I'm currently reading a book written by the French Alpinists Robert Paragot and Lucien Berardini and enjoyed one chapter which has a good punch line and will (hopefully!) be of interest to this forum. It's an account of their second ascent of Joe Brown's notorious off-width on the Aiguille de Blaitiere just one year after it was climbed by him and Don Whillans.
After identifying the "absolutely impossible" crack Paragot questioned whether it was "even climbable" but decided to give it a try. While ascending the first 10m he only managed to place one "symbolic" piton, which was so bad it wouldn't hold "even the smallest fall".
Paragot: "At this point it was still possible for me to descend, to walk away - the reasonable thing to do. The risks were enormous, if I fell I would die. [But] without doubt pride had taken over me and I didn't want to fail where the British had gone. If I gave up I would look like a joker, me who had the pretension, and reputation, of being a good climber."
Paragot continued climbing at his "absolute limit" adding: "I growled, I moaned, I raged, all while being pushed towards the void. All of a sudden I felt myself letting go. Panic took over: it was impossible to protect myself, even to plant a piton to save my life. Ordinarily in moments like those I managed to relax, breath deeply and work out what to do in a lucid way. But here - impossible. Fear and panic had taken over my mind."
Facing a 17m death fall, Paragot made one last desperate bid to reach a chockstone 1m above him. He grabbed a piton from his bandolier and wedged it across the crack - with the head of the piton on one side and the tip touching the other.
Paragot: "I grabbed the piton in my left hand while my right shoulder was wedged in the crack. I had no choice - I needed to trust my weight to this precarious support. In compete silence, and holding my breath so as not to apply any extra force to the piton, I wriggled free and pulled myself up on one arm before jamming my right shoulder and elbow back into the crack a little higher. Then I let go of the piton and grabbed the chock stone. The piton had held, only due to friction, but I was truly at my extreme limit, my maximum possible effort. The feeling of relief was so intense after the fear and physical struggle that I was unable even to speak to Lucien. I have never found myself in such a state...I collapsed and for a good five minutes I was only able to moan and cry... How was an Englishman able to do that...where I had so much trouble? For me it was more than upper sixth grade climbing and I cried with rage and exhaustion."
His second Berardini, who arrived at the stance in the same state, branded the crack 'evil', adding: "'Nom de dieu' it's impossible. We have climbed a lot of difficult rock and got up some difficult cracks but this was something else. How did the British do it?"
That question was answered the following year following a chance meeting with Brown on the Baltoro glacier in Pakistan.
Paragot: "[Brown] told me he climbed the crack using a cordelette and his balaclava as a basket. He hoisted stones that his companion found on the belay ledge and wedged them in the crack. Of course the second [Whillans] while passing took out all of the stones except one - the one I found. That was how we discovered, with legitimate pride, that the true first free ascent of the 'Fissure Brown' was made by the Berardini-Paragot rope."
Made me chuckle!
