Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
rushed to meet Alex in the form of a fist-sized stone accelerating from half a mile
above. It smashed into his helmet with the accuracy of a sniper's bullet. He
crumpled then fell the remaining 400 metres down the couloir.
René clung to his ice axes, stunned for a moment, and then called Alex's name.
When there was no response, he descended as quickly as possible in a semi self ar-
rest, kicking his crampons into the softening snow while jabbing his axes above his
head in a controlled fall. When he reached Alex's lifeless body, he understood
death had been almost certainly instantaneous. There was nothing he could do. He
forced himself to be calm, to control his own shock and continue his retreat alone.
He placed the body in a recess just above a crevasse and marked the spot with
Alex's ice axes holding him to the face. Then he raced the remaining four hours to-
ward base camp on the opposite side of the glacier.
I met him halfway across. I had been watching from the lateral moraine just
above base camp and seen the accident through the lens of my camera. All we
could do that day was return to the tents; it was too late to go up. That night, René
told me the story, about being stopped by the rock step, the conversations they had
during the bivvy the night before, how they hoped I would have recovered and with
extra equipment we would return and succeed. The evening before, as they descen-
ded, I thought my luck had changed. Feeling fit again after a bout of diarrhoea, I
hoped we could still climb the face together. Now this. The evening before, as I
watched them prepare to bivouac through my zoom lens, a sudden burst of intense
red filled the viewfinder. My heart missed a beat but then I realised what I had
seen. It was Alex shaking out the bivvy tent.
The morning after the accident, René and I started to pack up to return to the
face and recover the body, but cloud descended before we set off and it began to
snow lightly. A storm was brewing. We waited another day in a state of uncer-
tainty. Our liaison officer said he would leave immediately to get news back to
Kathmandu. I thought of his mother Jean, and Sarah, his girlfriend, and the need
to speak to them. We could stay and try to recover Alex's body, but what would
that achieve? It was clear Annapurna would be Alex's tomb.
There is now a memorial stone for Alex at Annapurna base camp with an inscrip-
tion that reads: 'Better to live one day as a tiger than to live for a thousand years as
a sheep.' Had René and Alex managed to overcome the short section that stopped
them, there would have been few difficulties between them and the top. In 1984
two Spaniards, Nil Bohigas and Enric Lucas, climbed the line Alex and René had
tried. It was a brilliant ascent, but their success was testimony to Alex's vision.
Luck had been with them. A narrow runnel of ice led steeply up and over the but-
tress that had stopped Alex and René.
