That Post-Mont Blanc Look by
The Big Yin, on Flickr
My old climbing mate Martin. Sadly no longer wth us, this guy got me into all kinds of hobbies that have stuck with me through my life - and also got me into more scrapes, troubles, incidents, fights, arguments and disputes than ANY other person has ever managed. He was the mate who talked me into going for a weekends camping trip up in Malham at the age of 14. I was the one that talked him into travelling the 60 miles each way or so up there on the bikes after school on friday. While there, he wanted some photo's of him "out in the hills" so handed me his dad's camera - the first 35mm SLR camera i'd ever used (think it was a pentax spotmatic or similar). Once back at school on monday, we were talking about taking photos, and getting the film developed and our form teacher heard us, and mentioned the school had a darkroom, and we should speak to the Head of Chemistry about joining the school photo society.
You see how this is going... Martin was there when I got into all kinds of things that, without being over dramatic, have shaped a large chunk of my life...
Dammit I miss the little bugger
Anyhow, to the less maudlin details of the photo...
This was taken in the early evening after we got back from a 3 day trip to the top of Mont Blanc. Well, I say to the top, I made it to the top, Martin made it to around 100M from the top - not 100M vertical BTW, "just" 100m of steady "snow plod" up the final dome of the hill. Unfortunately, we'd actually set off on this fools errand to climb "the big one" on the second day we'd been in the alps - fresh off the "magic bus", a day setting up camp, and straight into walking up the biggest hill around. To say this was dumb is a bit of an understatement. Both of us suffered with not being very well acclimatised to the thinner air. For me, I had a headache and slightly blurry vision for the last 5 hours or so of the climb. Martin wasn't so lucky, and it (ahem) affected his digestive system as well as being even worse on the headache etc. front. After something like 15 unscheduled "pit-stops" in 9 hours of slogging up the last days climb, he just didn't have any more to give, and handed me his camera and said "2 rolls, full panorama of the top, don't screw it up, because I'm never coming back to this f****r..." - I told him to sit on his Bivi-Bag and I'd drag him to the top, it was that close, but he just pointed at all the other people and said "I'm not going to show myself up like that to all those b*******". That was it - off I went, unroped and solo'ed it to the top - burned 2 rolls of Velvia for him, shot a roll of Super-8 for him too - as the trip was being partly funded by being his graduation peice from film college - then as an afterthought, got almost a roll of shots on my Practica as well...
Photoshoot over, and back down to Martin, got him back on his feet, and heading downwards. Every 100m of descent, he was brightening up, as was I...
Back into Chamonix, into the "bureau des guides" to "sign off" the mountain, and realised that everyone in the town were looking at us. Then saw the temperature track recorder in the bureau's window... it'd been around 35c in the shade that day, everyone was in shorts and minimal legal cover elsewhere... we were still in big plastic boots, helly-hansen salopettes and jackets, hats, glacier-glasses... the fleece's had been so wet from the snow we'd been covered in whilst descending (often in "standing glissades" - ski-ing without ski's) that we'd not noticed the temperature...
And, fast forward to 2 hours later, after getting to the campsite, ditching kit, and dressing for the ambient temperatures, we were sat around, Martin re-hydrating, and me enjoying a few bierre's - when I saw the look on his face as above... had to capture it... the look of "I got to 100m from the top of Europe* and couldn't bloody complete it". One of the saddest photo's i've ever taken - all the sadder for me now that he's no longer with us.
(mundane details, Fuji Reala 100, Praktika MTL3, Processed at Boots Chemists in Wakefield back in 1983, and home scanned on Canoscan 8800F back in 2009)
* yeah, I know Mont Blanc isn't classed as the highest mountain in Europe anymore... Elbrus is the new high-spot, but back then, Elbrus, being in Russia, wasn't considered to be "Europe"...
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