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Home , Aiguille du Dru, Direttissima (climbing), Don Whillans, Gary Hemming, Grandes Jorasses, Jean Couzy

THE

MADIN 1966 TWO GERMAN CLIMBERS BECAME STRANDED ON THE PETIT DRU, A TOOTH OF ICY GRANITE IN THE ABOVE , . IN A TIME WHEN RESCUES MADE HEADLINES, FOUR TEAMS AND OVER 50 RESCUERS RUSHED THE TO SEE WHO COULD BE THE FIRST TO SAVE THE DAY. WHAT FOLLOWED WAS WATCHED BY MILLIONS AND BECAME THE LARGEST MOUNTAIN- RESCUE EFFORT IN HISTORY. _ BY MICHAEL WEJCHERT

“EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS OF THE HEROIC DRU RESCUE” proclaimed the September 1966 edition of Paris Match. Followed by up to 10 million Europeans, the unfolding rescue made American (second from left) one of the most famous people on the Continent. In a secret deal set up in advance, French guide René Desmaison (not shown), who headed up an unofficial rescue, covered the epic forParis Match. On the cover, rescued German climbers Hermann Schriddel and Heinz Ramish are seated in the background, with French climber and rescuer François Guillot in the foreground. /PARIS MATCH AFFAIR GERARD GERY

14 | ASCENT 2017  ASCENT 2017 | 15 At 3 o’clock in the morning of August climb lay in the perfect, 90-meter diedre, a a violent thunderstorm, they started up to suffer as much as his partners. , 19, 1966, six men crept up the Mer de dihedral of granite high up the face. On the the dihedral, ignoring the growing clouds who climbed a new route with Hemming, Glace, the glacier from which the Petit first attempt, Magnone, Lucien Bréardini and the ice now plastering the face. The and Stewart Fulton on the Dru spits upwards. In the dark they could and Adrien Dagory, exhausted from the decision to continue, instead of retreat, Aguille de Fou in 1963, tells me that “his not see the mountain before them. Rain oppressive heat and short on equipment, would activate the most complicated rescue limitations were personal, not physical. He spat down, soaking the climbers to the dead-ended above the dièdre, where blank in the history of mountain . They just wasn’t that stable a personality.” bone. Ropes, , army rations and slabs gave way to a 30-meter overhang. made impossibly slow progress. Schriddel For Hemming, as for others of his sleeping bags bulged out from their heavy On their second try, the team, this time fell yet again, and Ramisch, who caught generation, alpinism was more a crucible rucksacks. They plodded up in the dark: an with Marcel Lainé, traversed in above the him on a hip belay, badly cut his hands. than a sport. He told an admiring reporter American, two Germans, an Englishman, dihedral by placing a line of primitive bolts That afternoon, having taken all day to from Elle after the rescue: “The mountain two Frenchmen. Some had met for the first (gulots), from the neighboring North Face, climb the signature 90-meter dihedral, the is an initiation which is renewed every year. time the previous night, in the smoke and skipping the section of the West Face they’d Germans committed to the pendulum. Here, You go there, you test yourself, you find GARY HEMMING with Andrea Harlin and they confronted two options: Magnone’s yourself again. Afterwards, you are more gloom of the Hotel de Paris, the cheapest John Harlin III, the children of his friend and previously climbed. This time the team place for an itinerant climber to cop an frequent climbing partner John Harlin II, who committed to an irreversible pendulum ladder, leading to safety and the less able to accept yourself.” actual bed in Chamonix. Above the six would die attempting the direttissima on the traverse across the slabs and launched up difficult North Face, or continuing up the Though Hemming had climbed with men was a mountain face that, 15 years North Face in 1966. the overhang. The route constituted the horribly iced-up overhangs to the summit. Robbins and Frost—men who practically earlier, had not once been climbed. cutting edge of for 1952. In Before the team had left Montenvers, they invented modern climbing—he lingered But the six men were not assembled to THE EXHAUSTED the wet, icy conditions of 1966, however, the had agreed to wave a red parka in case of only on the fringes of Yosemite in the late climb the Petit Dru—they were to save same features conspired to form something trouble to their anxious countrymen below. 1950s. His ramblings, from the late 1950s two young Germans who were ensnared GERMANS MADE more sinister: the perfect trap. After another bivouac, this time on the to the early 1960s, took him from on a ledge, unable to retreat, and unable THEMSELVES AS impossibly exposed ledge beneath the roofs, to Mexico, to British Columbia, to New York to continue climbing. Verglas coated the “T H E R E I S,” wrote the journalist Jeremy unable to commit to either the icy overhangs City: an early prototype of the dirtbag. entire wall. A helicopter had flown over COMFORTABLE Bernstein, in a 1971 article for The New or the old bolt ladder, and certainly unable Beginning in the summer of 1959, Hemming the mountain on the 17th, and spotted the AS THEY COULD, Yorker about rescues in the , to reverse the pendulum and rappel, the gravitated towards the Tetons, where he Germans through the clouds. They were “in the back of the young climber’s mind an exhausted Germans made themselves as worked as a guide for Exum . alive. Forty rescuers had been dispatched TOOK OFF THE awareness of the efficient rescue service in comfortable as they could, took off the red Mercurial even at his best, Hemming was to the summit of the Dru, but massive the valley—the realization that, if the worst jacket, and furiously signaled for help. legendary in his moodiness. He exploded RED JACKET, RENÉ DESMAISON was a leading French overhangs made it nearly impossible for comes to the worst, ‘on vous cherche.’” into fits of rage, often against inanimate AND FURIOUSLY climber and guide when he launched his teams to rappel to the stranded men. Heinz Ramisch and Hermann Schriddel LOTHAR MAUCH was frustrated. It was objects. Partners recall how his moods and impromptu rescue attempt on the Dru in The sole American on the glacier, and part SIGNALED FOR had set off up the Petit Dru on August 14, Thursday, August 18. The rain drummed tempers would affect his climbing. “He was competition with the attempt by the Chamonix of a second rescue team, was a tall, angular five days before Hemming’s team labored down on the café roof in , on very temperamental,” remembers Konrad guides. Desmaison was subsequently fired man with patched climbing knickers and a H E L P. towards them on the . Ramisch, the Italian side of the Alps. He had just Kirch, a friend of Hemming’s and a climbing from the guide service. He would continue to climb hard the world over, making 114 first scarf nearly as long as he was. His face, one a 22-year-old student from Karlsruhe, retreated from the , and now partner of John Harlin’s. “And he was very ascents, including the first ascent of Jannu, the journalist later wrote, “had something of Germany, had never once climbed with the weather was getting worse. Mauch, fluctuating in his abilities.” Hemming, first winter ascent of theWalker Spur on the the beauty of the paintings of the Christian the 30-year-old Schriddel, who worked as a 29-year-old German with handsome, stalk thin and around 6-foot-4, would often , the first winter and first solo saints.” His eyes, an impish, childlike IN 1935, the first ascent of an auto mechanic. They had only just met, dark features—he occasionally funded provoke fights he knew he’d lose. Once, he of the Dru, and in 1971 the first ascent of the (ED 2/5c, A1, 85-degree blue, twinkled when he smiled. In a few fell to and Raymond Leininger. encamped with a cluster of their countrymen alpine-climbing trips with modeling gigs was badly beaten outside a bar in the Tetons Desmaison-Gousseault ice) on the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses, days he would be one of the most famous Allain was, in the words of the climbing in the Montenvers campground. for fashion magazines—had been planning by three cowboys he’d been glowering at a line that is still considered hard. On the latter people in Europe. In three years he would chronologist, Ian Parnell, “decades ahead of Accidents typically leave a distinct trail on an ascent of one of Chamonix’s longest through his noticeably long, tangled hair. ascent his partner Serge Gousseault became be found dead in a campground in Jackson, his time.” He invented equipment still used of seemingly inconsequential mistakes. routes, the Peuterey Integral. Across from “Death,” he wrote in his diary, “is chasing seriously ill just short of the summit. Chamonix Wyoming. His name was Gary Hemming, today: lightweight half-height sleeping bags, But then, alpinism is rife with instances— him, reading that day’s Dauphine Libéré, a me in this country. I have to leave before it rescuers reached the climbers but Gousseault had already been dead for three days. and he carried with him a conviction that in inflatable mattresses and the first modern both of ascent and disaster—where small French paper, sat Gary Hemming, Mauch’s catches me.” Desmaison accused the rescuers of deliberately turn carried the five other soaked climbers rock shoe. Allain honed his skills on the things go wrong, apparently unnoticed by partner and mentor. The pair had made In 1960, Harlin, an American Air Force dragging their feet to punish him for his rescue upwards in the gray predawn drizzle. They boulders of Fontainebleau outside of Paris, the unlucky protagonists. A razor-thin line numerous ascents together: “Gary taught pilot stationed in Germany, wrote to of the Germans on the Dru. would save the men who were trapped, unlike many cloistered traditionalists of his has always separated the brilliant from the me everything during two summer seasons, Hemming, whom he’d climbed with back in thousands of feet above, by climbing up era. His equipment, training and approach bumbling. when I climbed mostly with him,” Mauch California in 1954. Hemming, attracted by through the storm. were, for 1935, breathtakingly modern. Ramisch and Schriddel made average, remembers. the allure of the European Alps and sickened (The Direct, as luck would have it, joined the On the North Face, Allain and Leininger but decent, progress up the easy lower by the perceived restraints of American original West Face route at the 90-meter IN A RANGE rich in iconic summits, the brought one between them to save two-thirds of the wall. Planning on two or WITH HEMMING, nothing was as it society, soon joined him. dihedral where the two Germans now found Drus—the Grand and Petit—stand out. weight. They used a single 7mm rope, five three days on the face, the two pared down seemed. Hemming was born in 1934 in While both men had made little ripples themselves trapped.) Though Hemming While both are spectacular summits, it was pitons, six and a prototype pair their bivouac equipment to the minimum Pasadena, California, but when he became on the fringes of climbing development in climbed with others, it was with Harlin that the Petit Dru, at 3,730 meters (24 meters of Allain’s rock shoes. The pair freed the standard at the time: waterproof anoraks famous, he loved toying with reporters and California, they made quite the splash in he felt most strongly the electrifying power shorter than its taller counterpart), that entire climb at 5.9. In 1935, and perhaps and down jackets, as well as a rudimentary friends alike, mischievously lying about his Europe, bringing Yosemite tactics to the of partnership. And while they would argue, caught the eye of Chamonix alpinists. still, it was an absolute tour de force. two-man bivy sack. age, his height, his history. In his obituary, large, glaciated mountains of the Western notoriously berating each other as they Its North and West faces are both steep, The first ascent of the neighboring West On the second day, Schriddel took a 30-foot would describe him as “a Alps. Apart from a new route on the Fou, dangled from some precarious belay, they imposing walls of granite nearly as tall as Face, in 1952, was such an undertaking leader fall, badly bruising his ribs. Ramisch’s climber widely believed to have been among Hemming completed the first American quickly became the most famous Americans in Yosemite. It wasn’t until after that Guido Magnone, one of the first throat, sore from dehydration, hurt so the best in the world.” Yet he climbed well ascent of the Walker Spur of the Grandes in the Alps. World War I that alpinists even considered ascentionists, wrote an entire book about much he couldn’t swallow. Nonetheless, on only sporadically, often moodily lapsing Jorasses, and the American Direct on the Petit Guided by Hemming’s fatalistic, medieval

the endeavor. The signature beauty of the the 16th, even after bivouacking through AFP/GETTY IMAGES into a listlessness that caused his abilities Dru, with Robbins in the summer of 1962. sense of chivalry, the two were part and the faces possible. JOHN HARLIN II COLLECTION

16 | ASCENT 2017  ASCENT 2017 | 17 , or the “Petit Dru” (3,730 meters) EVENTS OF THE DRU RESCUE Grand Dru (3,754 meters) AUGUST 17-22, 1966 Forty volunteers, soldiers and guides from the Ecole de Haute Montagne at- the café with Lothar Mauch on that rainy tempt to rappel to and winch off the day in August could not have been better stranded Germans. poised for stardom. (4,122 meters) John Harlin’s obsession was a route up the North Face of the Eiger in winter. By winter of 1966 he had made multiple attempts over five years, and finally recruited a team of alpinists whose names read like a who’s who of alpinism in the 1960s: Englishmen and , the Scottish climber , and the brilliant American . But the attempt had ended in disaster on March 22, as Harlin ascended a 7mm rope halfway up the face. E.H.M. rescuer Wolfgang The tiny perlon cord wore over a sharp edge, Egle dies tangled in rappel and Harlin fell. The journalist Peter Gillman, ropes. on assignment for the Daily Telegraph, E.N.S.A. team traverses German climbers Heinz Ramisch and watched in horror from Kleine Scheiddeg to Hemming’s group. Hermann Schriddel stranded here, through his telescope. “Suddenly I saw a August 17-21, spending 10 days total figure in red cartwheeling downwards. It on the Dru. THE CHAMONIX GANG at the Biloet Campground around 1964. Tom Frost, Gary Hemming, Stewart Fulton, John Harlin III, Andrea Harlin and John Harlin II. fell too fast for me to follow it.” RIGHT: A stunned Hermann Schriddel safely off the Dru, facing the media spectacle. Five months later, as Hemming read the Dauphine Libéré in Courmayeur at noon on 90-meter dihedral. parcel to some of the Alps’ most famous of letters. He climbed over the hedges of August 18, he was doubtless still reeling from rescues. Rescue duties at the time were her parents’ house in Paris. Her sister, Harlin’s death. “John is one of my dearest divided among three groups seasonally— unamused, promptly phoned the police, and friends. His death I refuse to accept and so far the École Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme, Hemming was arrested. Hemming’s beatnik as I am concerned he is still very much alive … August 19-20 route of rescuers Gary Hemming, or E.N.S.A. (the guide-training school predilections baffled most of his American I cannot climb alone next summer.” François Guillot, Lothar Mauch, of France), the guides themselves, and contemporaries. Frost muses, “He was The article that interested him involved Gerhard Baur, Gilles Bodin lastly the École de Haute Montagne (the portrayed as a romantic in the media. But, the two Germans, trapped high up on the and Mick Burke. training school of the French Alpine troops). he wasn’t willing to step up to the plate to Dru, on terrain he was intimately familiar Assistance by talented “recreational” be a father or a husband.” For the French, with. The École de Haute Montagne had alpinists such as Hemming and Harlin were who have always gathered rebellious spirits dispatched some 40 troops to the summit necessary additions, but not always welcome to their collective bosoms—from Joan of Arc of the Dru, orchestrated from Chamonix August 22 rappel René Desmaison and Vincent ones. “Gary never liked the Chamonix to Arthur Rimbaud—the man brooding in by Colonel André Gonnet. The plan was August 20, North Face route route, the American Mercié helicoptered to the base guides,” says Lothar Mauch. The rift had to lower a steel winch down and haul the taken by four rescuers of Direct. of the Couloir du Dru, climbed the Ecole Nationale de Ski et begun when Hemming and Harlin offered stranded climbers back up. An Allouette to Hemming’s team, and joined d’Alpinism, or E.N.S.A. them. their assistance during the famous disaster helicopter had buzzed past the Germans, on the Central Pillar of Freney in 1961. The and through the clouds confirmed they ordeal killed four out of seven climbers, were alive, but with the atrocious weather, Original Magone 1952 route. and left the two Americans disenchanted PARIS MATCH could do little else. over the lassitude of the French rescuers. HAD TAKEN With the rescuers came the press. “Every This rift deepened when Hemming was TO KEEPING newspaper in Western Europe carried booted out of an E.N.S.A. course in 1962 for details of the rescue on its front pages,” refusing to shave his unruly beard. Later, he A FULL-TIME wrote Bernstein in The New Yorker. A shaved it off all the same. helicopter from the O.R.T.F., the official an ensuing Paris Match article: “This rescue and to rappel a face that huge was still daunting, France. The 36-year-old had made the fourth CORRESPONDENT PARIS MATCH (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Hemming’s stubborn romanticism French radio and television network, joined is a great ascent—a real adventure. But what’s given the techniques and equipment of 1966. ascent of the West Face of the Dru. Unsatisfied, plagued him even more in the lowlands. ON HAND IN the fray. The Petit Dru had been besieged. important is that it involves the lives of two “The rescue organization,” says Mauch, “was he completed the first winter ascent of the His love life was plentiful, but abysmal. By CHAMONIX Mauch took a little convincing before he persons, two companions. If we make it, it very, very bad at the time.” line, and then returned to solo it. In 1958, he 1966, he’d amassed a tangle of relationships would go with Hemming. “Gary said, ‘If they will mean a lot more than just another windy At 3 o’clock on the afternoon of the 18th, and climbed a new route on the that were complicated even considering the TO SNATCH UP do it like that, trying to go down from the summit, don’t you agree?” Mauch and Hemming introduced themselves to north face of the Grandes Jorasses. He was a decade. He had a son with a Frenchwoman RESCUE STORIES top of the Dru, they might never get them Eventually Mauch agreed to return to Colonel Gonnet, who, to his great consternation, member of ’s expedition to Jannu in 1963, and the couple maintained an open out.’ He knew very well about the overhangs Chamonix, and to accompany Hemming up realized he was suddenly parlaying with the in 1962. Perhaps only exceeded relationship. But he had also fallen in love AS QUICKLY on the West Face,” he says. the Dru. “It was bad weather,” he reasons, same upstart American who had been kicked Desmaison in ushering in the new era of with a young French student to whom he AS HAPLESS But the tunnel from Courmayeur back with the logic of any obsessed alpinist. “There out of E.N.S.A. for refusing to shave. modern European alpinism. prescribed unrealistic expectations and to Chamonix was expensive, and the was nothing else to [do].” Hemming’s plan, to A man wholly different from Gary Hemming Unlike Hemming, who flitted between mythic proportions. CLIMBERS COULD two climbers had just paid the hefty fee. reach the Germans by climbing up to them and was also paying particular attention to bohemian dalliances and climbing with a When the two met, the woman was 17 years ASCEND INTO Hemming pressed—what better crusade rappelling, seemed simple enough. But rescues the unfolding saga on the Petit Dru. René somewhat calculated nonchalance, Desmaison old. Hemming pestered her with hundreds than a daring rescue? He would recount in in Chamonix were overly complicated affairs, Desmaison was one of the best alpinists in was an obsessive career alpinist, and one of

TROUBLE. JOHN HARLIN II COLLECTION, GERARD GERY/

18 | ASCENT 2017  ASCENT 2017 | 19 des Guides (who hadn’t yet ventured forth a the fusillade of stones and debris. The two on the mountain. The École de Haute WOLFGANG EGLE Desmaison was barely clinging to life. rescue effort), to strike off up the West Face Frenchmen hunkered down for the night Montagne’s 40 volunteers, soldiers and Desmaison would accuse the rescuers of to save the Germans. on a sheltered ledge, unable to cross over guides on the summit were still attempting WAS RAPPELLING intentionally dragging their feet to punish “Amateur or professional,” he wrote in to Hemming and his team until morning, to lower a steel cable down to the Germans. ABOVE THE FOUR him for his role on the Dru rescue while Total Alpinism, “any climber has the right, when the cold had frozen the couloir enough E.N.S.A. had finally sent its four alpinists the Devouassoux and the other rescuers indeed the duty, to save life.” What he to allow safe passage. In the morning, Baur to climb Pierre Allain’s route on the North E.N.S.A. CLIMBERS would claim that Desmaison’s need for neglected to reveal, in his chapter on the tossed Desmaison a rope. The two parties Face, and Hemming and Desmaison’s team WHEN HE BECAME the spotlight—he hauled heavy radio Dru (entitled “The Maverick”), was the converged. Now they were eight. What went was about to reach the Germans by way of equipment up the wall so he could broadcast exclusive contract he signed with Paris through Hemming’s mind as Desmaison the original West Face Route. TANGLED IN THE daily updates—had caused him to climb too Match before setting off. and Mercié popped up on the ledge next The three rescue entities were drawing ROPES ON THE ICY slowly. François Guillot, another young alpinist, to him? Desmaison, according to his own closer to the Germans, and, as notably to the Today, many Chamoniards still whisper was drinking a beer and watching the rain account, chastised the team for moving too swarms of reporters below, to each other. NORTH FACE AND about Devouassoux’s “revenge,” though few in the Hotel de Paris when he saw Mauch slowly, and conjured a plan of action. “Gary On Saturday the 20th, as Guillot led STRANGLED are willing to comment on it publicly. On and Hemming. Hurriedly, they explained knew very well that Desmaison was there the climbers up the West Face, rescue the ledge in 1966, Guillot, uninvolved in the their plan. Within hours of the meeting for money,” says Mauch. efforts were compounding elsewhere, too. TO DEATH. older men’s weighty quarrels, chimed in, with Gonnet, Hemming had assembled For Hemming, the helpless, troubled Four E.N.S.A. climbers—all colleagues of asking for the guides to lower a stuff sack an improvised team of rescuers: Gerhard romantic, the Dru rescue glimmered as the Desmaison’s—had begun climbing up the full of snacks. Baur was a young German in his early 20s spiritual crusade he had always dreamed less-technical North Face, with the intent Desmaison continues: “The cloud ceiling who knew Ramisch and Schriddel. Gilles of. For Desmaison, whose career suddenly of traversing in on Magnone’s aged gulots. was now about 11,800 feet. The air seemed Bodin was a French guide. Mick Burke, who hung in the balance, saving the Germans, The eight men on the West Face humid. In spite of the altitude it did not Konrad Kirch remembers as a “small, dirty- and the race to beat his colleagues, bivouacked below the dièdre. Now they were seem cold. It was obviously only a matter of looking climber,” was a talented Brit who meant everything. The idealist and the a mere 300 feet below the two Germans. In guides on the E.N.S.A. team, was making the time before the storm broke.” would later go missing on the South Face of opportunist would now have to work their one day, through ferocious storms, Guillot traverse across Magnone’s gulots. Pollet- A helicopter whirred past to snap Everest. He was also crucially well versed way together up the mountain as 10 million had led what had taken Ramisch and Villard was a colleague of Desmaison’s. photographs, and the team rigged the THE RESCUERS AND THE RESCUED . in knowledge of the West Face, having Europeans listened, read and watched the Schriddel two days the week before. Around Moreover, the two had climbed on Jannu Germans with modern nylon harnesses and First row: French guide Gilles Bodin and François Guillot, who quickly led up to the rappelled the American Direct, Robbins drama unfurl across the granite faces of the the corner, the E.N.S.A. party bivouacked at together, and routinely roped up around retreated to their last bivouac below the stranded climbers. Second row: Lothar Mauch, and Hemming’s line, when his partner had Petit Dru. around the same height. Hemming shouted Chamonix. Understandably furious at dihedral. That night, as the men prepared Hemming’s climbing partner, who agreed to broken an arm due to rockfall. “Desmaison wanted to do the rescue to to the Germans through the mist, but could Desmaison’s decision to rescue the Germans for the worst, another storm of insatiable Hemming’s audacious rescue plan; British But Guillot was the lynchpin. At 22, he take pictures, to sell the pictures to Paris hear nothing. himself, without prior consultation, he now violence lashed the West Face. The rescuers climber Mick Burke (glasses); Gary Hemming (red). Third row: Gerhard Baur, who knew was one of the youngest rescuers, but also Match, and you could speak for hours Everyone settled down in the dark. Their asked the renegade West Face team what debated untying from the pitons, humming the rescued Germans; the rescued Germans one of the strongest. “I was a pure amateur about that,” Guillot says. “However, he was sleeping bags and clothes were soaked their intentions were. with electricity. Heinz Ramisch and Hermann Schriddel; René at the time,” he laughs. “I was coming off perfectly in line with his approach, and he completely through. The next morning, the Guillot remembers thinking that, hubris On the 22nd, Mick Burke led the Desmaison; and, standing, Vincent Mercié. a six-week trip to the Caucus mountains. was a professional alpinist.” Germans responded to Hemming’s shouts, aside, Hemming and Desmaison’s plan was team, and the rescued Germans, down So I was in good shape. Gary knew me, and They came up with a plan of action. and the rescuers attacked the dihedral. the safer of the two. The ropework involved the mountain, soaked, exhausted and the foremost guides in Chamonix. And knew I was a decent climber, and asked me Guillot and Hemming would go first, Simultaneously, the E.N.S.A. team began with ferrying the two exhausted Germans elated. In the dark, they stepped onto the like many professional climbers desperate to come.” Desmaison and Mercié second, and Mauch, traversing in from the North Face. Higher up and across to the North Face was doable, glacier. In the morning, when “the light to fund their endeavors, Desmaison By 7:00 that evening, Hemming and his Baur, Bodin and Burke would tackle the up, Gonnet’s men were still trying to but involved, and dangerous considering the was bright enough so that the O.R.T.F. possessed a canny ability to manipulate team were on a specially scheduled cog- less glamorous but equally daunting task lower a steel cable from the summit of the Germans’ deteriorating condition. Burke television cameras could obtain excellent his adventures and present them—for a railway train headed up to the glacier. Early of hauling the heavy rescue and bivouac Dru. They had enlisted the help of some and Hemming’s knowledge of the American pictures,” the team was helicoptered back to cost—to the mainstream media. “He had the next morning, the men climbed up the equipment up the verglassed face. volunteers, including a young man named Direct, which shot down from the ledge in a Chamonix. In the black-and-white footage, a reputation in Chamonix,” remembers Dru Couloir, an inhospitable place in the That Hemming and Desmaison, not Wolfgang Egle, a friend of the Germans, perfect line, was the safest option. Hemming appears a little tired. His pants Mauch, “for working with Paris Match and best of conditions. Now, as sleet spat down, exactly slouches when it came to alpinism, who was rappelling above the four E.N.S.A. “At that time,” says Guillot, “rappelling are tattered and worn, and a red knit cap is the radio station.” the couloir was a death trap, and the men, allowed the young Guillot to lead the entire climbers when he somehow became tangled down a 900-meter-high face was something perched at a perfect angle over his head. He In Desmaison’s defense, alpinists with laden with heavy rucksacks and soaked West Face speaks more to the 22-year-old’s in the ropes on the icy north face and was enormous. And certainly for Desmaison, laughs easily with the reporters despite his middling bank accounts have always relied already to the bone, resorted to every trick abilities than anything else. Bodin recalled strangled to death. and also for Gary, it was a question of pride. fatigue, throwing his head back at his own `on publicity stunts to fund their endeavors. in the book to make upward progress. In in an interview in 2002, “Without Guillot, Desmaison remembers the incident They wanted to keep the two Germans with sardonic remarks. His French is good, with Harlin’s death on the Eiger had received the snow and sleet, the slabs and ledges we may still have succeeded. But, it would in Total Alpinism: “Luckily, this tragic them, and not give them to the other team. a slight American twang. When a reporter massive coverage; the French magazine proved impossible. Guillot led a few pitches have taken twice as much time.” occurrence was invisible from the West Face And this created a lot of problems for my asks if he ever thought about giving up, he Paris Match had taken to keeping a full-time and then retreated back down, and the men Hemming belayed as the young and, naturally, we did not mention it to the friend Desmaison after that.” fixes his gaze: “Jamais. Jamais.” “He loved correspondent on hand in Chamonix during huddled into their down sleeping bags and Frenchman furiously hammered his way two Germans.” One of the North Face rescuers fuming it,” Konrad Kirch remembers. the busy summer alpine season in order two-man bivy sacks, little better off than up the West Face. Word had gotten out Guillot and Hemming reached the at Desmaison and Hemming’s insolence While they had toiled on the Dru, to snatch up rescue stories as quickly as the Germans, who remained crouched about the tall, valiant Californian racing stranded German climbers a little after noon was Gérard Devouassoux. Five years later, Desmaison had slyly hidden his contract hapless climbers could ascend into trouble. on their teeny ledge, rationing nuts and his improvised team up through the clouds. on Sunday, August 21—a full week after in February 1971, Devouassoux would be with Paris Match from the other rescuers, Like Hemming, Desmaison realized that shivering through their fourth night in the Even if he was only feeding out rope, the Ramisch and Schriddel had started up the charged with rescuing Desmaison and but, back in Chamonix, he told an PARIS MATCH VIA GETTY IMAGES climbing up to the Germans was the surest same forlorn spot. press was in love. Less enamored was the face. Apart from the minor injuries sustained his young partner Serge Gousseault from understandably livid Hemming. “Gary method of rescue. He decided, without Meanwhile, Desmaison and an aspirant Companie des Guides with Desmaison. while climbing, and the obvious hunger, cold the top of the Grandes Jorasses after the was not the type of guy who would make informing the world’s oldest organized guide and photographer named Vincent For the stoic clique, Desmaison’s latest and exhaustion, they were fine. exhausted climbers had become stuck a big fuss about fighting with Réne,” says mountain-guiding association and his Mercié, had taken a helicopter to the base publicity stunt constituted the final straw. As Hemming reached Ramisch and at the top of a new route. By the time the Guillot. “But, I’m sure it was a pretty tough employer, Chamonix’s venerated Companie of the couloir and were soon also dodging There were now three rescue groups GERARD GERY/ Schridde, Yves Pollet-Villard, one of the rescue arrived, Gousseault was dead, and discussion between the two of them.”

20 | ASCENT 2017  ASCENT 2017 | 21 While the rescue elevated Hemming to DESMAISON’S ACCIDENT on the mythic proportions, Desmaison’s actions WHILE THE Grandes Jorasses and the death of Serge caused the Companie des Guides to fire him RESCUE ELEVATED Gousseault put him even further at odds instantly. He would spend the rest of his with the Chamonix establishment. He life feuding and feeling as if Hemming had HEMMING constantly warred with the guides he swore gotten an unfair portion of the credit for the TO MYTHIC abandoned him. Whatever his earthly rescue. “Well done, Gary!” he wrote. “Gary PROPORTIONS, motives, his routes are considered among Hemming was the hero of the hour, the man the greatest in the Alps. A modern alpinist, who had saved the two Germans, the man DESMAISON’S Jon Griffith, wrote on his web page after everybody wanted to touch, and interview, ACTIONS CAUSED repeating Desmaison’s pièce de résistance and see. You would have thought he had on the Jorasses: “Among all the hundreds of done the entire rescue single-handed; THE COMPANIE classics … there will always remain … the nobody showed the slightest interest in the DES GUIDES ones that combine five star climbing with rest of us.” an epic tale enshrined in our sport. The Guillot, who later became a guide, TO FIRE HIM Desmaison-Gousseault is one of them.” In spent years quietly reading Desmaison’s INSTANTLY. 2007, Desmaison died at the age of 77. increasingly exaggerated accounts of the Mauch, Guillot, Baur and Bodin are affair. “René hid everything about the still alive. When I spoke with Mauch, he job we did,” he says. “In all his books he was in Spain, enjoying the sunset after mentions the rescue, and each time his role a day of clipping bolts. He and Guillot are grows, as if he’d done everything himself. still friends, having met in the bar that I spent my life looking at what René was rainy night in the Hotel de Paris, over 50 writing in his books and saying, ‘Bastard; years ago. I chatted with Guillot, who was he could have spoken a little bit more about puts it, “a saintly smile and the vascular spending time in Marseilles. His shoulders, my role!’” system of a marathon runner.” he complains, are giving him trouble. In his While Hemming basked in the limelight “Gary was uneasy and unhappy in the mid-70s, he still climbs 5.11 (5.12, according and Desmaison tussled with the Companie United States,” Robbins would write in his to Mauch). “Gary had the fame,” he told me. des Guides, Lothar Mauch engaged in a obituary. In 1969, as his celebrité ebbed, “And that’s O.K.” heroism of a different sort. Two men had Hemming returned to the Tetons. He had Most of the rescuers turned toward been saved; another young man was dead. taken, for some morbid reason, to keeping inevitable careers in the mountains. The parents of Wolfgang Egle, the man who a revolver in his rucksack. Hemming’s Gerhard Baur became a successful still hung from the North Face of the Dru, idealism, which had so embodied the 1960s to mountain filmmaker. Guillot and Bodin had come to Chamonix. Mauch remembers his European fans, would be lost, seemingly spent lifetimes guiding in the feeling uneasy. Devouassoux, the E.N.S.A. in time with the tumultuous decade itself, Massif, though the fame and prestige climber who had reached Egle moments which began with such innocence and ended awarded the rescuers eventually faded. “Ask after his death, had delegated the task of in unfathomable violence. “Anyone,” he the youngsters, and you will see there are meeting the parents to Mauch. “He saw reportedly quipped, “can be a hero one day not so many who know!” Bodin joked in a the guy dying before his eyes! I didn’t see and a motherfucker the next.” On the night 2002 interview. anything,” says Mauch. “I was on the other of August 6, 1969, he attended a party with It is difficult to directly connect Desmaison side of the mountain. The parents asked his old friend Bill Briggs at the Jenny Lake and Gousseault’s tragedy on the Grandes me questions I couldn’t answer. It wasn’t Campground. Jorasses with the rescue, but in a town where right.” Hemming, who loved getting into fights politics and climbing are tied so tightly After the hubbub subsided, a different he’d lose, needled one of the partygoers together, not impossible. Hemming, turned sort of recovery took place, as rescuers about the inferiority of American guides to celebrity overnight, unraveled over his three somberly cut down Egle’s body and returned their Gallic counterparts. The two scuffled, remaining years. His diaries constantly it to Chamonix. with the much-stronger Exum guide question his fame. “Now I know with In James Salter’s novel Solo Faces, which pacifying the wildly drunk Hemming. Later, certainty the impossible situation of being is loosely based on the life of Hemming, Hemming quarreled with his girlfriend at ‘somebody important,’” he wrote. While the title character successfully fades back the time, snatched his rucksack out from the other rescuers simply became dramatis into an anonymous, vagabond existence her car, and disappeared angrily into the personae, and a mountain rescue became a after his dangerous brush with fame. The night, firing a shot from his revolver into confounding muddle of egos, the survivors are real ending was less tidy. Hemming’s face the air. Briggs, attempting to cling to much- probably relieved to have remained relatively had been seen on every television station needed sleep before he met his clients in anonymous: the two men who gained the in Europe. He wrote his own account of the the morning, heard a second shot at some most from those stormy days on the Dru rescue for Paris Match. He was put up in the point during the night. “I recall thinking suffered in accordance with their fame. Paris flats of intellectuals and journalists. probably Gary had committed suicide, or He played a character on a French television perhaps shot the girl.” In the morning he Michael Wejchert is a writer and guides for mini-series. Women stopped him on the found Hemming’s long body, splayed out in the International Mountain Climbing School street. He was “le Beatnik,” with, as Salter the grass. in North Conway, New Hampshire.

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