TR: Col du Plan north face, 20/04/16

[peds]

Col du Plan north face, 20/04/16

Fear, I think, is one of the more useful emotions we have at our disposal. Don’t get me wrong, happiness is great, it’s absolutely smashing, and it’s definitely the preferred state of mind to while away the hours with, but at times it runs a little counter-productive in the task of keeping us alive, as we seem to have evolved or adapted to enjoy all kinds of unhealthy and dangerous things, like sunbathing and sugar, or drinking fizzy wine until the small hours of the morning, or throwing ourselves out of planes or off of mountains or into the sea, you know, the good things in life. Sadness and anger, too, strike me as a case of faulty programming, as they don’t really provide any benefit to a body other than creating an interesting contrast between delight and despair, and they have an annoying habit of clouding one’s judgement, of further muddying the waters in an already confusing world. The decisions you make when upset are seldom the correct ones.

Fear, though, is essential for continued survival. Fear is your body’s way of telling you to wake the fuck up and pay attention, and the adrenalin shot you get from a sudden burst of terror is stronger than even the darkest of Italian espresso. It sharpens the senses, quickens the reflexes, it tenses your muscles in preparation for the whole fight-or-flight thing. It forces you to take a good, hard look at the problems you are facing, and to think them through. It makes you faster, stronger, and more intelligent.

A short while ago, as part of a rambling apology for the thick, snowy blanket of recent inactivity on this “web log”, I hastily scribbled down the idea that it wasn’t as easy to write about the experiences you have when you are simply happy and enjoying yourself, as it is to write about those when you are cold or exhausted or terrified. Well, here we are, there’s no two ways around the fact: if you happen to make any kind of reasonably-big mistake, you’ll die. That’s simply the nature of an E4 descent, and, standing as we are at the top of one, I am shitting myself.

As my gaze makes its way down the steep slope to the sudden, formidable, and most-certainly fatal drop of the hanging seracs crumbling away at the end of the glacier a few hundred metres below our feet, I am struck by an almost irresistible urge to pull the plug, to turn to Grant and demand that we ski a simple Grand Envers back down to the safety of Chamonix under a blazing sun, and I get a pretty strong feeling that Grant is thinking exactly the same thing.

But the quivering terror churning deep within my guts forces me to think logically: we have skied steeper slopes before, and in much worse snow. Having studied topos and reports from the route for hours on end in the years leading up to this moment, we’ve got more than a vague idea of where we are going. After spending most of yesterday sliding down the same mountain on a slightly-different aspect, we are reasonably certain that the snow we find is going to be safe and stable. We know our ropes and we’ve got enough of them; we’ve got tat and tiblocs and tea. Crucially, and, all modesty aside for just a few seconds, we are both quite good skiers, and we know this, despite the occasional and inevitable goggle-flinging yard sale on easy-angled meadow skipping that we all experience every now and then.

The cogs and gears deep within our brains grind away as they perform the mental gymnastics of weighing the pros and cons, the risks and rewards. Then it all becomes clear: we can do this.







There's all kinds of words and pictures and various links embedded in the text over at my "web log", if you are at all interested. Cheers everyone!

[cat in january]

Thank you for posting. Enjoyed the read and the pictures.

[PNWbrit]

Excellent. Thanks!

[LightRanger]

That's sick.
Nice prose too.

[Meadow Skipper]

Stellar!

[auvgeek]

Excellent! I've always enjoyed your writing, peds. Your blog post on the Mont Blanc 80km is one of my favorites, too.

[yellofin]

So well written, I feel like I am there. Fear does sharpen your senses but you need to relax to be able to be your best. Easier said than done

[klar]

Radness, as usual. Was Baldric watching from below?

[peds]

Thank you, all, for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed it, I certainly did!

So well written, I feel like I am there. Fear does sharpen your senses but you need to relax to be able to be your best. Easier said than done

You are absolutely right. There comes a point when the brain switches frequencies from knock-knee terror to "well, we are here now, we might as well get on with this!" It's a great moment.

Radness, as usual. Was Baldric watching from below?

Cheers miss Baldric was safe at home on the sofa after his dawn swim in a raging snowmelt stream, stuffed with a kilo of meat. He knows how to live life.

edit
Here is Baldric breaking trail through 20cm of pof in the Berard valley earlier today...

[Foggy_Goggles]

There is a bad ass among us! Maybe not on the Cham scale but you know what I mean. I'll look you up next year when I'm there, serious. Do you know Tom AKA Idris http://www.idriskis.com/ ? Seems like you might run in the same circles.

[peds]

I know Tom, I see him in lift queues all the time, but I've never skied with him. We were in the first bin up the Aiguille du Midi yesterday, and it was a great place to be!

He used to collect my old deep fryer oil from a restaurant I was the head chef at, to turn into biodiesel for his van.

Idriskis are super, I tried a pair for an afternoon once. Great fun.

[Foggy_Goggles]

As you would say "He's a smashing chap", took me under his wing on my 1st trip to Cham and took me down the Rond & Cosmiques. All I do now is practice my rope work, up my headband game and try to save money to go back.

Mind if I PM you here and ask all kinds of stupid "Yank in Europe questions?".

[Mike Pow]

Top of the notch.

And +1 to Tom being a thoroughly decent chap.

The skis are great too.

[Ripzalot]

nice friday afternoon read. two thumbs up!

[peds]

Mind if I PM you here and ask all kinds of stupid "Yank in Europe questions?".

Happy to answer whatever questions I can dude!