LES DROITES NORTH FACE

We went  up at the end of August 1988 to do Les Droites North Face. The is no "the" in front of Les Droites, if you desire a "the"up ahead of Les Droites you're not much of an ice climber, everybody knows what that thing is.

That summer I had met up with Mark Bebie rather informally in Chamonix , we had climbed in the Pacific Northwest before. Les Droites would be the second of the two climbs we did in the Mont Blanc Massif together earlier having done Les Grandes Jorasses by Eperon Croz, something of a disappointment owing to then perceivable climate change and a lack of ice. 

Les Droites would be different though as a storm had come through, no one had been up the thing since early summer so sight-unseen we set off up Les Grandes Montets, Dru Coulior looking as always imposing from the telepherique. Mark was too parsimonious to stay at the Argentiere Refuge so we bivouaced, Les Droites North Face looming squat, improbably steep, improbably streaked in what looked like white latex house-paint.

At midnight we set off, I effectively bumped into the gargantuan wall in the black night, a thin vein of ice down which spindrift poured no and again being the only feasible way.

"I better lead for a while", so up I went.

Weeks earlier I had happened upon the Charlet-Moser Pulsar ice tools at Snell's Sports, a tool clearly poised to change the face of ice-climbing in the coming years, I promptly shelled out my 1300 Francs and purchased a set. Following several hours of other-worldly climbing in the ice runnel the face opened up, dawn broke revealing a vast ice field with the sobering headwall spinningly overhead morning-lit in seductive red tones. 

How does that old saw go? "Red sky in morning climbers take warning?" The storm broke as we stuck the first belay in the steep granite crag, there was no obvious route, you could climb anywhere you wanted, if you pulled hard enough. Gradually the storm intensified, I resumed all lead duties briefly spotted the Integrale exit waterfall through a hole in the clouds and made for it. The Goulotte a la Breche had it all, steep ice, a grade V Scottish gulley bit (I half-expected to see frozen bits of missing Brits sticking out of the ice here) finally a swinging traverse over frosted fins of granite with 3000 feet of air, spectacular.

I awoke from our bivouac the Breche astounded I hadn't frozen to death.

The trouble started on the descent down the glacier back to Chamonix, Mark borrowed 35 Francs for the train after having earlier asserted he would rather walk down and save the money, "Cool", I said noting his feet would be shredded for weeks. He would not repay me though, I ran into him on the street in Chamonix some time later a scene ensued as he desisted coughing up my 35 Francs, but I had him cornered so he paid.

At the end of the summer while I was already back at work in Seattle Mark returned bought a keg of beer inviting most of the town's climbers to view his slides, during the course of the show he denounced me roundly, the first in a succession of post-climb traitors.

I was in my large-animal rotation at Washington State University during my senior year in Veterinary College, busy preparing a talk on solar abscess in the horse when Jim Ruch phoned from Seattle, Mark was missing presumed dead on Mount Snowdome in the Canadian Rockies, 10 March 1993 a year to the day after I had solo-climbed this route. 

I was later to speculate that having learned of my ascent Mark was eager to do this one, after all I had climbed this alone, how hard could it be? I was to do more solo-climbing in the future but with my daughter Simone then two, my fervor had cooled a tad, the risks inherent were becoming more palpable. After all, if Marc Twight got whacked, who would care? Me, I was a daddy, a girl needs her daddy, she still does.

Several years back I was struck on the head by a piece of falling ice, I was exiting the canyon after the speed-climbing competition at Ouray in 2006, a sizable piece came down beaned me on the yellow Grivel helmet I was wearing. "Bad karma", pronounced Betta Gobbi, she was cheesed that I hadn't used her new Monster tools in the difficulty final, the damn things pumped me out too fast.

Just some fucking bone-head who couldn't be bothered to yell "ICE!", that's all.