Struck by lightning on the Aiguille du Chardonnet - 12546ft (3824m) | ||||||||||||
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Introduction | ||||||||||||
-To the summit | ||||||||||||
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The temperature had dropped further and I noticed that the plastic of my helmet cradle had stiffened in the continuing freeze. It creaked noisily by my ear and was a continual distraction. Some spare rope was tied in coils over my shoulder under my rucsack. It was digging in surprisingly painfully. I tried to ignore these irritants and concentrate on climbing. The summit still eluded us and we were constantly enveloped by cloud. A little snow began to fall. Like small balls of polystyrene it swirled about in the cold wind that eddied around the rocks. Then chillingly in the far distance, we heard the terrible and unmistakeable sound of thunder. The anxious knot in the pit of my stomach tightened. With snow already falling it might not be long before we were seriously threatened on the Chardonnet. We had to press on quickly. Our progress along the ridge had slowed as the cold, lack of visibility and technical difficulty forced us to take more care. Surely the summit could not be much further? Discouragingly I found myself climbing on rocks that once again were rising to yet another tower. 'Aaargh'... JC cried out suddenly, obviously in pain. He must have been hit by a falling rock. I spun round to see if he'd been badly hurt but I was bewildered to see him on the crest of the ridge where he could not have been hit by a stone. But something was clearly wrong. Mouth open he appeared stunned, on his face a look of troubled surprise. 'What is it'? I asked quickly. The gravity with which he delivered his reply left me in no doubt that he was deadly serious. 'Lightning' he said. Bewildered, I told him that I'd not seen or heard a thing. He explained that there had been a localised flash of light before his eyes accompanied by a sharp pain on the top of his head. He likened the pain to being rapped hard with the knuckles of a clenched fist and he mimed the action with a fast, powerful swipe of his arm. I was filled with dread of what this must mean. I realised the pain in my back and the creaking of my helmet were connected to JC's experience. Electricity in the air was discharging to earth through me. The point of my second axe (stowed by my back) must have been acting like a lightning rod. The pain in my back was being caused by an almost continuous stream of small sparks arcing across from the axe and through my clothes to my skin. The creaking I'd been hearing was the sound of this discharge. Later examination of my clothes revealed small holes in them, like cigarette burns. These holes all lined up with the pain in my back. We had a very brief conversation. Distant thunder and the electrical activity that we had experienced suggested that the clouds forming around were probably about to storm. On the crest of the arête on this high and isolated peak we were in a horrendous position. We had to get off the Aiguille du Chardonnet fast. There was no question of returning the way we'd come, it would take far too long. We had been on the ridge for hours, we must surely be close to the summit. Our planned descent route, the slightly easier west ridge, was the quickest way off. The Dutch pair appeared behind us whilst we were discussing our options. They both looked strained and conveyed that they too had been experiencing electrical activity. They clearly wanted to get down quickly. I felt extremely vulnerable up there and found it comforting that we weren't the only ones on the mountain. I sensed that the Dutch pair were also glad of our presence and we all moved off together. The next tower was an easier one to climb and at its top the ridge beyond angled gently downwards. In the grey gloom of the cloud we couldn't be absolutely sure, but this looked like the summit. Despite the enormous anxiety I was feeling I was still pleased to have summited. My spirits rose at the possibility of moving onto slightly easier ground and perhaps most importantly, we could lose some height. We didn't linger on the top. The ridge didn't rise again to another tower and it was clear that we had indeed just climbed over the summit of the Aiguille du Chardonnet. | ||||||||||||
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