In reply to jcw:
Hi John, agree, congratulations to Jon. An excellent article about an iconic route.
I guess we'll never know the truth about the rescue. Was it dilatory? Hard to imagine...
Obviously the prowess of the rescue services has been eloquently documented(!) And my own small tale would bear this out. A few years afterwards ('75) I helped to rescue a guy on The Peigne - Jean Couter, then the president of the Chamonix section of the CAF. You probably knew/know him.
It wasn't a case of, "Ils sont a nous!" Far from it. We'd got him out of a dangerously exposed gully, with stones whirring past, to relatively safe ground. And some mates turned up. Suddenly the pressure lessened. But when that chopper rose from the valley and headed straight for us, I was utterly grateful. It came in so close; the winch guy was like greased lightening. Off Jean went to the hospital. His wife was a nurse there. She saw him wheeled in but his face was so swollen she didn't recognise him. Though he made a swift recovery - a full one I hope.
My tiny experience of the rescue services has left me with a huge admiration for their skill and courage. But for Desmaison? He'd been through so much. He'd come so close - in every way. The whole business must have been heartbreaking.
It may be that he was a complex character. A couple of years before the Peigne episode, I spent an afternoon soloing at a little crag in Yorkshire, with a legendary figure. Although I was well aware of his reputation for harshness (he'd say he was trying to protect traditional climbing values), with me, he was entirely benign. Years later, through a chance meeting, I learned of a harshness and ruthless which I could never have imagined.
'The evil which men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.' Wise words. You have your memory of Rene Desmaison at Dame Jeanne. I have my memory of this person on that long-ago afternoon when we moved across the stone together in blissful harmony.
Are we simply moths drawn to the flame? Or can the flame purify, cleanse us of overweening ambition, so that we finally find peace...
I'd like to think that Rene Desmaison finally found peace. God knows he deserved it.
mick