the birm*

In the blink of an eye…

Last week Marc, Landon, Thomas and I left the car park at Chamforan, crossed the river (alt 1470m), hiked up past the refuge de la Lavey (1797m) and found a spot to bivouac for the night. After a few hours of “sleep” (getting to bed at 9pm while the sun only sets at 10:30pm, being too hot and too excited), we got up at 2:15am and left a little while later en route for l’Aiguille de l’Olan (3300m). After 2 hours of walking by headlamp we finally came within sight of the glacier, as it was getting light. An hour later, after a zigzag slog on scree, we were putting our crampons on, grabbing our ice axes, roping up and putting some extra clothes on (lots of ice/snow = cold temperature). The walk/climb on the glacier was great: sun rising over the surrounding peaks, blue sky, hard snow, gentle slope. After about an hour we got to a steep bit of ice (about 60-70 degrees?) that lead to the top of the glacier where we’d start scrambling/climbing up the rock towards the summit. I was roped in with Thomas, Marc was with Landon. You rope in on glaciers to avoid falling too deep down a crevasse). Thomas and I let Marc and Landon go first and we were just to the side of them, a bit below. We reached 3100m and Marc started on the rock. As the transition between the ice and rock was real steep, we’d have to do the first section still in crampons. I was still climbing the ice towards Thomas, when there was a loud, deep, scary “CRACK”. I was about to yell “hey, don’t be sending rocks down on me!” when I looked up…

It all went very fast. In the blink of an eye, Marc had pulled off a piece of cliff that looked the size of a fridge and was in air-borne with it, about 10m above the ice, like frozen in mid-air. It was really weird, almost like everything slowed right down, paused and then sped up again.

In the blink of an eye he came crashing down. I yelled “stop him, stop him” to Landon, but there was nothing that he could do he got whipped off the rock perch he was on. Both Marc and Landon and a bunch of rocks tumbled down the steep slope, partly air-borne, partly hitting the snow. It was horrific.

Once they stopped, about 150m below us where the slope eased off, we yelled out “are you ok, are you ok”. Eventually they waved, kinda slowly.

It was really weird and totally unexpected that a bloc that size would break off. What was even stranger was that they were both alive and managed to walk back down off the glacier. There we assessed the damage: bad cuts, abrasions and ice (friction) burns. Possible broken thumbs, elbows and wrists, but legs and head were ok. After bandaging up the wounds we painfully and slowly walked back down to the bivouac spot. There we had some lunch in  the sun and a bit of a laugh, releasing some shock and tension. We eventually made it back to the car by 4:20pm, 8 hours after the incident.

It was a really weird day, we didn’t make the summit (we “stopped” 200m short), which usually would have been disappointing. But in the light of what happened we were content: content to be alive, content to be able to walk away, content to be able to tell of the tale. It’s amazing how events, which may only happen in the blink of an eye, can put things into perspective and make you realise how precious certain things are in life.

I praise God for his protection up there, for both me and my friends, and I thank Him for perspective, which reminds me of all the important and valuable things I have in this life, most of which money can’t buy…