A Game of Patience

The Northeast Summit of the Rooster Comb

BERNARD AMY, Club Alpin Français Translated by H. Adams Carter

BECAUSE one day follows another in the diary you write out yonder it would seem necessary to recount the arrival, Base Camp, the intermediate camps, the assault, the summit. But what is the use? The peak’s name is in the title and that tells it all. The camps? The photo will show them. Why wear out words that are already so old that you can scarcely read them. When we left home, we knew what Alaskan climbing was like. And others know too.

If I were standing in front of those to whom one tells a tale long afterwards — already now the calendar is partly effaced; there remain only shapes and colors, memories of cold, light, sun or snow — if I were in front of them, I should only let images come to light. Like ancient sketches that you look at again, mixed up, but from which order finally emerges.

One time, it was the beginning, Patrick and Jean-Raymond came back down the face. Herbert and I were waiting for them at the newly established glacier camp. It was raining. On the wall it must have been snowing. We wondered if the fixed ropes on the Sérac Pitch would be covered when we went up for our turn. It had been beautiful weather in the morning. Patrick and Jean-Raymond had reached the first rock barrier above the great snow slope. From below, we had seen them move upward. They had stopped below a cliff, Mask Cliff. Then they had waited there the whole day without our knowing why. One of them — but which one? — had remained stretched out flat, scarcely moving … It was raining. They came from under the low, scudding clouds, slowly, with the pace of men who are too tired to protect themselves from the rain. On their faces was that immense lassitude that came we knew not from where. They spoke in slow tones as if nothing was any longer pressing. “We climbed the flutes. It was terribly steep but it went well. When we got to the Mask, the weather was fine. We found a platform, narrow but big enough for two. When the sun struck the face full on, the first avalanches fell. That went on all day. We couldn’t go up or down. We were protected, but each time one fell, there was a deafening roar and a white curtain of snow right in front of us. We had to wait for the shadow before we could come down. Nothing is stable up there. It doesn’t freeze enough, and the Sérac Pitch is awfully exposed. Wait till evening to go up. Sooner, it’ll be too dangerous.”

That day we discovered that steepness was not the only obstacle. Our best technique alone was not enough. We’d have to be sly. We’d see whether we or the mountain would win out. To continue the climb, tactics were simple: to advance at night or late afternoon, to wait at the Mask the rest of the time and even to try to sleep there. But…

Vigil at the Mask Bivouac: Sometimes it snowed. Early that morning we had climbed, remaking the steps yet another time. The ropes at the Sérac were swelled with water and wet ice. Above we followed the principal flute: a narrow, icy toboggan chute with high concave walls on either side, striped with avalanche gouges. There was no escape. It was too early for ice to fall, but just the same ... “a little like a bob-run when you don’t know the race schedule.” When it snows you wait. On the slope sheltered from the wind and under the low, too luminous clouds, the temperature rises. Nothing budges on the slopes, but it is too dangerous to go back down. And higher up, the fixed ropes, dug out this morning before it snowed, must be covered again. The same work would have to be repeated again.

At the Mask, sometimes, though rarely, the weather is good. Then everything changes. The narrow prison of fog disappears. A new light rises from the neighboring snows. In the greatly enlarged space of the Ruth Amphitheater soar fantastic summits. You forget the bad weather, snow, uncertainty. Since Alaska is so beautiful, how can you hold a little rain and wind against it?

The discomfort of the bivouac brings you back to reality. Soon, in the evening and then all night, you’ll climb up and then back down again. You must be able to rest, stretch out, sleep. But the tent-bivouac is narrow. Outside, water drips from overhangs, the sun floods, clothes soak. The whole face is made for dripping water: great, steep slabs, inclined into space and covered with snow … Then, you wait and more often you start before the approved hour: on fixed ropes the slough slides are not as dangerous as they seem.

Another day we climb back up the slopes above the Mask at midnight or one o’clock, I no longer know which. Clouds envelop us and hide dawn. It darkens. There is nothing then but an end of rope on which the Jümars obstinately slip. It is snowing, to be sure, in cold squalls that stiffen clothing and attack fingers. With your face against the slope, you hold your tongue. You disengage the Jümar, warm it slowly, scrape the rope and reattach the Jümar, which finally bites, to let you gain a yard upward on this mountain the existence of which you begin to doubt. If it would only stop snowing, perhaps you could … No! Snow or no snow, you’re to fix some new fixed ropes and leave up there all the climbing gear you have.

Finally a great calmness took possession of us. On the wall it was snowing too hard. On the glacier we could only lose our way. There was nothing else to do but to wait it out at Don Sheldon’s Mountain House. Under rain gusts and snow squalls, an endless gray light blended day into night and made us lose track of the hours.

The weather is stuck. We shall leave tomorrow, or the day after. No-body knows. While we wait, we watch snow crush against the window panes and far out there dimly see the shapeless glacier, nearly indistinguishable from the clouds. Suddenly four black dots rise on the surface. We go out; we shout. Four climbers gain the flat where Don Sheldon landed us the other day. They stop and pitch a brightly colored tent. We wait. The snow keeps on. The four climbers have disappeared into their shelter.

We get to know them in the next days. We squeeze together on the benches of the Mountain House and all four of them sit down: Chris Bonington tells us of Annapurna. Jim McCarthy, Tom Frost and Sandy Bill speak of the Lotus Flower Tower, where we hope to go after the Rooster Comb. We are happy to share our meals with them. Outside the tempest continues. The wind drifts the snow against the panes. Inside the hut, there is a smell of drying wool and wet leather. Jim speaks French:

“Where were you on the Rooster Comb?”

“We were attacking the second half of the face. It’s the steepest part.”

“Will it go?” He was pointing up to the space now invaded by wind and cloud.

We shrugged our shoulders. “We don’t know. How can we know? We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Is this your first time in Alaska?”

“Yes, the first.”

“You know, climbing here is a game of patience.”

Patience? From the beginning we needed it.

On July 11 Don Sheldon had flown Patrick, Jean-Raymond and a part of the gear to the Ruth Amphitheater. On his return he announced that bad weather had settled in and he could not ferry the rest of us in. We waited until July 15, scanning the sky for a speck of blue to gain the peaks and escape from Talkeetna’s mosquitoes.

Scarcely were we at the Mountain House when we set out to recon-noiter. Patrick and Jean-Raymond had already placed a tent and supplies at the foot of the face. Not wanting to climb the long ridges, presently being attempted by an American team, we headed up the northeast slope of the left summit. The spur which bounds its whole height would be the most direct and doubtless the surest line to the summit ridge. On July 17 it snowed. Clouds clung to the Rooster Comb. Nevertheless it was too warm and the snow did not hold our weight. Joël and I crossed the bergschrund. After a difficult climb in the deep, heavy snow which we had to sweep aside by hand, we got to a rock band under a large snow slope. Above, the only possible route seemed to be at the edge of the rock, a very steep ice couloir. A huge sérac of doubtful solidarity overhung. We left this obstacle for Herbert and François to pass.

Until the 21st the rope teams kept working one after the other on the wall despite very unstable weather. We climbed as it snowed. It cleared

only for moments. Sometimes blue sky appeared, but clouds hugged the summits and bad weather returned. It was not cold enough. Avalanches were heavy, with wet snow, dangerous. The whole slope above the Sérac was fluted with little gullies: this was the Railroad Classification Yard. The point where the tracks converged, which we had to cross each time, was the Grade Crossing. The Mask Bivouac with its granite overhang was the only safe place on the whole route.

Above the Mask, Joël and François climbed a second snow slope to reach the Rock of the Midnight Sun. Suddenly there were extreme difficulties. If the snow had been good, despite the steepness, all would have gone well. But here conditions were bad. The deep, unstable snow was so unattractive that the pair preferred to climb the ice in the bottom of the flutes.

On July 20 Herbert and I passed the rock band. On the 21st Patrick and Jean-Raymond barely had time to climb the third snow slope. Bad weather had returned, so violent that we took refuge in the hut. Patrick and Jean-Raymond described to us difficult pitches through a succession of very steep snow ribs and icy channels. “They aren’t ice flutes. You have to call them snow flutes.”

The storm lasted a week. On July 28 the weather finally cleared. All six of us rushed for the face. It was unrecognizable. Avalanches had filled bergschrunds, dug couloirs and effaced pitches. Around us we “discovered” the peaks of the massif. They gleamed with new snow, plastered even on vertical rock.

François and Herbert broke trail and freed the fixed ropes. Jean-Raymond and I set up Bivouac II on a platform carved into a steep snow ridge and lugged gear. After a difficult climb up the third rock band, Joël and Patrick ascended tough new ice flutes to a hollow under a rocky island. Dead Man's Hole. The tempest returned, but the two kept on: after the most difficult rope-lengths on the whole route — pitches of vertical rotten ice — they finally reached the horizontal ridge which led to the summit cap. The wind was so strong that they could not continue. On the night of the 30th we were back at the hut, soaked to the skin and both happy and discouraged. We had reached the ridge; the next assault was for keeps. But would there be a next one? We had to return to Talkeetna on August 8.

The next day, then the day after, it rained. On August 2 it suddenly turned fine. That very night we were at the Mask. During the night, now blacker than earlier in the year, we loosened fixed ropes. Then it began to snow, but at dawn we emerged from the clouds in the biting cold that ushers in lovely weather. The cornices of the ridge, the dizzying flutes of the slope which we were finally conquering bathed themselves in red. Above us, François cut through a last snow overhang, struggled for a moment and balanced on the crest. Suddenly the sun struck us.

Afterwards there was nothing left but a fantastic tight-rope walk above a slope that had disappeared below us, a slow, airy dance on the most beautiful ridge you can imagine. Alaska stretched out to the horizon and drew us along in its slow drift. The light carried us aloft. Everything was evident, simple. We weren’t even astonished at arriving at the summit. Huntington and McKinley stood in front of us, motionless, obviously so used to waiting there that they no longer seem to wait. We were on our Rooster Comb, doubtless because we had learned patience.

Summary of Statistics:

AREA: Alaska Range, just south of Mount McKinley.

ASCENT : Rooster Comb’s northeast summit, 9680 feet, (not the highest point), August 3, 1971 (Abrial, Amy, Bleuer, Coqueugniot, Cordier, Ruph).

PERSONNEL: Jean-Raymond Abrial, Bernard Amy, Herbert Bleuer, Joël Coqueugniot, Patrick Cordier, Francois Ruph, Mademoiselle Marie-Francoise Gay.