Our problems have already started, shortly before that, when we try to find the access into the narrow basin. According to the map, obscure tracks go from the village’s higher section to the brook that streams down from it (torrent de maudit, it says in blue letters), but the dotted line stops before it even reaches the stream. From Grimentz, where we parked the car in front of La Poste, the steep slopes are a mess, and we can’t find the track. We lose forty-five minutes by following a brook above the village, which eventually leads to the abandoned ski slopes to the west.
Only once we escape the woods and arrive at a rustic alpine pasture with a few crude, weather-beaten sheds do we see we’re not where we should be. More to the south, the narrow, V-shaped notch in the mountain range we are heading for now appears to be visible. Map check makes matters only more confusing, because we don’t see the obvious landmarks on the map anywhere physically around us. No wonder there’s so little info about the Maudit, I think. They haven’t exactly made it a walk in the park to get there. In the oh-so-cultivated, well-trodden Swiss Alps, this seems like a piece of virgin wilderness.
For a moment, I consider abandoning our whole plan, because instinctively it feels wrong that I have allowed myself to be fooled by my usual sense of direction. But Augustin cheerfully proposes to walk back to the village and search for the more southerly gully. I envy his carefree attitude and ability to find pleasure even in such a mistake, without any complaints or doubts.
That is how we end up in the place where I’ve taken the first GoPro photo, the one with the accès interdit sign. No wonder we couldn’t find it at first. The trail begins outside the village, on the far side of a sloping meadow, where supply sheds made of larch balance on round granite stones and corner posts. But by counting the farms and chalets on the map, we get back on track. The upward spur is practically indistinguishable and overgrown with dense vegetation, but this must be it.
Only then we stumble on the enclosure, which probably stakes out a private reserve for grazing cattle. Crossing the barrier isn’t that easy. A precarious tour along the barbed wire on the left brings us to a cliff above a waterfall that must be the Torrent de Maudit. This side, impassable. A ten-minute search leads us to a place in the woods further right, where the barbed wire is looser. By holding it up for each other and stepping on the lowest strand, we manage to worm our backpacks through, and then ourselves. It takes a while before we’re back on the steep path on the other side of the fence, but now we can get moving.
The second picture is taken much further up and is subtly more disturbing. Like the third, and then the fourth. You see, the photo report of our expedition to Le Maudit is fragmentary and incomplete, unlike all the other series of climbing photos on my external drive. It’s not your usual succession of action shots, sunset snaps, and obligatory summit panoramas.
[I didn’t attach them, but I don’t mind showing them to you if you insist, once you’re back. But I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. This morning I showed them to my parents. Dad asked me to, but I really didn’t want to, because I still haven’t told them any of what I’m telling you now—and I’m not planning to, either. But I gave in in the end, because there’s so much they don’t know as it is.
Both of them felt uneasy about looking. Mom didn’t finish the whole series; she pushed my iPad away before she’d seen them all, and turned away, unable to put into words why the blood had drained from her face. I think I can. It’s the same reason so many people find it difficult to look at the Schiphol selfies circulating on the internet of people about to board flight MH17. It’s in light of what happens just after the photo is taken that makes looking at it seem wrong. Selfies of the just-about-to-die. You know it, they don’t. It’s too intimate, a breach of privacy in the last, most transitory moment of their lives.
And there’s more. When you look at the pictures, you can’t help but think that you’re looking at the report of two doomed individuals who are more and more losing their grip on reality.]
Photo 2 is taken maybe two hours after the first. We’re now pretty far above the tree line and the sun is scorching the exposed slope. It’s a selfie of me, with Augustin higher up the slope behind me, in short sleeves and with a bandanna holding his long hair off his face. Photo 3 is taken another hour or so later and facing down. Much lower, Augustin is trudging up the slope against the background of the mountains across the valley. Photo 4 is another selfie, and by then, the sky has become overcast.
What’s disturbing about these pictures is that all three of them are crooked.
The sunny selfie is tilted to the right, and it’s only thanks to the GoPro’s wide-angle lens, which bends the horizon on the edges, that you can see, in the upper corner behind Augustin and me, the notch that is the entrance to the valley. But when you think about it, it’s strange, the angle from which I apparently took the picture. I don’t think I could have done it deliberately. Sport cam selfies from below and at an angle are one thing, but so crooked? In the next picture, the mountain range horizon is tilting sharply to the left, and in fact you could say that, as a photo, this is a total failure. And the second selfie is leaning to the right again. If you focus on these photos long enough, you’ll feel a bit nauseous, as if not only the photographer but also you are standing on the bobbing bow of a ship, without any landmarks, because everything around you is bobbing too, until you feel like you need to vomit over the handrail. [This is where both Mom and Dad fell silent while looking at the photos.]
Something else that’s disturbing is the way our faces and body language change.
What the photos don’t show, not directly at least, is the effort it took us to gain elevation. Even before we pass the tree line, the trail has simply ceased to exist. The only practicable passage in the jumble of intertwined spruces and larches is often blocked with piles of overgrown, decaying trunks. It looks like the logging took place years ago and has simply been left there, exposed to the elements and serving as soil for new life. Still, I can’t shake the thought that these are barriers, and that they are deliberate. An obstacle? Of course, it suddenly occurs to me—old avalanche dams. It makes the ascent grueling, and we lose more time. But that’s not the only thing that shows from our expressions.
In photo 2, you see my face in wide-angle perspective. My brow is furrowed in an undirected smile, bronzed by the sunlight, cheeks flushed from the physical exertion. Wisps of hair cling to my forehead, my lips are slightly parted. Augustin is standing higher up and looking down, past the camera, stone-faced. Nothing out of the ordinary here—a slight tension perhaps, because we’re trying to find our way through unknown terrain.
In photo 3, Augustin is lagging far behind. He’s hunched forward on his Black Diamonds like an old man, although the high angle seems to somewhat enhance the impression. His face is barely visible. The only remarkable thing about it is that from over here the shadows make his face seem deathly pale, with holes instead of eyes.