Struck by lightning on the Aiguille du Chardonnet - 12546ft (3824m) | ||||||||||||
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Introduction | ||||||||||||
-Jammed ropes | ||||||||||||
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Our ropes fell 200ft (60m) short of the shoulder. The four of us ended up huddled awkwardly on a small icy ledge with another full abseil below us. Out of the confines of the gully, we found ourselves exposed to a freezing wind. The ropes disappeared upwards, pressed against slabby rock as they bent round the gentle corner we'd just abseiled. I reached up to pull the rope down but the friction between the ropes and the rock made it too hard for me to get the rope to move. JC grabbed the rope and we both hauled as hard as we could. We stretched the rope considerably but it didn't budge. I think the Dutch may have joined in but the ropes wouldn't move. My heart sank. The knot must have jammed in a crack. One of us would have to climb back up to free the knot. They were our ropes and JC had a knackered leg, so with no need for discussion I reluctantly headed back up. I was scared on my climb back up. To save time I had not attached myself to the rope. I used the jammed ropes when I couldn't find holds on the rock. My breathing came in quick short gasps as I half climbed and half heaved my way back up to the abseil anchors. When I reached the anchors I could see that the knot wasn't jammed in anything. It looked as if it might be catching a wrinkle in the slabby rock slightly, that was all. There was so much friction between the rope and rock it was very difficult to slide the rope. After much strength sapping tugging I moved it just enough so that the knot was slightly below the only possible catching point on the compact rock. Then I prepared to abseil back down the ropes once more. I heard another deep rumble. At first I thought it was more thunder but it went on too long. Probably disturbed by the incredible torrent of hail, an avalanche of rocks suddenly burst from the mist high above. Some were as big as footballs and funnelled by the gully they bounced violently towards me. They smashed into the rocks lining the gully with such force that spurts of rocky dust and bright orange sparks flew. A few rocks were spinning furiously. They emitted a menacing, spikey, buzzing hum as their irregular shapes zipped through the air like powerful catherine wheels. The rock fall reached me before I could move. As the first rocks passed me, the marked doppler shift of their sound was testimony to their speed. I was a little above the gully bed and all the rocks crashed past just below, leaving me unscathed. The rock fall left the air filled with dust and a burning, gunpowder like smell from the fiery impacts. The other three, waiting safely above the shoulder, probably weren't aware of the rock fall. It passed well below them, out of sight in the gully. By the time I'd abseiled back down I'd probably been gone 20 minutes. The Dutch pair were hunched against the cold and shivering. JC also looked like he was suffering. The burn hole in his trousers meant his leg was cruelly exposed to the cold. They were all freezing on the exposed ledge and desperate to get down. We hauled on the rope again. No matter how hard we all pulled it refused to move. I hated the thought of climbing back up again. Shaking from the cold JC said he didn't want to wait for me to have another go at freeing the ropes and we decided to leave the ropes behind. We asked the Dutch for their rope to extend our abseil. We knotted the ends of our ropes together and threw them down the slope. We threaded the Dutch rope through this loop so their doubled rope would get us further down the slope. We would pull their rope down after us. The Dutch let us know that we could join them on it when we finally reached the crevassed ice below. When we reached the end of the ropes we were 100ft (30m) above the shoulder. The remaining ground to the shoulder was very steep and icy. A slip could mean a long and dangerous fall down the mountain probably into a bergschrund or crevasse. One by one we carefully abseiled off the end of the ropes and facing in to the slope, slowly front pointed down the ice. Nobody slipped and we all arrived on the shoulder. | ||||||||||||
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