The Beggar of Chamonix
[This Post is Best Listened To]
This is a story of exploration. An exploration of icy spires in inaccessible locations, of travels over challenging terrain, where mistakes can have life altering, or indeed, ending consequences, where each decision has immediate importance. Well only partially, these pinnacles were explored long ago for instance. By many a great and ambitious men, whose stories take large prominence upon my bookshelf. In this story, we explore, more so a corner of human experience tucked far away in the future for most, but one that had found me upon the unlikeliest of places.
I had been diagnosed with a kidney disease from a very early age. This has somewhat shaped my identity, some would argue to an unhealthy degree. I would, say to myself, if I haven't accomplished anything by 40, it doesn't matter anyway, in that, life was squandered on me. Such a mindset, though toxic, did propel me to function at a very high academic level, a pursuit I derived a lot of value from. Yet at the same time, I tried very hard to avoid thinking about my disease entirely. There was a duality, on one hand the joy of life and accomplishment, and on the other, in the background, a gnawing sense of dread.
My dread became material and avoidance impossible when in the summer of 2019 the doctor told me that my kidneys were really not doing too well. She wanted to confirm through a biopsy that the kidney function had indeed deteriorated. And of course the biopsy showed that it had. There was massive scarring, very visible in all the pictures showed me, even to my untrained eye. Though my mother and father remained in denial, to me, the writing was on the wall. I had an uncertain amount of time before my kidneys would be no more than fibrous sacks. I wouldn't die, no, modern medicine has become exceedingly good at keeping one alive. But, I wouldn't be healthy anymore, and would no longer enjoy the mountains I recently discovered that I loved. At the age of 24, I had realized that dusk was upon me and soon, the night would follow.
After this news I started climbing a lot, well, as much as someone who was living through the Pandemic world could. I soloed various peaks in the Alps including the 4000m Lagginhorn and Weissmeiss.
I also did winter solos in Snowdon and Scotland, one was during a storm, I don’t know how hard the wind blew, but certainly enough to chuck me from the ridge if I was careless.
As the world opened up, so did my climbing aspirations. On March 2022, me and my climbing partner, Gerd, went to Scotland for a some winter climbing. Here we did an ice route above Garadh gulley, as well as Dorsal Arete and Castle Ridge. We also did a bit of trad climbing on Polldubh crags. Honestly, The Polldubh in Glen Nevis is my favorite place to climb in the world. Its such a serene environment. You have the soft sound of the river running down the glen with the birch trees rustling in the wind, all the while being flanked by snow capped mountains.
On our last mountain day we did castle ridge. We walked up the steep grassy slopes to the snow of the castle gully. Due to the recent thaw the snow was very soft. At one point my leg sank thigh deep and I lost my balance, my brain immediately kicked in to ‘‘arrest’’ mode, where I looked to drive the pick of my axe in to the snow to halt my fall. Within the split second I was thinking this, I realized that I wasn’t actually falling. Indeed, I wasn’t moving at all, having sunk so deep in to the snow I was firmly cemented instead. You sometimes need such, in the end harmless events to keep your reflexes sharp.
We finally got to the base of Castle ridge. For the most part Castle Ridge was wet and slimy, but fairly easy.
Overall car to car took us about 13 hours. We topped out on our route and without bothering to summit the Ben Nevis itself, which would have been an inglorious snow plod amongst the slip-and-slide tourists in their summer sneakers we chose to head back down. One would think there is a path straight from the south face of the Ben to the north face car park, and perhaps there is, but we couldn't fine one! So we hiked all the way back to the CIC then back down to the car park. Though the hike back was monotonous, we were rewarded by views of the North Face of the Ben. Within this amphitheater of rock the cliffs rose steeply to the summit. Runnels and gullies of ice and snow ran down. And the crowning cornices of the Ben were illuminated by the dying light of day. Such a sight that will be forever etched in my memory.
Then came the cramps. After dinner at the Glen Nevis hostel my body started contracting. First the left hamstring, then in my hurried attempts to resolve that cramp, the right hamstring. I laid there in agony waiting for one wave of cramps to end only for another to begin. One kind woman was there to give me a sachet of her electrolytes which helped with things. Gerd, knowing of my condition, asked me if these were getting more frequent, and severe. I wasn't quite sure. Its hard to tell when you are the frog that is slowly being boiled.
The following months after this were concerning. I noticed swelling in my ankles and shins. I would press down on them and they would create dimples as the fluid was displaced from the pressure applied by my fingertips. This is known as pitting edema. When I asked my friends, they were not so forthcoming with a concrete impression. Well, what could one expect when even the doctor I went to told me that this was likely just because of the summer heat. While full well knowing I had kidney disease. The world remained ignorant, but I was none-the-less in the grips of the nephrotic syndrome. My kidneys were now struggling to maintain the fluid balance in my body. I suspected that this was the case, but I was looking for rationalizations that would comfort my anxious mind.
Alpine climbing was one way by which through pushing my limits I could prove to myself I wasn't actually ill. For me at the time, the ultimate expression of life. To struggle to reach locations where life could otherwise not be. So I awaited excitedly for the opening of the Alpine season.
As my own first tour of the season I planned for something easy. Something that I could also use to initiate my flatlander friends to this pursuit. As an introductory tour therefore, I planned to do the Domes de Miage traverse with them. This is mainly a glacier route with a small section of easy rock climbing. We, a party of 4 started our walk to refuge Conscrits from Les Contamines. The approach to the hut is quite the trek, taking around 6 hours over 1500m vertical in scenery that can certainly be described as "Himalayan".
At one point we had to don our crampons to go over a hump of the glacier to the glacial plateau. For people who were wearing crampons for the first time, they managed very well! Unfortunately, one of my partners developed blisters thanks to the ill-fitting boots I provided, this hampered him for the rest of the trip. But none the less, we made it to the hut, just in time for dinner!
The next day we spent practicing crevasse rescue and the following night we started on the traverse as a rope team of 3, with our 4th member returning to the hut shortly after leaving due to the pain from the blisters. As you top out of the glacier route on to the snow ridge of the Domes de Miage you are greeted with a true treat, the valley of Chamonix and the lower mountains to the west appear as if a mirrage, emerging slightly out of the cloud inversion. As you traverse along the long ridge of the Miage, you are high above these clouds, walking as if on air.
We were back at the hut by 10 am, enjoying a well deserved Birra Moretti and chocolate cake. Throughout the trip and before, I was dealing with gout. On the way to Chamonix, I actually managed to convince a Swiss pharmacy to give me prednisone, which would have resolved any issues, had I known that the dose I was using was much higher than the one I told them!
Gout is an inflammation of the toe joint. It is caused by uric acid crystals that build up in the joint and cause an immune reaction. The uric acid builds up because my kidneys could not filter the uric acid in the blood very well. On the day of the ascent the pain was manageable, but I had a flare up the night after. My now wife took some concern at the situation but it was all very unreleatable to anyone there.
The descent from the mountain was the second most continuously painful 6 hours of my life. Every step would send a jolt of pain through my toe. It was first through snow, then ice, then moraine rubble then through the root and stem of the forest all the way to the asphalt of the road. Grunting and swearing all the way down.
Removing the boots was painful, but I managed a fake smile. But the smile was revealed for the fake it was shortly after as I limped, barefoot and dirty from the days on the mountain, through the streets of Chamonix. I was shortly then denied entry to a seemingly empty restaurant, whose owner cited the reason as them being "too full". Too full for a stinky barefoot beggar perhaps!
I look back on this with weird fondness and amusement the situation was very ridiculous. Especially if you consider that I was walking around the town with my partner who was also barefoot because of his blisters! We did end up finding a nicer establishment outside of Chamonix, which suited us better. I also looked up how much prednisone I needed, and it was a quite literal handful of the dose I had gotten from the Swiss pharmacy, so I gobbled that amount down from the box of the drug I had left in the car. A couple hours later, I could walk like a normal human again.
I often refer to the action of this drug as being black magic. I felt like every time I took it, I was signing an unknown contract with the devil, try to stave off the symptoms of something insidious that just would not stop.
[In the next post the Alpine season of 2022 continues]