Mer de Glace & Charpoua

The night at the Mottets and the return to the Bois.

Return to the story of the previous day. September 15, 2019: third day. Night in the fridge and return to the starting point.

The closed tunnel.

I hoped that this tunnel came over on a road, without knowing which one, allowing us to flee the dead end in which we were. We advanced towards the entrance. It seemed impossible to go further in the tunnel. At least, there, the terrain was flat and clear. A stone was there. I sat on it. At least, if we had to spend the night here, would this grassy space not be unpleasant, and the tunnel would she house us from the wind. Pascal, who went to try his exploration, came back quickly by saying that he was blocked. Like me, he had hoped to be able to find a small road on the other side, and escape. This disappointed hope made us understand that this tunnel and its entry, absent from the cards, did not have the function of facilitating the movement of one place to another, but were undoubtedly linked to the electrical installations of the Mer de Glace, the force of the water coming out of the glacier being used to run turbines.

Help !

While waiting for Pascal, I had turned on my phone, and I had located us thanks to its satellite sensors. I knew our latitude and our longitude. Around twenty and thirty, we decided to call the emergency peloton in the high mountains. In a straight line, we were near the helicopter base. Perhaps, despite the night that was now black, and could the moon that remained hidden, could they come and get us and get us out of this bad step? The gendarme that spoke to us did not seem determined to send a helicopter so easily. After spotting us on his card using our contact details, He sought to confirm, by questioning us about the visual observations that we could make, that we were well where my phone said.

The map is not the territory.

Have we seen the two little lakes below on the map, are downstream from the glacier's tongue? Alas, no, but we had seen, and we could always hear, sink the Arveyron. We had therefore exceeded the terminal ice tongue. This gendarme only knew his card, not the land, a map established a few years ago, during which the end of the glacier had had time to change morphology. Nothing seems so solid that a glacier has an observer, and yet he constantly changes, due to the advance of the ice down under the action of gravity. The part that changes the most quickly and the most completely is its tongue. A lake can be formed there if the temperatures increase, then it can extend, or disappear if the glacier is further recedes. The time elapsed between the moment when the card has been drawn and the one when it is confronted with the land is one of the reasons why the map is not the territory. I immediately thought he knew it. We also described him the cliff facing us, and the rocky bar that barred our way when we tried to go up. Thanks to the photo function of my phone, from which result from blurred shots which would barely allow an eye exercised to distinguish a grimacing chimpanzee from an amateur mountaineer, I still took three photographs, as best as possible despite the lack of light (The sun had been lying for more than half an hour), and sent them.

The tongue of the Mer de Glace fades its way between two hostile mountain sides.

Guided by a compass.

He then asked us if we had a compass. We had real, each of us had a copy of this object of childish simplicity, consisting of a magnetic needle floating in a liquid, mounted on a plastic frame that is aligned on the map or on the ground with a point or to follow a direction. Pascal, having solid training on orientation in unknown terrain, was best able to guide us. He took out his, I passed the phone to him, and the gendarme tried to guide him by indicating the cornerstone to follow and the length of the path to go according to this angle.

An insurmountable bush keeping a rocky bar.

But luck was not with us that evening. Quickly, we found ourselves in the midst of increasingly dense and increasingly precarious equilibrium as the slope increased. It was then that, without realizing it, I lost the clasp of my front lamp. The trees were so close that a branch had, without my noticing, pushed one of the lugs molded on the edge of this room, turning it enough for it to unscrew a quarter of a turn for that I walked. It was enough for it to fall.

Devoid of light.

However, I saw nothing that was going on near my head at that time. But suddenly my lamp died out. Only then I deduced what was produced, but it was too late. Impossible to descend to seek a small gray object lost in the dark among the multitude of trees and rocks densely intertwined around us. But I saw with relief that apply my hand at the entrance to the orifice that fog this cap pushed the battery compartment against the internal electrical contacts of the case and lit the lamp. Deprived of one hand, my progress became even more painful, and to say almost almost impossible. Pascal, unhappy to see me hanging further and further, decided to climb alone. I reached. He continued to go up for a long time. I hoped that he would manage to join the pleasant and practicable trail of the refreshment bar. But I saw him come back updated. He had once again met vertical insurmountable vertical rocks at night.

Blocked in the fall.

If going up was impossible, descend was just as much. We were so far from the tunnel and its grassy platform that it was dangerous to try to find them in the middle of the night. The slope was sometimes so strong that we could have stumbled, fall, and seriously hurt us. We decided to descend a little, carefully, slowly, until we find a less steep place where we could lie on the ground to spend the night. By descendant, the ground was gradually becoming less occupied by vegetation, its more reasonable inclination. At almost midnight, exhausted, we finally stopped in a place where the inclination was temporarily smaller; It was possible to stay there on the floor without slipping. After a moment of rest, I called for help to inform them of our intention to no longer move before the next morning, to spend the night we were. The gendarme understood, wished us good night, and asked us to call if necessary. I turn off my phone to keep him some energy for the next day. In such circumstances, saving the battery to maintain possible subsequent communication with help is important for its safety.

A hostile environment.

In a labyrinth, frantic agitation is useless, and forces, after a while, to return to calm. We can then examine it and reflect on your situation. I explored the places where we were going to wait for the Minotaur black of this maze, the deep and cold night. Pascal had found himself a large flat stone, on which he wanted to stay. Next to it, after having removed pebbles and roots, a space could welcome me for the night. I do not know who of us had the least unpleasant place, between a flat stone, but cold at night, Because the stone conducts the heat, and, in its opposite, the earth with a hole that hurt the back when you lengthen it. In front of us, a cliff, the prapators' head, from where two torrents flow, which would be stunts if the head had a less fleeing forehead. To his right is Le Mauvais Pas, a name which, with hindsight, seems to me today predestined.

Bivouac situation map, spotted by a red cross.

A survival lesson.

We had little food left. By searching in my bag, I found a small compote which had miraculously escaped the general devour. The feast was fleeting, but we were not hungry in our concern. We settled in our best, putting all the clothes we had brought. I put on my hot mountaineering tights, my hot windshield jacket, my waterproof in Gore-tex. Pascal released his survival coverage. Then, lying down, with my gaze towards the sky, I vainly sought stars. The portion of visible sky was weak, Stuck as we were at the bottom of the valley conceded of the Arveyron bordered by two close rocks ranging from five hundred meters above us, for the rock of the Mottets on which we were, and seven hundred meters, for the head of the Prapators facing us. This night was endless. At first, I could fortunately sleep a little, but I was soon woken up by the cold. Some pumps warmed me. I tried to go back to sleep, but the more the night advanced, the colder it was. I shined regularly, and had to make movements more and more often to generate a little muscle heat. Finally, I couldn't sleep at all. My chills became intense and frequent. Pascal shared with me a piece of his survival coverage. He did not frozen that night, but the temperature probably went down under the ten Celcius degrees, becoming quite unpleasant to keep us awake, But not low enough to be really dangerous. Nature gave us a lesson of survival at no cost. Minotaur would let us live.

An endless night.

The end of the night, which I spent entirely awake, seemed endless to me. I waited long overnight. But, in our glacial valley, the September sun does not show itself before noon. We couldn't see him get up on the horizon. Only a slow increase in the ambient brightness testified to what, somewhere, far from us, in the civilized world, the Sun God had started to drive his tank in the azure. The dawn with gray fingers made a shy entry on our mountain scene. We would wait for the light to be more frank, that the cold fades, before getting back in search of the exit of the labyrinth. The anxiety tightened my stomach. I still was not hungry. A little fresh water did me good. We took all our time to remove a few clothes and put away our bags, then, once the lighting has become sufficient, we left. But where to go? Elderly, and knowing that rising would bring us to rocks impossible to climb, we instinctively headed towards our right by remaining at the same altitude.

Luck smiles at the daring, but sometimes it happens that we have to wait.

Because there was bound to be an outing, a path. While we were not waiting for anything, a mast suddenly stood in front of us, similar to that seen the day before at the foot of the Motte path, but located above. Amazed, I looked at the surroundings carefully. I then saw, below, a hundred meters, this first mast in front of which we stopped twice the day before without seeing the path connecting it to the second. So we had finally found the exit, we were on the famous trail of the refreshment bar. How could we have left him the day before without realizing it? How had we not seen the second mast when we were at the first? In the mountains, everything that, in broad daylight under a bright sun, seems easy, natural, obvious, becomes, when time is spoiled or when coming in the evening, difficult, delicate, complicated. No doubt the second stick was really impossible to discern in darkness. No doubt there was no mark of painting on the surrounding rocks, which usually indicate the location of a path. Perhaps we were too in a hurry By the fear of the night falling to pay attention to the small clues that would have allowed us to stay on our route. Finally, the accumulated pressure and the anxiety fell suddenly. We looked at each other, accommodated. We were finally free!

Out of the labyrinth.

The trail that brought us back to civilization symbolized by the bush of the Mottets seemed surprisingly easy, pleasant, compared to the path we had tried to take the day before, however guided by the compass and at a distance by a professional of the mountains. I sat on a wooden bench of the refreshment bar on which, extended, I would have surely spent a better night, if I had one available, than lined on a dynamic, cold, stuffed ground for holes and pebbles. A little further, we still stopped. Didn't we have all our time to travel by foot the few easy-to-descent kilometers away from the car parked in Bois? I took the opportunity to call the relief peloton and tell them that we had found our way alone. I thanked my correspondent, without admitting to him that his apparent ignorance of the ground where our trap was found had not allowed him to get us out of this bad step. He did not know that the Mer de Glace had erased the two small lakes drawn on the official map, which shows that he had not seen the place recently, on the one hand, and, on the other hand , he should not have wanted to bring us back directly from where we were at the refreshment bar, because it was impossible. The map he had in front of him did not include any indication of the presence of all the rocky bars of this area, our guide ignored it and guided us according to his incomplete card. We had to lead us first towards the first mast, then, from there, in a second step, to bring us to the second mast by the path that we had not been able to see. The explanations would have been long, I was tired, and the reproaches only allow those to whom they are made to improve only if they accept them and then analyze them to learn from them.

On the return road.

After a descent into a wise forest, probably maintained by man, contrasting singularly with the impenetrable plant network of the day before, which was pleasant although fatigue made it found long, we crossed the impetuous torrent. In front of the helicopter base, a machine at rest seemed to taunt us. Finally, we were on the car. Happy with this return to the starting point, but tired, we took the road. On the way, in front of my insistence, Pascal stopped regaining strength on a rest area while sleeping for a few hours, too, lying in the grass not far from the car, Pascal in, on the driver's seat. He fell asleep deeply. When he woke up, invigorated, the less disturbing mine, we left quietly to find the city of Isère from where we had come three days ago, three days of physical efforts, walking on glacier in the middle of sublime and multiple peaks and edges, long escalations on scales, to sleep and raise the star of the day, at night in an unmarked refuge, and of dangerous wild adventure. Any hike is unique, but, in my life, I had not yet met all these elements gathered in the same outing. I will never forget him.

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