In 1461, the scapegrace Francois Villon wrote a hauntingly wistful short poem about the fate of beautiful, beloved women, and it ended with the wonderful line, Ou sont les neiges d'antan? Where are the bygone snows?
For me, they're melting from the glaciers of the Alps. I want to get back soon, with my 16-year-old daughter. By the time she has children of her own old enough to ski those glaciers, they may be neiges d'antan.
Before global climate change began to discernibly diminish Europe's remaining glaciers, in the spring of 1983 I set out to ski the Haute Route, the classic tour from Chamonix, in France, across the top of the Alps to Zermatt and Saas-Fee, in Switzerland.
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| Glacier skiing on the Haute Route between Chamonix and Zermatt (Photo/wikipedia.org) |
Mountain guides often say they can haul any strong recreational skier along the 60-mile Haute Route, but it is serious mountaineering terrain. One day requires 6,000 feet of climbing, and there are several nasty steep couloirs to negotiate. Avalanche is a persistent danger. But most of the mileage follows glaciers, vast and small, and the chief danger is that one may disappear forever into a crevasse.
I invited my buddy Stan Tener along, then (and now) a professional ski patroller at Snowmass, a member of their avalanche control team, and a good climber. Stan had never been to Europe, so he didn't know what he was getting into. We hooked up with photographer Del Mulkey. Del, 20 years our senior, was a former University of Montana ski racer who lived in the South of France and knew a lot more about travel in the Alps than we did. He had already skied the Haute Route a couple of times, and had also skied high into the Himalaya.
At Chamonix, the forecast called for clear weather for at least the next two days. Late in the afternoon we dragged our 35-pound packs onto the Argentière tram and rode up 9,000 vertical feet, high into a clear Alpine evening. We skied 2,200 vertical feet of moguls down to the first of our many glaciers, and skinned up for the short ascent to the fortress-like Argentière refuge.
Well before dawn on April 26, we traversed over to the foot of Chardonnet Glacier. There, we put on our new crampons, tied the skis to the packs, and began the steep 2,500-foot climb to the top of the world. Del climbed like a camel, plodding steadily upward without stopping for rest or water. He ate breakfast on the march, consuming a big chunk of the raw bacon the French call lard. At sunrise we reached the 10,900 foot Col de Choidon and gazed across the top of Europe, the early morning light picking out hundreds of snowy peaks arrayed to the horizons.
Over the next four days we climbed and descended steep couloirs, crossed cols, traversed steep icy avalanche-carrying sideslopes -- and followed glaciers. The glaciers made highways in the sky, long gradual langlauf ascents where we could climb at two miles an hour, and easy cruising descents when we could cover five or six miles in 40 minutes, finishing up with a cold beer in a village inn. We stayed each night in a snug refuge built on some aerie at the head of a glacier, and usually overlooking two or three more. As we ate our high-calorie dinners – goulaschsuppe, fried eggs with beans and potatoes, and fruit cocktail in kirsch – I loved to watch the sun set and see the brilliant white of the glacier surface turn deep blue and then black, while the overhanging rock faces shone with golden alpenglow. And I loved to be out on the trail in the early morning dark, to greet the dawn from the ridgeline and watch the light change again, in reverse.
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| Mont Blanc's icy massif dominates the French side of the Haute Route (Photo/wikipedia.org) |
We covered about 60 miles across Swiss glaciers, closely paralleling the Italian border, and had no close calls with crevasses – though Stan often screamed at me to stay out from under avalanche chutes. We met climbers and skiers from Austria, France, Switzerland and Holland. We argued in good spirits about our choice of route and equipment – Del used fat randonée skis, Stan and I were on skinny "norpine" skis with leather telemark boots.
On the fifth day the weather turned nasty. Unable to see the crevasses in the white-out blizzard, we bailed out to the resort town of Arolla, ten miles short of Zermatt.
The adventure changed our lives. Stunned by the immensity of the Alps, Stan went back to Chamonix a year later as an exchange patroller. He worked through the winter at the Grands Montets, and came home speaking fluent locker-room French. He still patrols, and knocks down avalanches, at Snowmass. And I abandoned the dark canyons of New York. I moved to Truckee and hired on to teach skiing at Squaw Valley, where I could find reliable backcountry skiing into July.
Del died in Paris in December of 2003, full of age and wisdom, red wine and lard.
The Swiss government now reports that their average glacier is retreating at about 50 meters per year. Thanks to global warming, this rate is accelerating, and few glaciers, anywhere in the world, are expected to survive this century. Some of the smaller, steeper glaciers – the Arolla glacier contains only about a third of a cubic kilometer of ice – won't outlive me. One annual report by the Swiss Academy of Sciences says that by 2025, alpine glaciers will retreat to about 45 percent of their 1885 extent. Small icefields make up 25 percent of the total glacial volume – and these will all be gone. The Italian resort of Val Senales had to close its summer operation this August because its glacier simply vanished.
I want to ski what's left, with my kid, while we still can.
Copyright 2005 by Seth Masia
2269 Mariposa Ave
Boulder CO 80302
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