Conquistadors of the Useless by Geoffrey Sutton Lionel Terray David Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

and ice technique was by comparison still rudimentary. To be honest, I was held back more by the subjective aspect of difficulty than by the difficulties themselves. The very thought of climbing a pitch with a reputation for delicacy made me as tense as a gladiator entering the arena, and I had to stretch my willpower to the utmost in order to overcome this apprehension. Thus, due to a careless reading of the guidebook, I several times got up the ‘crux’ of a climb with no bother at all, whereas on an easier pitch, which I
thought
to be the crux, I trembled like a leaf. [4] I had occasional flashes of daring which astonish me when I remember them today, and when I think about the way I got up certain pitches shivers run up and down my spine.
    During one ascent of the Cardinal, for example, I got by mistake into a smooth, overhanging chimney. I overcame the problem by pulling up on a blade of rock that I had managed to jam between the two walls. Many years later I found myself by chance on the same mountain and went a bit out of my way to have a look at the well-remembered chimney. Despite my modern moulded-rubber soles and ten years’ experience of the hardest routes in the Mont Blanc range, I was quite unable to climb the last few feet. The most dangerous thing in mountaineering is certainly the carefree confidence of youth!
    During the months which followed, some order seemed to come back into the world. For those living in the valleys of the Alps nothing seemed to have changed: the tourists were back, the joyous chinking of flowing money was heard again. Youngsters avid of sensations and fugitive glory were grouped again around the chronometers at the Sunday ski-competitions, which were being contested with the old ardour. That winter was the apogee of my skiing career. In December I was selected to train for the national team. My summer season had put me into a state of exceptional fitness, and had given me the self-confidence essential to clearing the path of victory. I seemed highly likely to qualify when, in an unlucky fall, I badly injured my knee, and barely recovered in time to go in for the Dauphine championships for which I was still eligible. Nevertheless I won the downhill, the slalom, and the combined classification for the four events – for in those days they had the crazy notion to make the same men compete not only in the downhill and slalom, but also in specialised events whose techniques were as far apart as the cross-country race and the jumping.
    A few days later, by a stroke of luck, I came second in the ‘combined downhill and slalom’, and third in the overall classification in the national championships of France. Later in the season, at the ‘Grand Prix de l’Alpe d’Huez’, fate took a hand to redress matters. A hundred yards from the finishing post I was several seconds up on the whole of the French national team when some spectators got in my way and I lost first place by a fifth of a second.
    By the time the last snows gave place to the delicate corolla of the crocus in the saturated fields, I had good reasons for thinking that my old vision of reaching the highest ranks of the sport were not just the daydreams of a silly child. How I would have laughed in the face of anyone who predicted that it would be many years before I was to know again the enraptured feeling of more than human force that comes from the utter concentration of the fight against the clock.
    At my mother’s house I had bed, board and a little pocket money, so that for months I was as free as a mountain goat. I had no place in society to fulfil, no other task than what I saw fit to set myself. Animated by an appetite for physical exercise which amounted almost to frenzy, I led a life of intense activity and virtual asceticism. From the beginning of December to the end of May my ski training, and the many competitions in which I usually entered for all four events, left me almost no