Sunday, March 10, 2024

Indomitable

Sorry this is a bit late for International Women’s Day, but Nicole Niquille really does deserve a day to herself. An interview in the latest edition of the Swiss Alpine Club’s bimonthly magazine brings us up to date with her story. 



Back in the 1980s, Niquille was one of Switzerland’s top alpinists – notice that the phrase isn’t “top female alpinists”. She went to K2 in 1985 and Everest in 1986, qualifying as a mountain guide, the first Swiss woman to do so, in the same year. “There was no feminist motive, I just wanted to live in the mountains,” she is quoted as saying in the interview.

Eight years later, on a Sunday evening in May 1994, her life changed forever. While she was picking mushrooms just a few hundred metres from her house, a falling stone hit her on the head. When she woke up in hospital, she was a paraplegic. 

During the next two years, she had to relearn everything, from speaking to moving her fingers and limbs. Despite all her efforts, she could not learn to walk again. Yet the mountains continue to give her strength: "When I freeze at night and can't pull up the blanket, I think of the nights in the airy tent on K2." 

“You never accept your disability, but you have to live with it,” Niquille says. Living with it meant, in this case, opening “Chez Nicole”, a mountain hostelry which she has run since 1997 with her husband Marco on the banks of Lac de Taney at an altitude of 1,408 metres. 

The restaurant led, in turn, to her next project. One of her kitchen helpers, a Nepalese Sherpa, told her about her sister Pasang Lhamu Sherpa. In April 1993, Pasang was the first Nepali woman to reach the summit of Everest, but lost her life while descending. 

Deciding to get involved, Niquille set up a foundation and invested 100,000 francs of her disability capital in building a hospital at Lukla, the starting point for treks to the Everest region. Opening its doors in 2005, the hospital runs on funds raised by Niquille’s foundation, about 450,000 francs annually.

Without the accident, Niquille says, she “would have led a different life and the hospital in Lukla would not exist”. For herself, she has no regrets: “There is no happiness or unhappiness in life, only people with different life stories,” she says. 

And even if she were to be offered the use of her legs again, she would accept this only every other day. “That way I would really appreciate them and I would know exactly what I had to do on the days I was able to walk.”

References

«J’ai dû trouver une utilité à ma chaise pour pouvoir l’accepter» Rencontre avec Nicole Niquille, interview by Martine Brocard in Les Alpes/Die Alpen, the bimonthly journal of the Swiss Alpine Club, edition 1/2024.

Hard core (3)


While climbing Les Ecrins by the south-east face, the extreme alpinist André Roch (1906-2002) encountered loose rock:

The climb became complicated, slabs succeeded cracks and the wall was always sheer and exposed. The clearest recollection I have of this ascent is the following. Somewhere Gréloz got up on to a big block at the foot of a wall. He was able to reach hand holds at the top of the wall and was endeavouring to pull himself up. Hardly had he taken his feet from the big block when over it toppled, disappearing into space. This time I really thought Gréloz must fall, but he remained hanging by his hands and then succeeded in pulling himself up. Once he was safe I reassured him by explaining that I had had him well belayed round a rock the whole time. It was then my turn to go up, and the minute I left my famous belay, it too disappeared into space. This goes to show that the south-east face is not exactly sound. We had a good laugh over this adventure, which had caused us considerable agitation.

References

André Roch, Climbs of My Youth, Lindsay Drummond London, 1949. Header image is a photo by André Roch of climbers on the north face of the Dent Blanche, published in Mountaineering in Photographs by André Roch, Adams and Charles Black, London 1947.

Hard core (2)


While bivouacking during the first descent of the Aiguille du Dru’s north face, the extreme alpinist André Roch (1906-2002) dreamt that the mountain itself had taken on a personality:

Sitting back to back on some stones we endeavoured to sleep, but in my state of feverish over-excitement my thoughts ran thus:

The Dru is so beautiful, so graceful, so radiant in the sunshine when he thrusts upwards into the blue sky. But now he is terrible, gigantic, furious, as he leans over us. He is a demon—a cyclops perhaps. At times it grew lighter and I could see his head, but I could not make out whether he had two eyes or only one. The black, streaming muscles of his chest, towered over us. How huge and frightening he was! Were he to see us, he would be infuriated and, with one flip, would send us down to the Nant Blanc glacier.

But, old Dru, you can’t see us, and you can’t touch us with your foolish great stones hurtling down some sixty feet wide of us. Hush! not a word—something’s going to happen. He is stirring. A fierce wind howls. It must be the hour when old man Dru takes his shower.

And sure enough, a veritable water spout poured down; and how pleased he seemed to be! Crouching on our perch we caught it full force without daring to move.

Wait a bit, Dru, old fellow; we may be small, but we still have some tricks up our sleeve and among them more than another 300 feet of rope still untouched.

Gradually the moon rose and then dawn broke. The old Dru cannot have slept much and, because of his queer notion of taking a shower at two in the morning, we hadn’t slept at all. But this was no time to argue with him. We tried to swallow some squares of chocolate, but without success. We could see the glacier, which was not far away. Beneath us opened an immense chimney some 300 feet high, down which we resumed our long series of rappels. Weakened by so many trials, feverish, stiff and trembling, we slid painfully down the length of our wet line. Beneath the continuous cascades of water that splashed the entire wall, we discovered a bed of crystals. There on a ledge I espied an enormous smoked specimen. But to get at it I should have had to stride round a tricky crack, and I preferred to give up the gem…

References

André Roch, Climbs of My Youth, Lindsay Drummond London, 1949. Header image is a photo by Georges Tairraz of the north face of the Petit Dru, published in Mountaineering in Photographs by André Roch, Adams and Charles Black, London 1947. 

Hard core (1)


The extreme alpinist André Roch (1906-2002) started learning his trade at an early age. His autobiographical work, Climbs of My Youth, explains ….

When I was ten my father had already introduced me to mountaineering. In summer we would stay at some centre for excursions and on Sundays in the spring and autumn we would explore the Préalpes or the Saléve.

One day a solitary climber had fallen on a climb on the Saléve known as the “Grande Varappe’”’ and the rescue party had brought him down on a stretcher to a quarry shed at the foot of the mountain. We were passing, and my father was called in to certify the man’s death. As my brother and I were full of ardour and enthusiasm for climbing, my father decided to let us see the body, in order to give us food for reflection. As far as I can remember the dead man was in a pitiable state, but nothing very dreadful was visible; he was tied to the stretcher and well wrapped up in tarpaulin. Half the face was smashed in, but the whole head was muffled up so that we could not see much, One leg was broken and the shoe that stuck out from beneath the wrappings could be twisted about in any direction; and this my brother and I did each in turn. The bloodstains were dry and coagulated and did not look very bad.

Nearby, over a drink, the rescuers were discussing the accident, and judging from their conversation, they had had great difficulty in.recovering the body and getting it down. When my father had finished we continued on our way. He asked us what we thought about it all, and I replied that it had rather spoiled our taste for anything much that day.

My father said nothing, but he judged that the effect had been slight and would not be lasting.


References

André Roch, Climbs of My Youth, Lindsay Drummond London, 1949. The header image is the frontispiece from this edition: Roch was as talented a mountain photographer as he was an alpinist. 

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Images and ink (53)



Image
: Everest and Makalu at sunset, image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure. 

Ink: A Centenary Tribute to the Alpine Club, by Arnold Lunn, published by the Swiss Foundation for Mountain Research (1957).

The Makalu expedition, precisely because it was a model of organisation, lacked drama ... A famous journalist asked the expedition leader Jean Franco hopefully whether there had not been any incidents. “Alas!” replied Franco, “there was no crevasse into which we fell, no avalanche which swept away our camp. At 8,000 metres. we felt as though we were on the summit of Mont Blanc. Nine of us reached the top. Three ascents in three days. You can’t call that a conquest. And we didn’t even have frozen feet.” “Well, then,” said the journalist, “nothing happened.” “But what he did not ask,” comments Franco, “was why nothing happened.”

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

A meizanologist's diary (59)

17 January: in the supermarket, we spot a stall setting out red beans for Setsubun, the day before spring arrives in the old calendar (this year it’ll fall on 3 February). The “lucky beans” have been endorsed, perhaps even blessed, by the yamabushi up on Haguroyama, one of the three sacred mountains of Dewa. 


The mountain mystics are irrepressible. According to Carmen Blacker in The Catalpa Bow, a study of shamanistic practices in Japan, the Meiji government proscribed the Shugendō order in 1873 under legislation designed to suppress all cults in which Shinto and Buddhism were mixed. But the yamabushi held out until more liberal times by associating themselves more closely with Buddhist sects. 


After the war, Blacker adds, “several new groups made their appearance under the title of Shugendō”. And now, apparently, the Haguro sect is promoting demon-deterring legumes in a supermarket near you. They're full of beans again, these yamabushi ...

Thursday, February 15, 2024

A meizanologist's diary (58)

 15 January: while driving us into the foothills of the Hakusan range, the Sensei debriefs me on my solo visit to Adatara. She isn’t impressed by my route-finding expedients: “You know,” she says, “you can’t rely on following tracks in a whiteout – even your own footprints could be snowed over in half an hour.”



There's no time to reply – heck, she’s right – as we’ve reached the trailhead for Toritate-yama (1,308 metres). Except for us, the carpark is empty on this grey Monday morning, and snow is already swirling down. Yesterday, under skies of a flawless winter blue, probably a hundred people skied and snowshoed up this mountain.


“Well, at least we’ll have a trail to follow,” I say to the Sensei as we put our snowshoes on. And, indeed, something like a trench seems to lead off through a deserted holiday village and up into the forest. Half an hour later, we are still following the trench, now lightly snowed over, as it takes us across a plateau towards the summit slopes of Toritate.


Next, a wide track zig-zags up through the trees. Although there’s still a trench to show us the way, the going becomes harder as we gain height and the snow deepens. So I’m glad to hear voices behind us; they must belong to the three men who arrived by car at the trailhead just as we left. Surely we’ll be able to hand over the lead soon…


The track ends, and we start climbing a ridge. The wind gets up, as it must ever since Daniel Bernoulli of Basel (1700-1782) discovered his effect, driving the snowflakes into our face – these aren’t the fine spicules that sand-blasted me on Adatara a few days ago, but crisply formed and quite substantial six-pointed snow crystals, courtesy of the Japan Sea coast's maritime climate. So they sting.


Now the trench we've relied on fades into nothing – overnight, the wind and snow have effaced the tracks of a hundred people. The Sensei makes no comment: I suspect that, as a professional teacher, she is thinking that this will be a heuristic experience for me. So I weave an erratic path between the trees, feeling out the firmer footing left in the snow compacted by yesterday’s hordes. 


That works, more or less, until we emerge from the shelter of the woods on the windward side of the ridge – in this treeless gap, the brisk northerly has piled the snow into fluted drifts and dunes, with knee-high scarp walls. Even with our snow shoes, we find ourselves wallowing as if through a gigantic cake of mochi


The local mountaineering term  猛ラッセル (mō rasseru) floats to mind,  as in frenetic, rasseru as in the Russell Car & Snow Plow Company, incorporated in the state of Maine in 1893. As the firm's brochure proudly stated, “Russell snow plows have now been most successfully used in all kinds of snow, both East and West … they should not be confounded with the many other kinds of snow plows that have proven more or less inefficient when hard work was to be done …”

Russelling the way it used to be
Image: courtesy of the Glenbough Archives

Anxious not to be confounded as more or less inefficient when hard work is to be done, I russell my way frenetically onwards through the drifts.  Yet my efforts seem to be all but nugatory. At this rate, we'll be lucky to make the summit at all – where are the three young guys behind us, I wonder. Their voices seem to have faded out. 

At least the work is keeping us warm; I’m already wearing everything I have, including the outer jacket reserved for high alpine weather. In Scotland, you’d call these “full conditions”; here in Hokuriku they’re just the default setting.


After administering a heuristic dose of the mochi treatment, the mountain gives us a break. Higher up, the wind has blasted the snow into a firm crust, into which the steel teeth of our snowshoes bite eagerly. The summit is a snowy pate, open, treeless – we pay it the briefest of visits, as there is no view to admire. “Now all we have to do is follow our tracks home,” I’m tempted to say, but think better of it. 

In the car park, we meet the trio who had been following us up. One of them had started to get exposure – something to do with his jacket getting soaked through and then freezing – and had completely lost awareness. He was still looking a bit dazed, but his companions had managed to bring him down safely.

What was it that the taxi driver on Adatara said about the winter mountains … ?