You don't sound uncaring at all, I'm sure you're absolutely lovely in real life.
Read as much or as little as you want, I wrote it down mostly to order my own thoughts after the experience, and to kill time whilst still on the better painkillers.
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By the time I realise that they are probably my final words, they are already halfway across my tongue and out of my mouth, and instead of choosing to say something profound or heartfelt, I'll just have to settle for the horrified staccato shriek of “No, no, no,” followed by a cavernous, roaring, emphatic bellow of sheer terror that starts not in the lungs, but deep within the soul.
We are just below the summit of the Aiguille du Belvedere and on our way back down to the south ridge, easy and familiar terrain upon which we are both comfortable travelling solo, when I stop to turn around and grab a photo of Grant as he pokes his head around the corner. A mute blanket of swirling grey cloud peppered with wind-driven flecks of snow hangs over the patchwork umber-and-ochre rocks surrounding us. Turning on my feet, as I reach into my chest pocket with my right hand for my phone, I reach up and outwards with my left to steady myself.
At the slightest touch from my hand, with no more than a few ounces of pressure, a formidable chunk of limestone breaks away at roughly head-height and starts moving towards me, almost imperceptibly for the first tenth of a second but with rapidly-increasing speed and volume immediately afterwards. Nearly a meter deep, over a meter wide, and around thirty centimeters tall, I realise straight away that I simply cannot stay directly beneath it. I don't know if my first movements are physically jumping away from its line of descent, or pushing against and outwards from the moving rock with my hands during its short flight before landing where my feet were a split-second earlier, but it doesn't matter, the die has been cast and my descent has begun.
The adrenaline rises in my system, and as my body impacts the ground for the first and least-painful time, landing on my front, my perception of the world is split cleanly in two, with one half of my brain absorbing information as if from a film played in slow motion, and the other half trying to respond in double time, demanding that my flailing limbs take action, any action, however futile, against the events before they even unfold. Rolling uncontrollably and sliding sideways down the grit-and-gravel covered slab I am both protagonist and spectator, and as I successfully claw the ground with my right arm to try and prevent my legs from spinning around and rising above my head, I am reminded of the roughly one-thousand kilogram rock in my immediate vicinity and its ability to mash any errant limbs into a paste, but there's absolutely nothing I can do except hope that it takes a slightly-different path down the mountain.
Accelerating all the while, after only a few meters of sliding across bare rock and churning waves of scree I am airborne, and possibly as a reflex reaction to the unexpected weightlessness I stop screaming. Over the furious cacophony of boiling rockfall somewhere behind and below me, a curious silence envelopes everything, but briefly, for just as I realise that rather than soaring clean over the terrible three hundred meter precipice of the south face and I have instead just flopped over the top of a shelf barely a meter high, the tremorous ground rushes up to meet my thighs, arse, and spine, the silence is suddenly torn apart, and once again my shrieking fills the air.
In my narrow frame of vision between my wildly-scrabbling knees, far below me through the swirling mists I see snow-covered slopes, and as I'm heading roughly south-west I know that they are either the upper reaches of the Belvedere's east ramp, or the highest slopes of the Combe de la Balme, but it doesn't really matter which one. From my current location, both involve the kind of journey that a human being just wouldn't survive, and with perfect clarity I understand that if I cannot stop myself within the next thirty meters, or be stopped by some act of chance or fate or a well-placed rock, my current thoughts will be my last. By now I've covered another ten meters on shifting scree, and as I approach the next drop, which again doesn't look to be much taller than a meter high, vague protruding chunks appear on the right hand side of the lip, and I lean every fibre of my being towards them, managing to make contact with my right elbow and my face as I grate over the edge. I feel my speed decreasing with every shred of peeling skin, but the short stint of freefall immediately afterwards renders my efforts useless.
A guttural grunt, bruised and enduring, announces another landing as the air is crushed from my lungs before the normal screaming is resumed. Almost immediately another vertical drop is upon me, with a landing between three and four meters below into a dark grey gully, vaguely-defined by pebble-strewn slabs and domes on the right but bordered on the left by prominent crowns and flat-topped spires of rock, with a similar structure protruding almost into the center of my flight path, a perfect target, and I barely have time to shift my weight onto my left buttock before once again I am airborne and the world falls silent, and I am flying for long enough for my adrenalised mind to tell me, quite calmly and in a patient monotone, that this fall will be from high enough to break bones, and that I absolutely must try everything in my power to slow down upon landing, because from up here it's obvious that there's nothing but wind beyond the end of this gully, barely ten meters away right now, and despite the comically-twisted passage of time in this ethereal dreamscape, it's getting closer at an alarming rate.
The cloud bursts and the world is harsh and violent again as I crash onto and over the tall rocks leaning in from the side of the gully with as much flesh and limb on my left as I can provide, the impact bounces me down and right onto the cluster of domes and slab, and I roar like a trapped animal as I desperately press my heels and fingers and wrists into the rolling gravel and as far into every unseen pocket and dent and crevice as I possibly can, and soon the crack and shiver of the rocks landing around me and on me and pinging down the gully into nothingness fades to a patter, and then the only sound left is my own constant screaming, pressed into the rocks on all fours, facing outwards with my groin thrust into the air, but the screams continue for a few more seconds until I'm more convinced that I've stopped moving, and I remember Grant, high above me, and as I lower my arse gently onto the rocks to take some weight off my hands, I strangle my cries into something understandable, choking out “Okay. I'm okay. I'm okay.” with shakily increasing volume, until I'm bleating it almost loud enough to be heard through the howling wind.
It isn't over. I'm still on ground steep enough that a slip would turn into a fall, with an inarguably-fatal drop no more than four or five meters past my feet, dug deep into the crumbling shale in the center of the gully. I can't stay on the sloping rocks I'm clinging to; I don't have enough purchase, I don't know how long I'll be here, and more rockfall could come down from above at any moment. But just under two meters away on the other side of the gully there are in-cut shelves and steps, small but flat, below the tall, almost-vertical spires. I feel broken, and I know that I've got only a minute or two to force my shaking limbs to do anything before the adrenaline fades away and I'm reduced to a quivering heap.
Systems check: blinding, excruciating agony in my left wrist, it's broken for sure. An angry snarl from my right arm, which is missing a glove, and the torn jacket sleeve is up around my bicep, but it'll work well enough to shuffle with. Shooting pains from up and down both legs and my feet complain when I flex them around, but they are digging into the ground just fine right now so they are pressed into service. Moving mere inches at a time, I scrape my torso across into the center of the gully on my left elbow and a flat right palm whilst kicking a trench with my feet as I drag them over, then haul my buttocks up onto a perfect rectangle of flat rock the size of a sheet of paper, and face back across to where I came from. A fine dusting of fresh snow, which most definitely wasn't in the forecast, bears a breadcrumb trail of blood spatters, ending on the loose shale by my feet. I lean my head against the wall to my right, and immediately recoil in pain; the swelling on my face unseen but obvious.
“Pete?” Grant is calling, again and again, distant but getting closer, his voice cutting through the gusts of wind before being spirited away.
“I'm okay. I'm okay.” I continue, pausing every time the wind picks up to spit the ever-flowing stream of blood from my mouth. “I'm okay.”
“Pete! Oh my fucking god, I am so glad you're not dead.” He's still out of sight, somewhere up above me over my right shoulder, past the rocks.
“I'm okay.” I suck each corner of my mouth gently, poking around with my tongue, before spitting the blood out again. No teeth are visible flying through the spray, no tinkle of bone-on-stone, which is good.
“You're okay? Are you going to need to be rescued?” he cries, his optimism ringing crystal clear through the dismal weather.
“No no, no, no, I definitely need a rescue. But I'm okay.” I reach towards the open zip of my chest pocket. “Can you see my phone anywhere up there?”
Ha.
The next hour is easier. Grant's head appears over the parapet a good ten meters away, we agree that he shouldn't try and come across to me, and he calls the PGHM. My nose stops bleeding, and the thick, treacly smears of blood on the rock next to me start to crust over. We can hear the helicopter, Grant is on the phone to the pilot, giving him our GPS coordinates. Every few minutes the noise of the beating rotor blades grows louder, then slowly fades away. The heavy cloud ceiling lurks a few hundred meters below us, and I suppose they'll have to wait until the forecast sunny spells in the early afternoon.
The sunny spells are cancelled, the world takes on a dull monochrome, and the snow falls thicker as the wind picks up. I have to gather my strength for a full sixty seconds before wrestling my jacket hood over my head with the stiff, unresponsive, softly-whimpering fingers of my left hand, and stuffing my sodden mop of hair into it with the howling-but-compliant fingers of the right. The skies grow darker and the uncontrollable shivering begins, which is fine, it's when it stops that you need to be worried. Despite the elation of simply being able to breathe, I don't remember a time in my life when I've ever felt this wretched. Swirling tendrils of cloud mask the distant slopes visible beyond the gaping mouth of my narrow, brittle gully, not far below me to the left, and the unspeakable call of the void rasps bitterly that all of this suffering could end now, if you just keel forwards and go limp. A forceful voice in my mind has been wishing silently “Please, hurry up,” for forty minutes now. I start saying it out loud instead.
The echoing cries have been getting closer for I don't know how long, but suddenly another head pops up from behind the rocks over where Grant is perched, then another, then a team of three, then yet more, and soon a man is being belayed across to me on a hastily-built anchor as another rope is thrown down from above, and as first one down jacket and then a second is wrestled over the noises coming from my arms, another man is hammering pitons into a number of cracks below me, loudly decrying the fucking shitty rock on the fucking Aiguille du Belvedere, and I find myself agreeing with him. I'm folded into a chest harness and clipped to the anchor someone else has built behind me, and as a fixed line is built between us over here and them over there with large bights at regular intervals, the doctor is belayed over and gives me a quick head-to-toe and then wastes no time before offering me a dose of morphine, and it's the best suggestion I've heard all day.
Nothing that I’ve seen in my life first-hand compares to the efforts of the PGHM as they wrestle an inert sack of flesh and complaints down from a mountain in a blizzard. To be in the very center of such an awe-inspiring endeavour is a humbling experience, and one that I will never forget until the day I die. My arms are draped over the shoulders of two of my rescuers and I am dragged to my feet, before the screaming suggests we try a different approach. I am thrown over someone's back like a wet towel over the back seat of a car, spots of blood dripping slowly onto his arms and gloves as he picks his way across the slabs to where the collapsible stretcher waits. I am braced and pinioned and strapped and secured, and as a team presses on ahead of us to set fixed ropes and rappel anchors along every meter of this crumbling ridgeline, I am dragged and hauled and lowered over slab and shelf and chimney and corner. Inevitably, I am crashed into the odd rock here and there, and I can't help but leak the occasional yelp. Sorry, they keep asking, are you okay? I'm absolutely fine, you do whatever you have to. Throw me against a fucking wall if it'll help all of us get down in one piece.
Five hours later, as the last of the day's workable light is trying its best to filter through the murk, we are off the south ridge of the Belvedere, with only a few hundred meters of descent on the relatively-easy snow slopes under the Col des Dards towards Lac Blanc, and hopefully below the cloud ceiling. Three or four people of the nine-strong team take turns to clip their lanyards to the stretcher as they guide me downhill, and contingency plans are made in case a helicopter pickup isn't possible. How far up can a 4x4 go? How far down might we have to walk? I overhear the doctor as she says that, if I'm in a stable condition, we could spend the night at the Lac Blanc Refuge. I've never stayed there before. I hope they have a good supply of firewood.
But as the hopeful weather updates come crackling in over the radio, suddenly most of the rescue team are sent to stand some distance away with their headtorches shining to mark our position, and after a deafening roar and a blinding light and thousands of biting crystals of ice sent flying by the downwash, I am lifted on board, and as the door is slammed shut behind us and the helicopter beats its way back into the skies, for the first time in six hours the sensation of movement is no longer accompanied by spasms of pain up and down every limb that I own. As warm air floods the cabin, I afford myself the luxury of a few heaving sobs, relieved that the first episode of what might be a quite a long process is finally over.
So after three nights in the hospital here we are, well over a week later, and the sudden, debilitating pain of a body freshly-broken has made way for the warm background throbbing of a hundred tiny injuries trying to heal themselves, as well as a handful of more noticeable problems. The damaged cartilage on the left of my ribcage, excruciating at almost every movement – getting up, sitting down, sneezing, laughing – has a simple solution: just don't move, and hang around with fewer funny people. The battered coccyx, too, annoying though it is, can only be treated with patience.
Following some fairly non-invasive surgery, the stray shard of radius from somewhere under the left wrist has been chased around, nailed down, and locked firmly in place with six long screws and some ghastly external carbon fibre contraption, which thankfully won't be with me for a very long time. The black eye and its retinue of grazes has faded away; the slightly-broken nose, which was worth barely half a sentence in my doctor's brusque and enigmatic monologue, although still sore, has just about stopped clicking except on special occasions; and the temporary third nostril, whilst providing some welcome comic relief at the time, spraying a fine mist of blood into the air with the original brace of nostrils blocked by a scabby thumb and forefinger, has long since healed over.
A magnificent technicolour bruise, almost as long as my right arm and with a different hue for every day of the week, is accompanied by some mere residual stiffness; and whether the pain in my right foot is a bruised bone or some kind of sprain, every day it grows closer to being nothing but a memory. Though initially-impressive, the now faded-and-flaking cuts and bruises on the outside of my left knee, still recovering from my relatively-recent ACL surgery, suggest that if I wasn't wearing a supportive brace then whatever impact it suffered could have had much more serious consequences, and would likely have led to my physiotherapist being even angrier with me. As it is, the swelling and stiffness are still too severe to gauge what extra damage, if any, I've done to the area. But none of that matters, because I am here to complain about it.
I've always thought that I've been quite good at managing the risks that I take whenever I go into the mountains, but now I'm not so sure, and after several failed attempts at writing this final paragraph, I'm going to give up.
