Gaston Lagaffe (Alpine climbing)

Friday 17 April 2009 09:06PM

When I was 14 I went on a language exchange in France. It was a great time, but perhaps it was also a clumsy time of my life; after the first few weeks I had firmly earned myself the moniker “Gaston Lagaffe” after the accident-prone French comic strip character. It wasn’t that things kept happening that were obviously my fault, just that so many ridiculous things happened to me that the balance of evidence definitely pointed to there being some element of the bad “luck” that was my own fault. So many “unlucky” things happened in the six weeks I spent in France that the feeling of “not again! Why me?” became a familiar one.

Since then my unlucky:lucky ratio has improved, except in the area of travel (another topic altogether) and it had been a while since I felt that feeling of embarrassment, anger and frustration at first realising something ridiculous had happened.

Two days ago it was back with a vengence. Toby and I decided to do a quick day route on the Aiguille du Midi, me wanting to get some alpine climbing done (not managed anything in the alps this winter) and to get some acclimatisation in before this Sunday’s grand finale to my first season of ski racing, the famous Mezzalama ski race. We arrived at the Aiguille du Midi and I put my bag and two brand new axes down on the bridge to nip to the loo. When I returned there was only one brand new axe… I thought for a while that Toby must’ve taken it with him as a practical joke, but soon realised he hadn’t. The old “Gaston” feeling enveloped me again.

Much faff ensued and I ended up borrowing an axe and having a very clustered and slow abseil with another team of three, only to find the axe lying in the snow 200m down the couloir! By then it must’ve been at least midday, so we knew a race was on to catch the last lift down to Chamonix. The other team bagged the easier route (Perroux/Profit gully), leaving us with the slightly harder Vent du Dragon, and a race we quickly lost. Another Gaston evening followed, involving sleeping in the toilets of the Aiguille du Midi with no sleeping bags (quite warm actually, just very noisy and bright – the lights don’t switch off!). Perhaps this will prove to be an effective acclimatisation routine, but since then I’ve been exploring more civilised techniques – sat in the midi station cafe with my team-mates Ben and Nick!

Gallery of the route here