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| Rainy
days, and how they tweak us out. |
Once upon a time,
before the brief fad of bungee jumping, before Osman did his
last freefall, even before anybody slacklined the Lost Arrow,
there existed one obscure restday stunt that only a few insiders
had ever heard of.
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Chamonix, February 1986.
Snow, whatever little there was this winter had long since
gone to hell. Instead we saw drizzle and low grey clouds out
the dirty windows every morning. The itinerant core of danish
climbing bums hanging out at Le Ski Station this winter was
getting edgy, grumpy or had simply descended into alcoholism.
On this particular afternoon we sat around a greasy tabletop
in the drafty front room appearing to be engrossed in a game
of cards, but in reality driving each other nuts in our boredom.
Just in time Bent sauntered in and dropped an open publication
in the middle of the table. The slick layout, vibrant colors
and high dollar amount under the products gave it away immediately:
the new Patagonia catalog.
'Check it out.' Bent planted a big finger on the double page
spread of a blond woman, dressed in the latest Synchilla,
who appeared to be stepping of a tall bridge into certain
death. There's blue sky behind her and nicely tanned legs
emerging from the too small shorts. The caption, neatly hidden
in tiny cursive down in one corner:
Restday, near
Annecy, France.
'Wait. Annecy is just down the road.'
'And that's a rope there, tied to a distant object, another
bridge it looks like.'
'Holy cow, she's about to embark on the mother of all pendulums.'
Next day:
Careful perusal of the appropriate Michelin map, and several
hours of driving around in the rain looking at bridge after
bridge, finally paid off. My Volkswagen jerked to a stop as
Jesper recognized the railing beyond the foggy windshield.
'That's it. That's the one.' It was lunch hour and the busy
highway was jammed with swift Citroens and Renaults. Someone
nearly rear ended me and honked angrily. Lights flashed and
the wipers went swish, swish.
'Get off the road, man. Over there, big pullout.'
We all poured out of the steaming car, fighting our way into
stiff Goretex, everybody talking at once, running back onto
the bridge on the narrow sidewalk. Oh my god. Silence. Misty
swirls of fog below us, and way down there a swollen river.
Ugly black and grey limestone, overhanging, vegetated. A narrow
gorge of indeterminable depth. 500 feet? A thousand? Vertigo.
I pulled back my gaze, with difficulty, and suddenly saw the
other bridge over there, obscured in the clouds. The old one.
The one from before. Perfectly parallel to the one we stood
on. Probably a good rope length away. What an idea.
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Downtown, an hour later, regrouping. Cafe au lait and croissants.
We knew we had to do it, but were still searching for a viable
excuse. Ropes are weak when soaked, somebody pointed out.
Getting dark early. The new sign in plain french and bad english
stated that even thinking about doing it was illegal.
Our ropes did feel inadequate, all of a sudden. Harnesses
were mentally inspected, while nursing the last drops of cold
coffee and picking up flakes of pastry with a wet fingertip.
Without a real outspoken commitment, we suddenly got up, walked
down to the gear store, forced Jesper to purchase a nice fat
Beal line, completing his transition from ski bum to climber,
and gloomily piled back in the car.
We all sat in our own thoughts while performing the act of
near suicide called commuting in France. At the site I turned
off the motor and let silence reign.
'Wanna do it?' Hans asked. We all looked at him. Jerk. Couldn't
we just give it a little time?. No need to be so direct, so
insensitive. More silence.
Rigging was not easy. After some initial
tumult we let Henrik take charge, him being the oldest after
all. There was exactly 140 feet between the bridges and back
then ropes were 150 feet long. The bank was overgrown, sloping,
and dangerous. Add to this the pouring rain and constant eye
to the highway for the telltale blue Renault 5 with Gendarmerie
written all over it. A few sightseers under umbrellas were
studying our shaky progress. Finally we got 2 lines out to
the middle of the new bridge. The other ends, tied firmly
onto some rusty cable support thing way over there on the
old one, simply disappeared in the mist. The weight of all
that horizontal perlon tautly suspended was enormous. It took
one person, Bent I think, to tension them with all his might,
while they were temporarily tied off on a rail. We all scurried
back in the vehicle.
'Who's first?' It was in fact already decided,
somehow. Jesper, as always, was a little too much out of control
to qualify, with many outrageous near death accidents behind
him. You could sense Bent wanted to go, but he was not in
a pioneering spirit that day. We all knew Hans wouldn't do
it at all, ever. Henrik could go either way, but odds were
on him not jumping. Which left me. I had driven us here. Maybe
it was my idea, all this.
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I stepped out of the car, put on two harnesses, some prussiks,
a handful of loose biners, and ran with Bent back out on the
highway. The sidewalk was less then 2 feet wide and traffic
was thick. The grey gloom of the day was slowly turning to
dark. Headlights in my eyes. Gas fumes. Fast cars with pale
faces inside. Again Bent pulled in the ropes with superhuman
strength, allowing me enough slack to carefully tie in. When
he let go the weight almost pulled me headfirst into the hole.
I climbed the rail rather shakily and totally spaced out.
So deep. Man. I managed to turn around to face out in space,
without prematurely skidding of the narrow ledge. Clinging
on was now very strenuous, and my tennis elbow started hurting.
Insane. I glanced at Bent who was holding a camera, pointed
at... me. He moved around to get a better angle and fell backwards
over the low rail into the traffic. Screeching tires and honking.
I let go. Feverishly grabbing the ropes. Closed my eyes. And
got sucked out of there.
After the initial pull, I began to freefall. Didn't feel
the ropes. Just hurtling downwards. Panic. Something had failed.
Parachute didn't open. Rapped off the ends. Anchor pulled.
Wings broken. I started screaming, but the cry got stuck in
my throat as I was violently caught and jerked sideways. It
worked. The pendulum began. And lasted. Back and forth. Forever.
My stomach. Crazy.
Finally I stopped, slowly spinning around, harness creaking,
feet kicking in empty air, white knuckles in an iron grip
on the ropes. No traffic spectacle anymore, just the white
noise of the river still way down there. This was by far the
worst moment with the adrenaline all blown out, jump done,
just hanging here waiting for something to break, whether
it was rope, stitching, bridge.
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Don't you drop anything. It took all my courage to let go
of the ropes with one hand and fumble around after the prussiks.
Back then, in the early days of danish bigwall climbing, there
was only two sets of jumars in circulation. None of them were
here with us. The plan was to have the jumper start prussiking
right away, while the various talents on top would set up
a z-rig or something along those lines. This whole aspect
of retrieval was only briefly discussed beforehand, since
actually executing the jump itself was the overwhelming crux.
Now I suffered from our offhand attitude. In jerky slow motion
I crept closer to the black tangle of cables and creosote
treated planks that was the old bridge. An improvised freehanging
prussik is reserved for the few James Bond types among us,
so I just hung there quietly freaking out, while the rescuers
fiddled with pulleys and runners and shouted orders at each
other.
Go here for a sunnier, friendlier
version of this complete waste of time
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