BIG STUPID MOUNTAIN VII

Death by Helicopter Was Not on My Bingo Card

Doing it wrong on the Tour du Mont Blanc

Claire looking at a big stupid mountain. Photo by the author

“Do you hear that?”

There’s no good sound at 4:46 in the morning. I don’t want to hear the rain on the nylon. I don’t want to hear the wind slap the door flap. I don’t want to hear thunder snarl through the valley, sounding like some savage beast. A creature that pants, and growls — and chews through tents.

Misadventures are the fairytales of fools. Every doomed expedition is born from the dreams of earnest romantics, who think they know how to make themselves happy. Four giddy fools left a little French village this morning, crossing a river as green as Joyce’s sickly sea, certain that we could put one foot in front of the other forever.

We raced up the trail as if we were chasing rabbits, each of us secretly believing that an epiphany was beyond the next bluff. We had only hiked an hour before we found Jesus.

Somebody’s lord and savior is supposed to be waiting at the finish line, but when you hike the Tour du Mont Blanc backwards, Jesus sees you off. Five hundred metric tons of concrete, chiseled into the son of God. We were less than a thousand feet above that little French village, but at the feet of Jesus we cheered like we had summited one of the honored peaks of Nepal. Calling ourselves alpinists before our boots had the chance to scrape holes in our skin.

“If we keep this pace, we’ll be at our campsite by 1:30. Crushin’ it!”

That was the first time Claire’s trail watch lied to us.

Five-and-a-half hours of ascent was sitting between us and lunch. Five-and-a-half hours of scrambling over boulders bigger than Buicks, and dangling from cliff edges by iron rungs. If our sweaty hands slip, we fall a hundred feet into a forgotten crevice. We become sacks of bleeding broken bones, pinned down where the vultures arrive before the rescue team.

What devil has whispered us into this wilderness? We are not alpinists. We are idiots. I barely know what the N on a compass stands for.

I’m doing it wrong. I must be. My bag is too heavy; my water is running low; my blisters are beginning.

But at least it’s beautiful.

Please let me see these mountains when I close my eyes. Please let this valley sprinkle through my dreams until the day I die. Photo by the author

They call this Type 2 Fun.

Type 1 Fun is fun right now — like sex, pizza, and the first thirty minutes of Monopoly. Type 2 Fun is a story that’s fun to tell, once the ugly details dissolve into anecdotes. A disagreeable experience, enjoyable in retrospect.

But Type 2 Fun is the first cousin of misery. Above the trees, the trail deteriorates. Our only guides are the tiny yellow arrows painted on the rocks, like old mustard stains in a sea of weathered stones. We cross over peaks and start downhill, relieved to give the reigns to brand new muscles. Only new aches replace old aches. Our knees start to scream, and our shoulders still carry the weight of our worlds.

“It says our refuge is only another 200 meters.”

That was the second time Claire’s trail watch lied to us. 200 meters comes and goes. 2000 meters comes and goes, and still we face the switchbacks.

It’s easy to lose your cool when you imagine sleeping without supper on the side of a cliff. It’s even easier to blame someone else for all this Type 2 Fun you’re having.

“We’re taking too many breaks.” Translation: You’re taking too many breaks.

“This isn’t a race.” Translation: Stop trying to leave me behind.

“We need to get there before sundown.” Translation: You’re not pushing yourself. You’re going to ruin this for everyone.

“We’ll get there when we get there.” Translation: I’m having second thoughts about going on this trip with you, and if you whine for the next nine days, my epiphany on this mountain may be a murder/suicide.

Going down, and our knees start to scream. Photo by the author

The last spit of sunshine was clutching the roof of the refuge when I first saw La Flégère. I didn’t dream of dinner, or a warm fire, or even a working toilet. My only dream was to stop the world, to put an end to all this one foot in front of the other nonsense. Let me be still until tomorrow.

It was good that I dreamt of dinner. We had been told a thousand times that the food is spectacular on the Tour du Mont Blanc. The day’s toil will test your spirit, but there will always be a refuge filled with fresh meats, little cheeses, and strawberry apricot jams. There will be a hearty soup boiling over a wood fire in a cast iron pot. There will be crepes, and fondues, and warm baguettes. Local; artisan; gourmet.

Hogwash.

The cheese was old — hard where it should be soft, soft where it should be stiff, blue where blue didn’t belong. Six pieces of sorrow for four travelers to share. Then they brought bowls of potatoes to the table, drowning in a cream sauce that was three parts water to every part that could have conceivably come from a cow. Every bite was a sad yellow and white lump, every spoonful an insufferable translucent slurp.

No meat. No vegetables. No point in wondering if La Flégère served seconds.

I was hungry when we trudged back to camp. Hungry, and wet, and cold, and cramped. The rain had begun, so Claire and I dragged all of our gear inside our two-person tent. Spooning our rucksacks so they won’t get wet. Hating each other for every twitch and wiggle.

Hell hath no fury like a woman confined to a small tent with a smelly man. I hope Claire falls asleep soon before the farts come.

That’s when I hear it. The noise at 4:46 in the morning. At first, it was just another clap of faraway thunder, but the thunder never went away. It grew louder, and louder — a whapping roar that became more and more unmistakably mechanical.

“Is that a fucking helicopter?”

Our tent begins to flap like a flag in a hurricane. The corners lift off the ground, and we’ve got nothing but our tired bones to hold it down. We are being sucked into an alien spaceship. A spotlight sweeps over us, blinding us as we try to keep our tent poles from flying off the mountain. This is the end. Soon the main rotor blade will tear through the nylon and dice us like onions.

“Death by helicopter was not on my bingo card!”

Remember type 2 fun? This is it. When you surrender the absurdity of your awful adventure and burst into laughter.

We unzipped our front flap just in time to see the helicopter float over the power lines that lead to La Flégère. The pilot must be lost. Either that or this bird is being flown by a maniacal sociopath, a maverick misfit who will risk becoming a human fireball just to terrorize a few hikers.

Today was hard, and it started with a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow is harder, and it starts with an empty stomach and an asshole in a helicopter.

There’s light on the horizon. It’s already tomorrow.

Welcome to the Alps.

Here’s the next chapter in my Big Stupid Mountain series:

[embed]Quitters and Cheats are Mountain Climbers Too The Tour de Mont Blancmedium.com

Catch the first part here:

[embed]Big Stupid Mountain The misadventures of an unenlightened, wandering assmedium.com