Le Couloir de Barre Noire: Day 3
Learning to Climb French: Alpine climbing at Les Ecrins and Dolomites, August 2-10, 2005

The night at the refuge was horrible. Forty people trying to sleep together in a room does not lead to rest -- it leads to murder. The Spaniard next to me snored like a drunken sailor and the stupid Germans, in the bunks across from us, decided to pack their backpacks in the room while everyone else tried to sleep. In total, I estimate that I slept 15 minutes; definitely not enough after a long alpine day and a previous night of bad sleep in the car. I was not a happy camper and my body was letting me know that I needed some rest.

At 4:00 we went downstairs for a nice refuge breakfast; hot tea, bread, Nutella, butter and jelly. With bellies full we started the non-trivial hike to the Glacier Blanc at the base of the Refuge des Ecrins (3172m). François had left his headlamp in Paris so he followed two Germans that parted ahead of us who had intentions of climbing the Dome des Ecrins (4015m, F). My ankle was killing me and soon the trio was gone, which lead to the additional task of finding my own way through this maze of rock.

About an hour later I found François freezing his ass off at the base of the glacier while the Germans roped-up. We did the same and soon enough we had flown by most other climbers on the glacier. My previous glacier experience was confined to Alaska where the crevasses are 3 to 4 meters wide and clearly visible. Here in the Glacier Blanc, the crevasses were just wide enough to swallow a person and hidden enough to make every step a mini Russian roulette. Everyday the glacier surface melts down into a huge puddle of water. During the night, it re-freezes into a 3cm thick layer that creeks and cracks when you walk on it. As I took my first steps into the glacier, the thin layer of ice cracked and my heart stopped. François had no patience for this inexperience and was soon barking at me to go on -- definitely the way in which he talked to me while in the mountains was starting to bother me.

I moved about as fast as my lungs allowed me at +3000m, but to my amazement François, the half a pack a day smoker, had no trouble with the thin air. We arrived at the turn-off for the Couloir de Barre Noire (AD)* at first light and a pair of guys were already halfway up the couloir. This was no problem as I estimated that they would be done by the time we crossed the rimaye (i.e., the contact crevasse at the base of the couloir, a.k.a. bergschrund).

After the mandatory nature's call, we racked and were off. As the self-declared ice climber of the team, I would lead the entire couloir. We ran up to the rimaye where we set the first belay. Climbing up the rimaye was super easy and soon, I was flying up a huge tongue of ice. An ice screw 5m above the belay station to protect it, one at 30m to keep sanity, one at 55m in case I was hit by a rock from above as I prepared the next belay station, and two screws at the next belay station 60m up. We repeated the pattern over and over and as I had asked François to not mess with the ropes, we did not have one entanglement the entire day.

The weather forecast called for 55 KMH winds in the Dome des Ecrins and we were feeling its effects. The couloir was a big highway down which the wind carried huge amounts of spindrift (small avalanches of snow powder). François continuously asked me to move to the right which placed us directly below the thick of the spindrift. As we moved up, the névé turned into glace noire (i.e., black ice) and the angle of the couloir increased to about 55°. The final pitch did not come too soon as we were both freezing in the howling wind. While waiting for François to come up, the gusts of wind were strong enough to force me onto my knees as I held to an ice screw for an additional measure of safety.

François moved beyond the last belay station to a sunny spot where he could escape the north face in which we had spent the last hours freezing. We ate a little, coiled the ropes (the wrong way again), and prepared for a faire des anneaux de corde (i.e., short-roping) descent of the Dome des Ecrins. François suggested that we continue to the dome proper, but I was exhausted and we still had a multi-kilometer hike back to the car. François used the descent to try to explain to me how to move efficiently while on short-rope, but I was to tired to assimilate anything.

The walk down the glacier was hell. I was exhausted and the surface of the glacier had become a slushy puddle. I did not care that with every step my boots became wetter and wetter and the skin of my toes became softer and more bruised. By the time that we arrived at the Refuge du Glacier Blanc my big toes were about to blister, I had fallen one more time on my forró injured right knee, and my right ankle was the size of a grapefruit. I needed all but a miracle to continue with this trip, the miracle came in the from of a very sunburned French partner.

François had forgotten to put sunscreen on early that morning and now his face was severely sunburned. He announced that he needed a day off to heal his face and I "very compassionately" agreed to it. I offered to pay for a night of good night sleep at a local hotel and soon we were back in the car looking for such an establishment in Vallouise. A visit to the local pharmacy the next day yielded all the medical supplies needed to take care of our various illnesses and we were off to Italy in search of limestone.