember at least three occasions when I succeeded, with uncanny skill, in losing the way. On two occasions, it was not serious; both were on descents and we were able to retrace our steps before it was too late. The third occasion was more serious.

One weekend the SAC's planned trip to the Dent de Requin, one of the Chamonix needles, was cancelled because of bad weather. Sunday turned out to be reasonably fine so Richard and I decided to go the Clocher Clochetons above Chamonix, opposite Mt. Blanc. The Clochetons are five 'clock towers' within half an hour or so of a téléphérique station. I had done the traverse of these E to W with Raymond Lambert a few years ago. 'I'll show you', I said to Richard. 'We'll do it the other way, W to E.' I should have known that hubris goes before a fall.

The first tower was the highest; I went up, round the edge on to the face where you suddenly had a 80 m drop below you. There was an easy crack up the middle of the face; full of confidence, I went straight up until the crack got narrower and narrower and I could go no further. I had been on this face before, to admit defeat would be to lose face. So I jammed my knee in the crack and went up - one step. Then I couldn't unjam my knee, I was stuck good and proper. Looking down, I saw that just below I should have traversed to the right and got on to the edge of the tower. Too late, and struggling merely jammed my knee in more firmly.

The other leg began to tremble and fingers to ache and I wondered: what happens if I come off but my knee remains jammed? I called to Richard - round the corner so invisible - and gave our usual two tugs on the rope. He could only half hear me, but knew something was wrong. He fixed a belay and climbed up, got his shoulder under my heel, pushed and freed my leg. Relief! While he went down to undo his belay, I traversed and went up. When he joined me on the top, we sat for half an hour without speaking.

Alpinists in the Himalaya

With the coming of mass tourism, large numbers of alpinists have come to the Himalaya to be enchanted with the trekking and climbing. Les Alpes, the Journal of the SAC sometimes looks more like a Himalayan Journal than one focusing on the Alps. There is hardly an issue without at least one major article on the Himalaya. For instance the most recent issue, that of October 1999, had an article on Everest (the finding of Mallory's body), one on Makalu which had just been climbed by Andre Georges in his quest of the magic 14; and one on the reduction in trekking fees in Nepal.

In addition, there are advertisements in all mountain journals for trips to the Himalaya. Here are samples. Annapurna Roundtour, Frs. 4860, 22 days; Langtang/Gosaikund Frs. 4880, 22 days; Trekking Gokyo-Khumbu with a peak 6189 m: Frs. 5380, 24 days; Muztagh Ata , 47 persons, Fr. 7900, 30 days; Expedition Ama Dablam, 4 persons, Fr. 9200, 35 days.

For the Europeans, the Himalaya are no longer the preserve of the rich and the leisurely; they have become accessible to the ordinary person and with a time span that can be fitted into a normal vacation period. In past days, a major part of a holiday period spent in the Himalaya was spent in trekking to and from the mountain; this has changed. It used to be that 'real' technical climbing was limited to the Alps; this is no longer so. And yet another factor bringing the Alpinist and Himalayanist closer is that trekking seems to have become immensely popular in the Alps.

Many of the problems of the two ranges are now the same, most resulting from mass tourism: crowding, garbage and toilets to name the most unpleasant and difficult ones. Perhaps in the years to come, not only will many alpinists enjoy holidays in the Himalaya, but the search for solutions to similar problems will also become a cooperative effort.

SUMMARY

Recollections of the author about his visits to the Alps and Himalaya.

 

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