Alps 101

— Peter Neame

You always remember the first time. For me, it was driving out of Geneva along a valley with huge cliffs on either side, heading for the Alps. Quite excited.

“Oh look— the Aiguille de Bionnassay, the Aiguille des Glaciers— and there’s Mt Blanc. And the Aiguille du Midi!”

There they were—beautiful mountains, rising pristinely to 14,000 feet above the Alpine Mecca of Chamonix. Eric, who had a driver’s license and a car, and had been driving for well over 20 hours from our home base of Liverpool and was exhausted, asked, “How do you know that? You’ve never been here!”

“Well, when I was supposed to be studying for exams, I was reading the guidebooks.”

After a bit, we started winding our way up a two-lane road, cursing the occasional slow-moving traffic. The view now vanished—bits of this road still exist, but it has now been gobbled up by a huge, fast four-lane road. This may be speedier, but it makes the Mecca of Extreme Adventure just a bit too accessible. Progress. In those days, I don’t recall anyone calling it a Mecca of anything, and extreme adventure was mountaineering and skiing. It wasn’t “adventure” either— just something one did. Guiding had been a local business ever since the first crazy mountaineers appeared in the 19th century. Now, hang gliding, helicopter rides, mountain biking, canyoneering, long-distance mountain running, and massive tourism are all on the menu. The guiding industry is huge. Back then, there was the occasional bus of Japanese tourists, but nothing like now. Everything has become so organized, with proper queues and tickets for time slots on the plethora of uphill transports. The French queue was a wonderful thing in those days—a sort of wedge-shaped mass of people, all pushing just a little bit. Somehow, it worked, although you really had to become French. Not the done thing if you were a stifled Brit, Swiss, or German, where pushing was just not the thing.

We found Snell’s field, the squalid patch of grass among the trees, just a mile outside Chamonix, owned by the owner of one of the local climbing equipment shops. And free camping! About half the climbers in Chamonix from the UK called this home for the summer—the other half of the UK climbers lived in equally squalid conditions among some trees much closer to town, like a population of recluses, trying to stay out of sight of the Gendarmerie, who really didn’t approve, but couldn’t usually be bothered to do anything. A higgledy-piggledy crowd of tents and makeshift shelters, in a clearing with trees around it—as the summer progressed became more and more unsanitary. There were no toilets and water was from a little bubbling mountain stream that served the paying, but equally squalid campsite next door that surrounded the Pierre d’Orthaz. This was a huge boulder about 25 feet high that served as an assembly point for the skilled climbers to show off and the less skilled climbers, like us, to attempt to emulate them.

No one was around when we arrived.

“Where is everyone?”

“Oh, there was a big fight in the Alpenstock last night and everyone has scarpered up the hill in case the Gendarmerie raids us.”

Which they did from time to time.

There was a certain amount of abandonment of social norms, apart from the general squalor. Later in the summer a group of, er, residents, were gathered around chatting about this and that—mostly about what climbs were “in condition.” This meant what objectives were least likely to try and kill you. A couple of Spanish lads wandered up.

“Excuse me, can you camp here?”

“Yes, just put up a tent in a clear spot.”

“It is free?”

“Yes. Water is over there down that path in the trees.” Pointing at the other campsite.

They seemed pleased. “Are there thieves here?”

This was met with gales of laughter, and I said, in my best effort at an upper class accent: “Of course not! We’re British.”

More gales of laughter. We never saw them again. Apparently, we had a reputation. Honestly, we weren’t nearly as bad as the Japanese climbers. We did have morals and ethics! At one point that summer, someone, unfamiliar with things, turned up with a keg of beer. Very welcome! But on interrogation:

“Where did you get it?” It turned out they had lifted it from outside the Bar Nationale.

“You can’t do that! That’s totally unacceptable.” One of the “senior” alpinists organized a collection from anyone who was around. The next day, he went into Maurice’s establishment.

“We heard you might have had a problem with a keg of beer?”

“Mais, oui—c’est terrible.”

“We organized a collection.” Minks then handed him a large pile of money, probably enough for him to get two kegs. Maurice was practically in tears. More of him later.

The first order of the day was to get some food. We didn’t know enough to know that the other important thing was to look at “La Météo,” posted in the main square next to the picturesque church.

The next day, we walked up “for a look” to the upper station of the Montenvers cog railway. This unique place with an astonishing view had been completed in 1909. It sat on a promontory above the Mer de Glace, a long glacier snaking down between the mountains. Typically, we would catch the train, but this wasn’t a serious trip to climb something. In the previous century, the glacier had gone all the way down to the valley, threatening local farms, but in the 1970s didn’t get close. Nowadays, it has dropped in depth by over 300 feet since we were there.

We pottered around on the ice, admiring the view, climbing the occasional piece of ice, and marveling at the crevasses. It was a “dry” glacier—no snow on the surface of the ice— and so what you saw was what you got. Pretty safe for a couple of alpine novices. Nowadays, it is still amazing, but quite different. It is covered, mostly, by a rubble of rocks with some fast-flowing rivers which eventually plunge down holes to re-emerge at the tip of the glacier. There were no surface rivers in the 1970s.

As it got hot, we went back down to the valley. Tomorrow, we were going to climb something. As we went down the really pretty path to the valley, we met some people coming up.

“If I were you, I’d turn right round and go back up. Tomorrow is going to be the last good day for a while.”

We listened to their advice, but naively thought, based on UK weather forecasts which were notoriously unreliable, that the doom-laden forecast was possible but not certain.

Next morning: pack climbing sacs, go into town for supplies, and this time, catch the Montenvers train back up. We repeated our trip from yesterday down to the ice and headed towards our objective, a very small wooden box on a ledge on the Aiguille du Grépon, about four or five hours away. The fact that there seemed to be almost no one heading up the glacier, and that clouds were building up, completely escaped our notice. While we didn’t know much, we did know that clouds built up in the mountains in the afternoon, so we were not immediately concerned. As we headed towards the small ice field below the Aiguille de Grépon, it started to rain. We plodded upwards. After a bit, and before we got significantly wet, we decided to spend the night under a boulder, still an hour or so short of our objective. At first light, we arose to a view of—nothing. Well, cloud. It can’t really be called waking up, as lying on a bed of rocks, under a rock, and being dripped on, was not conducive to sleep.

Oh. Drat. Those weather folks were right. It dawned on us that French weather forecasts, unlike British ones, might be accurate. We headed down. And so began a routine: wake up late, wander into town, get a couple of baguettes, a liter of unbelievably cheap wine, some cheese, and other sundries to round off a well-balanced diet. Go to La Météo. Attempt translation. Curse. Head to the Bar Nationale, the only place in town that was pleased to see les Anglais.

It rained, off and on, for two weeks and, when we next saw the mountains, they were just gorgeous. Covered in ice and snow like well-decorated cakes. Completely unclimbable until the snow and ice that plastered them had mostly melted.

While we waited for the mountains to clear, we amused ourselves by playing on the ice of the Glacier des Bossons next to the entrance road to the Mt Blanc tunnel—an amazing feat of engineering, a tunnel seven miles long under the highest mountain in the Alps, joining France and Italy. It had opened 10 years previously. The ice is long gone, a victim of global warming. It has retreated up the mountain a long way. There is just a giant trench of rubble where it used to be.

A word about Maurice, the owner of the Bar Nationale. He was probably about 50, but seemed old to us, in our late teens or early 20s. He didn’t speak much English, but enough to deal with a rather rowdy, mostly English-speaking clientele. Our French, of course, was pathetic. His eyesight was dreadful. We would hand him an amount of money that we estimated was about right. He would carefully peer at it, from a distance of about 6 inches, sorting out the coins that we had accidentally tried to use that were not French currency, and hand us any change. Or ask for more, whichever was appropriate. This was shortly after the French had done something to their currency that made one old Franc only worth 1/100th of a new Franc. The coins were still labelled “1 Franc”. Mightily confusing to a Brit after a beer or three and possibly a vin ordinaire or two—but not at all confusing to Maurice.

He would also help us with the difficult bits of the meteo – not always successfully.

“Bonjour! Deux bières, s’il vous plaît. Maurice, qu’est-ce que les poissons noirs dans le meteo?”

“Poissons noirs?”

“Oui – sur les sommets”

“Je ne sais – “black fish?”

By trial and error and with advice from our elders and betters, we worked out that black fish indicated that another beer should probably be ordered as we weren’t going anywhere tomorrow.

Some years later, we were leaving on New Year’s Day.

“Au revoir Maurice! Merci! Nous partons dans le matin.”

“You are leaving! You must have another beer.” And Maurice poured us a round of beers on the house. A lovely guy. I can still see him in my mind.

The Bar Nationale is still there, but Maurice sadly is not. His wife and his daughter dealt with food – a group of us ordered Steaks Frites. They arrived: nice steaks, French fries, and a nice salad. Yummy! Arco, looking at his, had a horrified expression on his face.

“I can’t eat this! It’s not dead!”

I have no idea how it is now, but then, you got the food the way it was supposed to be, not, as was the English custom, cooked to death and then some. We expressed our concern to Maurice’s wife, who looked as horrified as Arco. She picked up the offending plate and flounced back to the kitchen, returning a little later with a shrunken steak with a rather unappetizing crust of dried Bearnaise sauce on it and sort of slammed it down in front of Arco.

He beamed and tucked in. “Much better!”

While the USA and the UK are two countries sundered by a common language, the UK and France are two countries sundered by the English Channel, or La Manche if you prefer, and a very different approach to food. To the point where Brits would bring their food from the UK for a trip to the Alps. None of that expensive foreign muck for them, thank you very much. If it wasn’t from Sainsbury’s, it was highly suspect.

We did eventually climb the Grépon, more or less uneventfully. Our last climb for the summer. The descent was a different story. We went off route in cloud, and things got a bit more exciting, as we used the ropes to get over a vertical cliff that wasn’t supposed to be there. The ropes jammed when we pulled them down. After a little panic, we freed them. We just had to catch the last gondola down to the valley, so I bundled all our stuff into my sack, and we set off at speed, looking worriedly at the ice cliffs hanging above us.

Crash. We spun round— our worries were justified. Some of the ice had collapsed behind us, not uncommon late in the day—and we broke into a run as the ice blocks bounced towards us. Obviously, we survived and made good speed to the gondola station about an hour away. Eric, who had by far the lighter load, waved at me from the gondola station.

“Where are the tickets?”

“In my sack!”

I broke into a shambling run, getting there just in time before the operators went down without us. They were unusually cooperative and friendly, in that sort of supercilious, “you poor uncultured Brits,” way that only the French can do. We staggered into the gondola cabin, hanging precariously from its cable. The other passengers seemed impressed with these two exhausted-looking climbers, in spite of the fact that we had delayed things a bit.

As you do, as soon as we hit the valley 15 minutes later, and 3,000 feet below, we went for a beer. And by then, my first summer in the Alps, I knew that the French and British were actually very similar. Both absolutely convinced that they are the superior race.

Retired Biochemist, USF Professor, and mountain climber, Peter Neame, grew up in Great Britain, got his degree at Liverpool University, and moved to the U.S. in the 1970’s. His wide range of interests have led him to take numerous OLLI classes. The crag behind him is Clogwyn d’ur Arddu in North Wales – one of his favorite places. This fall Peter is leading the Great Decisions Foreign Policy Discussion Group with Ara Rogers. Meetings will be held in two sessions on Mondays from 1-3 p.m. Part 1: 9/22-10/1. Part 2: 10/27-11/17 • Online. Register here.