Miracle
on Mont-Blanc/ By Catherine Galitzine
For
three weeks, the young French couple had remained lost and snowbound in the
Alps. They were as good as dead. Suddenly, 22-year-old Patricia rebelled. “I
don’t want to die,” she cried. So they decided to walk out—or die trying.
Their
skis hissed across the untracked snow as Patricia and Herve Ranville made for
the Anterne Pass, high in the French Alps. Married for four years and sharing a
love for ski-trekking, the couple had decided to spend New Year’s Eve skiing
and camping on Mont-Blanc. That night, they pitched their tent at an altitude
of 1,878 metres and celebrated the coming of 1981 with packaged soup, rice and
chocolate, washed down with snow melted on their little bottled-gas stove.
Then, snug in their double goose down bag, they wished each other a Happy New
Year and slipped into a peaceful sleep.
Herve, 23, and Patricia, 22, were both teachers in the
Yvelines department. They had discovered the joy of ski-trekking two years
before. Realizing the potential hazards of their new sport, they prepared for
each outing carefully—riding bicycles and practicing rock-climbing to develop
their wind, doing yoga to increase self-control, using sophisticated equipment,
mapping their routes from guide-books.
Originally, they had planned a four-day expedition from
the village of Chamonix to Sixt, via the Le Buet peak and the Anterne Pass.
However, weather forecasts had forced them to re-route and shorten their trek,
to two days and one night on the mountain. As they were leaving the Refuge du
Tour, a little inn near Chamonix, Herve told the caretaker of their new plans.
When Patricia opened the tent flap on New Year’s Day, she
found that clouds were hovering over the Anterne Pass above them, fog swirled
around the tent. “Mustn’t waste time,” she said, folding up their things.
Wrong route.
She
and Herve went through the pass, set their ski bindings in running position and
crossed the Anterne Plateau on their way down towards the valley floor. Around
noon, a dense fog forced them to slow down. From then on, they navigated
exclusively by compass and altimeter.
Every 50 metres, Herve checked their position on their
map to be sure they were following the right trail. At 2 p.m. the fog lifted
briefly to reveal the high-voltage power pylon mentioned in their guide-book.
“It’s okay,” Herve exclaimed. “We’re on the right track.” Since they were
obviously not going to reach Sixt that day, they decided to put up their tent
near the pylon. One night more in the mountains wouldn’t make much difference;
they still had food for two days.
The next morning the fog was gone. Packing their
belongings, the couple skied off towards
the north-west. Soon the slope became steep. Then suddenly, there was nothing
before them but a sheer cliff overlooking a long drop. Realizing they had taken
the wrong route, Herve and Patricia trudged back up to the pylon and started
again; this time they went further to the pylon’s left—only to wind up peering
into the same abyss. It was too late for another try now. They simply would
have to set up the tent where they were and spent another night on the
mountain.
The next day, they slogged back up to the pylon. There,
Patricia re-read the guide-book for what seemed the twentieth time. “ The trail
must be somewhere off to the left, “ she said. Herve interrupted: “Look there!
Ski tracks!” Laughing with relief, they started off. But they didn’t go far
before realizing that the tracks were their own. Patricia dropped to the snow.
The unending whiteness suddenly seemed hostile. She and Herve had been gone
four days, and for the first time they were beginning to worry.
For the third time, they struggled back to the pylon and
set up the tent out of the path of possible avalanches. Threatening clouds
piled up in the sky, and fat snowflakes began to fall. “We’re probably in for a
few days of bad weather,” Herve said.
Panic sets in.
Fortunately they had begun cutting their rations the
previous day. They still had one small tank of fuel and slightly over 5,000
calories of food. By keeping to 500 calories a day each, they could hold out
for five more days. For the next four days and nights the snow was unrelenting.
Herve and Patricia left their tent only to brush away the snow. All around
them, huge avalanches broke loose with a terrifying noise. Panic was beginning
to overtake them. They slashed their already restricted calorie allotment in
half, causing spells of vertigo and spots in front of their eyes.
The snowstorm ended on January 8. Around 9 a.m. the
couple heard a helicopter. Herve grabbed his red overalls and waved them
frantically, shouting “Hey! Hey!” But the helicopter was already disappearing
beyond the pass. “It’s not possible,” Herve said, his voice broken. “He didn’t
see us.” Later in the afternoon, they spotted a second helicopter, but it was
even further away than the first.
The next morning, the sun was out again. If help didn’t
come, Herve thought, they would have to backtrack to their starting point. But
for the moment, it would be foolish to move. They had to wait for the snow to
pack down. “You know, Pat,” Herve said, “in mountains, they don’t stop
searching, just like that. They’ll certainly be back.
Patricia’s parents had reported the couple missing to the
High Mountain Gendarmerie Station in Chamonix on January 5, four days before.
But when authorities questioned the caretaker of the inn where the Ranvilles
had stayed, he had forgotten Herve’s parting words about a change in route; all
he remembered was that the couple was heading for the area around Le Buet. When
the snowstorm ended, police inspected the region on foot and from the air; they
flew over the Anterne Pass, but a high voltage wire prevented them from flying
low enough to spot the couple.
As the days wore on, it seemed impossible to the rescuers
that the Ranvilles could have survived more than ten days in storms and minus
25 degree C. cold. On January 11, the search was suspended because of bad
weather. As tactfully as possible, a young policeman prepared the couple’s
parents for the worst.
The next day, January 12, Patricia and Herve were certain
the search had been called off. Four days had gone by since they sighted the
helicopters. During that time, nothing broke the oppressive silence of the
mountain. “If we don’t get ourselves out of this, we’re done for. We have to
backtrack,” Patricia declared. After much debate, she convince Herve to take
the food they had—some cheese and hazelnuts—and go to search for help. Herve
didn’t like the idea of going alone. But, reluctantly, he began the painful
climb towards the Anterne Pass.
After three and a half hours, he had gone only 300
metres. Then he saw clouds rushing towards him, indicating that it would soon
be snowing. He returned to the tent.
The next day, the couple awoke to find that their tent
buried under 50 centimetres of powdery snow. That evening, when he peeled off
his boots and socks, Herve found that his toe had gone blue. He knew there was
very little he could do about frostbite except drink huge quantities of water,
but the last little bottle of fuel was half empty. He forced himself to eat
some snow, even though he knew every mouthful swallowed would lower his body
temperature. Before going to sleep, the couple dined on one raisin each.
Blocked for another two days in their tent by a terrific
storm, Herve and Patricia contemplated their imminent death with composure.
They passed the time writing wills and farewell messages. Suddenly, Patricia
rebelled. “I don’t want to die,” she cried. Herve helped her do some yoga
exercises to regain her calm, and finally they fell asleep.
Next morning, Patricia decided: “Whatever the weather,
we’re leaving now.” They had nothing to lose. Weren’t they as good as dead
already?
It took them four hours to dress, dismantle the tent and
close their bags. Finally, around 12.30 p.m., moving like a pair of robots,
they plunged into the storm back towards Chamonix.
Nightmare trek.
Guided
only by their compass and altimeter, Herve and Patricia trekked for three days.
On the fourth morning, the storm grew too violent to travel. The wind gusted at
120 kilometres an hour. Visibility was zero. Lying in their sleeping-bag, they
wondered where they were and how long their tent would resist the elements.
Herve’s feet began to thaw in the warmth of the sleeping-bag, and the pain was
excruciating. “Talk to me, Pat,” he begged. “For God’s sake, don’t stop
talking.”
For 12 straight hours, Patricia described imaginary
feasts, recited recipes, talked about anything that would distract Herve from
his suffering.
Like a curtain rising on a stage, the fog lifted from the
mountain the next morning to reveal the flat, smooth surface of Anterne Lake.
Herve’s navigation had been perfect!
They decided to climb 200 metres higher to the Anterne
Pass. Patricia fainted three times while preparing to leave. When they finally
managed to break camp four hours later, Herve fell several times in the first
few metres they covered. “We’ll never make it,” he muttered. In despair, they
almost pitched their tent again. Then, somehow, they found the strength to go
on.
Six nightmarish hours brought them to the pass. There
they decided to descend another 200 metres, still heading towards Chamonix, to
the “Moede Canteen” shelter. But it was boarded up. They tried to hack open a
window with their ice picks. Impossible. There were iron shutters behind the
boards. Philosophically, they pitched their tent for the last time. Tomorrow
they would reach a village—or they would die.
The next morning, Herve and Patricia set off again,
moving into a narrow gorge whose walls were lined with heavy layers of snow
that might fall at any moment. It was madness to navigate between them, but it
was their last chance. Each time one of them fell, it took nearly half an hour
to get up. Oblivious to hunger, thirst and pain, they struggled forward on a
prodigious wave of hope.
Around 5 p.m., on January 22, a passer-by who lived in
the village of Le Mont, saw a pair of strange, skeleton-like skiers. Rushing to
meet them, he asked, “Are you the two youngsters they’ve been looking for?”
“Yes, I think so,” Patricia stammered. “We’re the ones.”
Patricia and Herve
Ranville were treated for frostbite at the hospital in Chamonix. Herve had to
have all ten toes amputated. In 22 days, he had lost 15 kilos, Patricia 12.
Early in their six-month
convalescence, the couple discovered why they hadn’t been able to find the
trail to Sixt. The guide-book’s description of the route was incomplete and
misleading.
To all mountain climbers, the
experience of these two young teachers is a formidable lesson. Thanks to
excellent equipment, judicious rationing and a tremendous will to live, they
had held out far longer than anyone had thought possible.
“if
the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail” -Abraham Maslow
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