No Man’s Land
Background
The following story is about a mountaineering experience I underwent in my mid twenties. The first time I wrote this was in a cathartic binge two days after the ordeal, sleepless inside my fully lit apartment while blasting Tool on the speaker system. Seven years since I have edited, reread, thrown away and rediscovered this piece more times than I can count. Thankfully the bare bones of this story has remained in tact, as any story of survival should.
When this took place I was living and working as an Intelligence Officer in Germany. After a brutal summer of trainings and assessments I was having a hard time returning to the office. Recently I had been given a small invitation into the career of my dreams, a career that several years of previous denial had brought much inner turmoil. I was slowly starting to feel invincible again and not long after returning to Germany my new found friend and climbing partner called from France proposing a 5-day plan of mountaineering. The ‘yes’ came easy for me. Here's my account of this particular experience.
Leaving Society
Screaming down the German autobahn my Audi and I howl. Away from the plastic and shallow acting people call “work”. Away from the mechanized interactions and pretending people call “the real world”. I am excited for what is to come, excited to be raw. Underneath scared for what is to come; last time I left trembling. Perhaps that’s why I am returning.
Upon arrival a kind of seduction set in. I met him late evening at a wine bar. There we were, sipping our wine discussing our love affair. For both of us life in the mountains had a newness to it. He was an aspiring guide and I was a skier with a deep interest and curiosity to the life of a climber. As we romanticized the aura of the room took on that which you might find in a late night jazz club. His english was broken, I spoke no french. At some mood the alcohol took away our energy to try to understand one another when he said something both poetic and foretelling- “we don’t have to translate, the mountains will”.
The next morning was all arranged. As it turns out, his girlfriend works for the famous cable-car of the Aiguille Du Midi which gives us a bypass to the long line of tourists. Suited up I feel a sense of self-importance brushing shoulders with the common tourists in their jeans and peacoats. We aren't going up there to take pretty pictures. I oddly enjoy the conversation shared with a couple of Americans on the cable car, also climbers. It’s rare for me to be in such a positive mood.
The altitude gain is over 3000 meters/ 10000 feet in a matter of half an hour. Gawking from the balconies we soon discover how different of a world it is up there. But for us, we aren't up there to take pretty pictures. We take little time lingering as we move through the tunnels making our way to the ice cave; the 20 foot transition zone from insulated modern society to the world of exposure. It feels like the beginning of a rite of passage sitting on the bench as I adjust my crampons; looking around at the skiers, paragliders and other mountaineers. The tunnel exits to a knife edge descent that wraps down and planes out into a glacier at 13,000 feet. From there, it’s an alpine playground.
That evening we chose to traverse onto some terrain that would justify a couple of rappels to get down. Before dark, we made our way over to the nearby and luxurious alpine hut for a comfortable and acclimatizing night of sleep. Early the next morning we found our way across a classic traverse, expanding our lungs and communication along the way. And later that day we connected a system of cable cars to return back to the Chamonix Valley for a juicy burger and a few gear purchases. With a quick turnaround we load into the girlfriend’s car and drive out of the valley a few hours to begin our objective.
More Background
Perhaps this is a good time to share some relevant history between Ed and myself. We had met six months prior- he having freshly moved to Chamonix Valley while I and partner at the time were on a weekend ski trip. While skiing together the next day our passions met. We stayed in touch and a couple months later I returned to the Valley for a week of adventure with him. Over the course of a week we climbed and skied several moderate classics. What we lacked in technical knowledge and experience we made up for with a cavalier attitude. It was clear almost immediately that we were both at an exceptional level of fitness with high risk thresholds. We assumed that whatever the mountains would throw at us, we would figure it out as it came. As we moved through each up and down that week it would slowly reveal just how much we were willing to put out. Our last objective of that trip was a debacle. With each rappel our lack of experience raised eyebrows. In hind-sight moments beyond my conscious control saved me. We took risk after risk crossing the glacier to barely miss the last cable-car back down to the valley. This meant that we would need to spend the night in the Du Midi station, which by late afternoon was already below freezing. We spent our last night together waking each other up to do push-ups and air squats. We were curled up around a toilet in the woman’s bathroom. It was the warmest place we could find.
The Approach
Reaching the trail head at dark, it’s my turn to carry the rope. Ed had held this burden earlier today . Two hours in I am dry heaving and I don’t want to admit I’m already cramping, much less my pounding skull. “Fucking idiot. Why are you carrying water Landon? There’s a river right there”, I am thinking.
He says: “You just have to accept to suffer” I nod, and laugh.
“I’ve barely begun”, I am thinking.
Finally, we reach the first of several unmanned huts this route offers. At 8,000ft. it is relatively low in altitude, but it’s clear I am sick from the altitude. I force down some food and the warm tea calms me down. Before long, I pass out into a deep sleep.
The next day is different. Our task is to navigate semi-technical terrain and gain some elevation toward the end. We pass through a period of bickering at one another as a rhythm works it's way into the labor we're performing. We arrive at the second hut with good timing just before losing day-light and visibility from fog. We prioritize drinking, eating and drinking more. Just past sunset, two guys enter. We all realize we’re going for the same route and decide to join forces. Not long after going to sleep a fifth guy enters the hut well past twilight- a paraglider.
At midnight we follow the other two in the dark trudging through deeper snow conditions than any of us had expected. At some places it is waist deep. Maybe we are drifting off route? A few hours pass and after ascending a steep snow slope we find our first section of rock. From the distant belay I have the luxury of a broader view. I look down and see lights from an Italian village. It looks like a little cluster directly below, surrounded by a vastness of blackness. I marvel over at the three french guys. Their carelessness and ease with the exposure, their laughter. I am intrigued by the one climber who is taking a risky detour off route. With their backs fully exposed one guy is belaying off of a slung flake while the other hacks away with his tools trying to get a passive piece of pro in, slightly inverted. Ed is patiently waiting to see if it will go, conversing with the belayer. After a few falls the leader comes down and shakes his head. I feel like I am standing on an edge of threshold. I'm well read and inspired, but not yet initiated. They point their heads back on route.
Climb, traverse, climb, traverse, climb. Light is appearing in the sky as we weave over and through the rocks. The fluidity of the movement brings a smile to my face. No different than how I felt as a young boy weaving my way up a tree.
We sit under a wind lip near the summit just after sunrise. We take a short break and mentally prepare ourselves for the descent, which is more like a long traverse... part two.
*The route we are on is on the list of big-route objectives for prospective guides to tick off. Their certification requires completing a half-dozen of these climbs at this commitment level and difficulty. Ed, having recently abandoned his life in Paris in pursuit of another life in the mountains needed someone to ‘practice guide’. This relationship was mutually beneficial. He got to practice, I got a fast-pass into another extreme endeavor.
The descent is actually the allure of this objective. It’s a sustained snowy knife edge with sheer drops on either side, making an arrest nearly impossible. This balance beam demands focusing one foot in front of the other. Connected by a section of rope, the agreement was that if one fell off on one-side the other would jump the opposite. As the morning warmed up our fitness and recent nights at higher elevation begins revealing it's magic, we cover a great deal of snow and rock in short period of time. We are feeling confident. Managing something bigger than originally intended is becoming plausible, as we sit in a little rock out-cropping looking up toward Mont Blanc proper.
“There is a cloud approaching, you see?”
“Yeah, I see”.
The other two guys had fallen back and as the weather begins to turn we see them change course as Ed and I ascend. Fast.
The Storm
The wind picks up and everything becomes increasingly white. We check our altimeters and stand with our backs to the wind, huddled close so we can hear each other. We both verbalize our gut feeling to turn towards the direction to the hut; yet, the irrational excitement for unknown mixed with our invincible attitudes we decide to continue up even more. The storm strengthens as I feel it coming on. I am about to suffer, and know it. Pretty soon things will become darker, colder, and louder than they already are. As the wind whips and we merge into the storm small frozen pellets pound against my eyeballs. TOOL begins to play inside my head. The heavy instrumentals, the fast twitching of the drums and the mysterious lyrics are fitting as we move in a stir of confusion. I smile.
*Our altimeters say we have plateaued. We check it off as a mental success leaving us with the reality of where we are. We hurry in the direction we think we should return back to safety. Fact was, where we thought we were going is not where we were going. A different story had been written out for us this day. The way we are going will reveal the consequences for the choices we have made as we unknowingly descend into a nightmare.
My head is racing. “Which way? Are you sure this way? No, no, no, no this is wrong! Fuck! Fuck you!” The terrain steepens and the pain from the cramping in my muscles become secondary to the whipping cold. Six months ago my hands got cold and I came away with a frostbitten pinky. Now my hands are really cold. Ed’s tugs from the rope urging me to follow what he thinks might be the way out. Indecision descends into my body paralyzing me only to feel another tug from the rope. What I despise in humans I have now become. A sheep on a leash.
For hours we are kicking and poking our way in all directions inside of this ping pong ball. With some kicks, nothing. Slowly I begin to realize that this can actually kill me. It registers that this could be the last thing I see: white. The blind faith that had carried me this far ebbs into a stir of rage and desperation, as my hope diminishes.
The struggle inside comes to a calm as a small voice makes itself known.
No Man’s Land
I don’t know if this moment was eternal or instantaneous; if we had descended beneath the storm or the storm had lifted above us? Perhaps both and all of it.
Before I knew it, there we were standing on a snow slope looking down into a virgin world. Vividly bright, never before in my life had I seen such purity and beauty as what lay ahead. The vastness of such a landscape was much like a lucid dream. On distant sides were massive mountainous walls- the one to our left frozen and wintry looking, the one to our right actively falling apart creating a symphony of sounds while being baked in the mid-day sun. Below our feet seracs, crevasses, ice ramps and snow slopes all intertwined and spiraled downward thousands of feet into a blind drop-off that looked like an abyss. To our backs was where we had come from. Far, far away in what felt like a distant world was civilization. We were in no-man’s land.
To say that I was exhausted is an understatement. We had hardly eaten since midnight, drank very little water, and all four of my limbs had seized up from cramps hours ago. Not only was the terrain itself beyond my limits of experience, but so to was the physical state my body was in. Had Ed not protected what he did, I would not be alive. After one fall I took, I don’t know what made me dry heave- realizing that I had just fallen or that I was alive. The next few hours would continually evoke far beyond what I believed a human could do only to give way to another state of horror and exhaustion then morphing into further creativity. Such is the wonder of survival. The spontaneous moments of gazing into each other’s eyes exchanging both the terror and joy of the experience speaks to one extreme. Realizing that this is what it feels like to be edging with death, realizing how of an alone encounter that is, that moment speaks to another extreme.
After some hours we reached another threshold. Standing on some unstable rock still uncertain as to what was below us when suddenly out of my mouth slipped the words I vowed never to say- “I quit”. He asked if I was truly done and I tried to undo it but didn’t have the strength. Yes, I had had enough. Not that it really meant anything because who would save us?
We stood there for a moment, balancing. Then Ed started digging into his pack, pulling out his cell phone. I asked what he was doing and he said that he was going to try to call rescue. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was even an option. His cell phone was dead. We stood there for a moment, balancing. Then Ed remembered something, he had brought an external charger. It worked, and he made the call.
As he stood there parle’ing in French I felt some hope returning. He got off the phone and relayed the news. The dispatch said that they could send out a helicopter to try and find us but with it being later in the afternoon and in such an obscure area for us not to expect a rescue to happen today. I asked Ed what that meant, if they couldn’t find us and he drily said “we’ll spend the night here”.
*Aforementioned, I had spent the previous summer going through some challenging experiences, mostly with the military. One of those assessments was a two week Army Ranger assessment. Our last patrol was ex-filtration by helicopter. Weeks later I attended Survival School with the Air Force. In the middle of our six-day survival period our team practiced a field rescue, by helicopter.
Not long after sending over our coordinates we heard a faint noise down the valley. I pulled out an emergency blanket in hopes of flagging them down. Within a minute that little dot came moving up the swath passing us by at a distance only to loop around at the top of the glacier and come back downward... passing by us again only to disappear.
(I hope by now you’re the seeing both the irony and the humor in this story).
The Scenic Way Down
After a long moment of quiet, the helicopter appears again this time and passes by closer as it loops lower and comes toward us. I knew by now they had spotted us. Very soon a man lowered by a steel cable would come swinging into us. It was a swift rescue plucking Ed off first leaving me alone for a few moments of quiet to look back into all that had been passed through. Moments later the sound of the helicopter chopped through the silence. He quickly came swinging in, clipped my harness and we accelerated away from the mountain-side. The onrush of wind turbulence was exhilarating and as we cut through the air. This good man asked if I was okay. I motioned with a nod that I was, physically speaking.
Our “fast-passes” were running dry. To my surprise they dropped us off not in town but rather at a station three hours hike up trail. Ed asked for my basic information and took it to the helicopter crew. While there I noticed the crew's excitation by what had just happened, repeating something in French. When he returned he said that I had just exhausted my one free helicopter ride on the municipals dime (he had already used his months prior). I asked what everyone was laughing about. The crew told him that we were the first live bodies they had recovered from that glacier- première descente.
We were quiet most of the walk down. The flushed heat in my face had a lot to say, but no words could leave my parched mouth. Off the trail Ed’s kind girlfriend met us roadside with her vehicle and a coke.
Epilogue
This ordeal has been both a mark of tremendous pain in my life as well as tremendous gift to my life. Seven years having elapsed almost to the week I am re-reading it. The transformation of such an experience is built into how life reveals itself to me. It’s not until the past few years that I can weather a thunderstorm without being overwhelmed with an imminency of death. The shaking inside is a way of saying “hello”. It wasn’t until two fall-times ago that I gained the courage to cross a small glacier. The water carving it’s way through the ice brought me to tears.
It would be ideal to sit here and tell you that coming off that mountain that day would be the beginning of beautiful and gentle healing and yes I get more of that these days. Initially, it was stacked into a whole lot more. I was no stranger to taking risks with my life and finding myself in horrid conditions before this happened (and not just in the mountains). More would continue afterward. Yet, little did I know, and less do I know now, that my life turns in such a way both to preserve me as well as humble me. Being back on a glacier for a long, longer, and very long day the experience moves through such a depth I cannot, and won’t try to, describe. A world transformed is to see our Self in the world. And my goodness to just turn for a moment, and see just how beautiful ‘it’ worthy of a closer look, wherever it is, even in those moments that yeah make one side truly mysterious, and yet in another seeing Landon, you’re just being Landon.
Slowly through descent can see just a bit wider.
If you read this and you and I have shared a rope, I want to thank you. Let’s do it again sometime, yeah? And if we haven’t or may never, albeit the story can be exclusive, I want to give you an even warmer thank you. As in the words of Maurice Herzog- “there are other mountains in the lives of wo/men.
