And on photo 4, he’s above me again.
He seems strikingly gaunt here. At the exact moment I take the picture, he turns away from the camera, and his disheveled hair stands out against the pale, overcast sky. My own face is now center-framed, and that is maybe the main reason why this photo feels so eerie. I look ashen, skin stretched tightly around sunken eyes and more-than-obvious uneasiness written all over my face—or call it numb fear, though you can see I’m doing my best to conceal it.
Because at that moment we’d just done a third map check, and this time we got into an argument about it. We can’t figure out where we are on the map. According to the altimeter on Augustin’s Seiko, we’re at 9,200 feet. I ask whether it’s possible the watch gives an overly high reading due to the reduced atmospheric pressure, but Augustin says it’s a GPS sensor. GPS communicates with satellites, and they are never wrong.
“But where are we, then?” I say, as I thrust the map into his hands. I’m frustrated, because I can’t understand it. If I look back down into the valley, I couldn’t wish for a better view of the surroundings. Still, the contour lines don’t seem to tally with the actual situation up here. The map says the nameless basin at the end of which the Maudit rises starts at 8,800 feet, but the col is still above us (from here it no longer looks V-shaped; more a flat, plateau-like pass). Or did we follow this gully too far up, and is the Maudit valley beyond another rib, more to the west? But then why doesn’t the shape match up?
If I look at it too long, I see spots before my eyes and notice that my head seems to float ever so slightly. I don’t understand it. I’ve never had any problems with orientation.
My doubts irritate Augustin. “What do you want to do about it? Half an hour tops and we’ll be on the col. We should be able to see the Maudit from there and then we’ll know where we are.”
“But look at the map. Can’t you see that it doesn’t add up, that we’re too high?”
“Can’t you see that the valley is up there? Look!” He swings his Black Diamonds at the notch.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
Augustin laughs scornfully. “Dude, what are you talking about? We’re just a little lost because there are no trails. Let’s go up, we can see better from there.”
He’s right. You climb, you see. You descend, you no longer see, but you have seen. I gaze past him at the col, at the steep, uninviting slopes that enclose the valley behind it, and at the sky, which is growing more overcast. Three choughs circle high above us on an invisible thermal. I notice I’ve got goose bumps on my neck and arms. I’m cold, now that I’m standing still, wearing only a sweaty thermal shirt. “Okay,” I finally say.
But I don’t feel okay; the chill has gotten into my head, and that is when I take the fourth picture, that is the chill the photo conveys to the viewer.
What the photos obviously don’t document is what goes on in my head during the last thirty to forty minutes before we reach the col. At least, that’s how short it must have been, even though it felt longer, much longer. Every time I look up at the col, I notice that I see spots before my eyes again, and it’s starting to make me feel dizzy. I suck my lungs full of air and try to clear my head, but before long, the sensation sinks down into my stomach. I lose my spirit, because I know this feeling all too well.
One of the greatest physical discomforts about mountaineering is the necessity to set off at night, when it’s cold and pitch-black, under the hypnotizing light of your Petzl headlamp. You have to take advantage of the colder-than-daytime temperatures. It’s vital to be off the glaciers around noon at the latest, when the sun turns firm snow bridges on invisible crevasses into lethal pitfalls. Every year, climbers—sometimes entire teams—disappear into deep glacial voids and die in their frozen darkness. If the mountain is merciful, the drop is deep enough to smash them into silence in one go. Most victims, however, are trapped between blue, narrowing walls of ice, and as their body warmth melts the ice, they slowly sink into it, slowly deeper and deeper, until they die very consciously of asphyxiation.
So you set off early. But my stomach, still asleep, always rebels when I have to perform great feats at three o’clock in the morning. I can’t take food; I throw it up right away. But if I don’t eat I get nauseous, because my body lacks fuel. Both options are equally bad. That’s why these days I swear by metoclopramide, which I take to calm my stomach before a climb.
This morning we left at a decent hour, and now it’s almost noon, but still my stomach is in knots, and with every step I take it feels like it’s swinging in its own greasy hammock. I try to concentrate on my breathing and find a rhythm in my footsteps’ steady stride. My heart is beating so hard that I feel it thumping not only in my chest but also behind my temples. This is starting to look like altitude sickness, damn it. But that’s BS. We’re well acclimatized, and the effects of the altitude shouldn’t kick in until well above 13,000 feet.
I stand still and jackknife, leaning on my poles. We’re halfway up a steep boulder field and I stagger a bit to keep my balance. The horizon in the north is rolling. I raise my hand to my chest, as if trying to calm my heart. I feel miserable. Maybe I should stick my finger down my throat and make myself throw up to get rid of the nausea, but somehow that prospect scares me. I don’t want to go there. Stupid, looking back, how your judgment deteriorates in such circumstances. Alone, out of breath, and under the influence of . . . of what, actually?
I stand upright and scan the scree field. Augustin roves steadily up the slope [roves steadily? did I really think that?], back and forth, back and forth, and for a moment he looks like a hanged man on the gallows, swinging gently in the wind.
“Stop,” I groan. I rub my eyes with my knuckles, smell the salt on my fingers. I try to breathe more slowly, thinking about getting a metoclopramide from my first aid kit, but I don’t feel like taking off my backpack. When I lower my hands from my face, there are only spots, but most of them disperse and I can see clearly again.
Go. Climb on for a bit.
The mountains in the north are still rolling.
Not the ones across the valley but those in the far distance, beyond the Rh?ne valley, where you can see the Berner Oberland range. The snowcaps expand, contract, expand. The air seems thin, as if I’m hallucinating. I shake my head violently and moan. Hearing my own voice should give me confidence, but its sound is peculiarly distorted by the alluvial fan, as if thousands of mouths, hidden behind gray boulders, are moaning back at me from below.