Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
others floundered; rather than seize a handhold in a death grip, he seemed to caress it
with his fingertips.
By 1941, Gaston's record of climbs included a third ascent and a second ascent of
two challenging routes in the western Alps. That year, as he pondered enlisting in the
service of his country, he was instinctively drawn to a special division called Jeunesse et
Montagne (Youth and Mountains). Since by now France had already been conquered
and occupied by the Germans, all such service branches were officially civilian rather
than military outfits. The rugged curriculum of the JM (as it was called)—eight
months of spartan training in skiing and alpinism, with the aim of turning its gradu-
ates into instructors of other young men in the mountains—embodied a kind of French
anticipation of the Outward Bound movement. JM aimed not so much at preparing
men for mountain warfare as at building their characters, inculcating such virtues as
manliness, industriousness, and team spirit. The service could not have been more ap-
pealing to the young Rébuffat.
On one of his first assignments, as he rode the train toward a regional climbing cen-
ter, he met another partisan of the mountains, Lionel Terray, who was the same age.
Gaston's first impressions were mixed. “He is nice,” he wrote in his notebook, “but has
an egotistical air. I spent the whole ride standing up: not for one second did he offer
me his seat.” Years later, Terray recorded his own first take on Rébuffat: “His narrow
features were animated by two small, black, piercing eyes, and his somewhat formal
manners and learned turn of phrase contrasted comically with a noticeable Marseille
accent.”
As soon as the two twenty-year-olds realized that they shared a consuming passion
for hard routes on big mountains, a bond was formed. According to Terray, they spent
the whole train ride comparing notes and talking of alpine projects. Soon they were
climbing together, licensed by the JM to set off on little-traveled ridges and walls as
partial fulfillment of their official duties.
With Terray in 1942, Rébuffat achieved his first new route, on the Aiguille
Purtscheller. Later that year, the two men pushed a brave new line up the northeast
face of the Col du Caïman, which Terray would call “my first really great climb.” The
somewhat obscure but very dangerous route angled up not to a summit but to a saddle
between two peaks. By now the pair had agreed that Terray would lead all ice and snow
pitches, Rébuffat all rock.
The Col du Caïman came close to being a debacle. A nervous Terray dropped his
ice axe low on the route, after which his partner had to make do with a piton ham-
mer. Twice, trembling on tiny nicks of footholds on steep ice, Terray started to lose
his strength; twice he avoided potentially fatal falls only with desperate lunges. With
