Vajolet Towers: Day 8 Catinaccio (Rosengarten) Group
Learning to Climb French: Alpine climbing at Les Ecrins and Dolomites, August 2-10, 2005

The day started on the wrong foot. The alarm went off at 6:00, François did not hear it, I did not move, and when François came to life at 7:00, he was immediately in a poor mood because we had overslept. Actually, I had hardly slept at all. During the night I tossed and turned incessantly wondering why François, a guy so agreeable in Paris over the last few weeks, had turned into this flaming asshole who felt the need to abuse me anytime that we were on a mountain. Was I such a poor judge of character? Was I being too soft and should I just roll out the punches and punch back? Bottom-line: was it my fault or was François to blame? The answer was probably somewhere in the middle but I concluded that I should set "boundaries" and defend them.

In the interest of time and avoiding being blamed for further delay, I decided not to have breakfast, opting instead for a Cliff Bar. In the car, François pointed at a spot in the map and said "tell me when to turn". As he drove too fast through town, running two red lights at pedestrian crossings in the process, he read aloud road signs and demanded to know where we were on the map. I could not make sense of the map to save my life so I finally said -- "I have no idea". He replied -- "You have the map!", to which I reacted by giving him the map and saying -- "Why don't you figure it out yourself". This led to a tantrum on François' part which was the straw that broke the camel's back. I blew up, told him to be "fucking nice to me or I would go back to France" to which he replied -- "Go back then".

Partially stunned by my reaction, he pulled over and I started throwing all my gear on the side of the road while insulting him with no hold backs. He gave me a few of my things (which prompted a very polite and totally out of place "Thank you" on my part), and he left. I had so much adrenaline in my system that I could have carried twice as much gear back to the campground. However, just as I was starting to walk back, he turned the car around.

And with that, I got in the car, we turned around, and from there on I read the map like I had drawn it.

We drove the dirt road to the Rifugio Vajolet (2243m) as far as the little Peugeot would take us. From there, a short hike took us to the refuge. At the refuge I was charged 5€ for a liter of water, which annoyed me because: (1) I think that water is one of those things that people should make available to each other free of charge, and (2) I had left a liter of water 300 meters below at the prompting of François who told me that I could fill my Platypus at the refuge.

From the refuge we ran up the mountain to Garti, me matching François step-by-step -- "This son-of-a-bitch is not dropping me today" -- I though. We arrived at the Rifugio Re Alberto I (2620m) after passing everyone we encountered on the path. However, there were two problems: (1) the Vajolet towers were engulfed in clouds (we could not see them even though they were less than 300 meter in front of us), and (2) it was too cold to climb. So we did the only sensible thing to do -- we drank tea at the refuge.

Using the climbing guidebook, we reviewed the routes we sought to climb that day: the South Face of Stabeler Tower (the central tower; IV), the South Face of Winkler Tower (the right tower; V+), and the South Face of Delago Tower (the left tower; IV). (Each of the routes is only 120m long and they can all be climbed in one day by a fast party.) After reviewing the guidebook to nauseam, I decided to take a nap on one of the refuge's benches while François kept an attentive eye on the cloud engulfing the towers. An hour later, I instinctively woke up, looked out the window, and ran out of the refuge as I saw the cloud had disappeared. In tune with the poor state of our relationship, François took off from the refuge before I was ready to go.

As I arrived at the place where François was getting ready, I realized that we had already climbed the first half of the first pitch unroped. From there, he led the crux of the route; a short traverse under a rock shaped like a triangle. When my turn came I found it difficult to follow the pitch while wearing the backpack, but there was nothing I could do other than climb. As I was about to pull the final move of the traverse, poof! -- the rock that I was holding with my left hand broke off the mountain sending me into space. François had been very attentive with his belay and I only felt about a meter.

We kept on switching leads, only stopping to check our progress in the picture in the guidebook. At one point we arrived at a very nice belay station and the pitch that followed was the best of the climb; a dièdre (a.k.a. dihedral) up to a roof that was surmounted on the left. François did an excellent job at it. Since we had a team of Germans on our heels, we pressed on as fast as we could.

The final pitch was mine. I followed the pitons to a point where they disappeared -- to the left was the real summit, to the right a false summit marked by a memorial bronze plate. "That has to be the way" -- I thought. "Why would anyone place a memorial plate anywhere else but along the route." I followed the pitch to the summit (without even stopping to read the bronze plate) and there I was. However, I soon spotted a great rappel station on the real summit to my left, thus realizing that: (1) I had finished the wrong route, and (2) I could not go back down as I already could hear the German approaching. "What the hell. This is good enough" -- I thought.

A shouting match ensued as François could not hear me from below. I was not sure of what was going on as I was shouting into the mountain in front of us and I could clearly hear the echo of my own voice. François kept screaming to pull the rope up, but the rope would not move no matter how hard I pulled. Meanwhile, the German arrived and after briefly discussing how pissed-off François was I pointed out to him that the real rappel station was on the real summit and he went in search of a path to it. Eventually my rope moved up and François arrived bitching about the low intensity of my shouts, the entanglement of the ropes, and the fact that I had climbed up to a false summit. No sense arguing; I showed him where the rappel station was and he proceeded to set it up. He kept asking me to read him the description of the descent, which I did -- all two sentences of it -- and he continued screaming at me to translate it so that he could understand it. His rage was so intense that he had lost the ability to understand English so I roughly translated the description using my crude French.

He rappelled off, and I was left in the peace of a majestic sunny summit. Below, François screamed at the top of his lungs French profanity while he fought with the entangled ropes,

Eventually he asked me to come down, and to my surprise, he was still on rappel somewhere halfway down the rope wanting me to find the way down the mountain -- deja vu all over again. I managed as best as I could to come down to a point halfway down where I could not proceed unless François let go of the ropes. "François, I am stuck... Let go of the ropes..." After much shouting, he let go of the ropes and I took a wicked pendulum to the east. I finished my rappel arriving in a good, but admitted exposed, grassy ledge. François could not operate in his state of rage, so I thought it was time to take over. "Let go of the God dammed ropes. I will take care of this."

I thanked all the Gods when the ropes came down after some anxious pulling. I coiled them over my neck and carefully traversed to a rappel station where François waited for me. François demanded one more time to have the way down described to him, and I told him -- "I already told you everything that is in the book. It is just two sentences. I don't know anything else." I reset the rappel (which was needed based on how I had coiled the ropes) but François did not like it at all. "Why are you undoing what I did? -- he asked. "Because I did not like what you had done" -- I replied to put an end to any possible further argument. From that moment on, François surrendered to his anger, ceasing to do anything other than what I asked and ending all communication with me.

I was lucky and found the descent route. Rappel after rappel went by perfectly and without a single incident with the ropes, which I think increased the anger and frustration of François. Finally we arrived at the base of the South Face route of Delago tower and I offered to let François start the next climb. He refused; as far as he was concerned, that had been the last climb that we would ever do together. I tried to smooth things out by telling him that I understood his frustration with the ropes and the length of time that the descent had required. He clarified his feelings though by telling me "I am very disappointed with your performance." The climbing trip was over.

We parted for the refuge along different paths and at the refuge he asked me if I was staying. When I said no, he told me he would wait for me by the car and took off. I walked down the pass wondering how it had all gone so wrong and what I was to do when I arrived at the campsite. Along the way I took time to exchange friendly greetings with other people on the mountain; I needed that warmth of friendly human contact. I even helped a little Italian dog negotiate a short but difficult stretch of the path.

By the time I arrived at the car François had calmed down. He offered to teach me how to set a "proper" belay station, and not being one to ever refuse education, I went along. In the class I learned some things, but mostly he was showing me another way of skinning a cat. He climbed French, I climbed American -- neither way was significantly better than the other, but he needed to blame something for all the problems that we had had and clearly the way in which I climbed had to be blamed.

We parted for camp and he suggested that we climb with other people, to which I was more than happy to agree. Back in camp he asked Marie Line while I asked Deke, and even though they both agreed, they only agreed to the switch the day after next. They already had plans for the next day. That sealed it; the climbing trip was over and all that was left was finding a way back to Paris the next day.