To Woo a Termagant

In summertime the queen of the Alps, 15,781-ft. Mont Blanc, puts only minor difficulties in the path of those who would woo and conquer her. Each year in the climbing season some 75,000 mountaineers flock to the resort town of Chamonix to have a try at scaling her heights, and most of them succeed. But in the winter, when her steep slopes are swept by gales often reaching 100 miles an hour and the temperature drops below zero, the icy-hearted mountain becomes a fickle and merciless termagant. Few, even among expert mountain climbers, care to risk her treachery in the off season, and to those who do, the professional guides in Chamonix offer only negative encouragement. "Risk your neck if you like," they say in essence, "but don't look to us to get you out if you fail."

Last month a 23-year-old Parisian climbed to the summit of Mont Blanc all alone. Inspired by his success, two other ambitious young mountaineers, Parisian Jean Vincendon, 23, and Belgian Franc,ois Henry, 22, decided to have a try at its challenging heights. They set out early in the morning of Dec. 22. The sky was blue and the air was warm, the kind of weather when skiers down below wish for snow. Four days later the skiers had their snow. Up above, the Alpine peaks were shrouded with ominous evidence of storm and fury. Torn between heartache and indignation, the people of Chamonix gazed aloft, muttered about laws to prevent off-season climbing, and gazed hopefully at the local guides, who refused to budge. "Their action was voluntary," said the guides. "Even to save two men, you can't risk the lives of ten or 15 rescuers with wives and children."

To Save Two Men. As long as the weather was bad, it made no difference what anyone said; nobody could have reached the climbers in any case. Two days later, however, when the sky cleared, a Piper Cub, filled with blankets, food and medicine, took off from the French air-force base at Le Fayet, 20 kilometers down the valley. With an Alpine guide aboard to plot the route, the little plane spotted the climbers on a treacherous northern slope close to the edge of a snow cliff that threatened to break away at any minute. The pilot could not get close enough to drop his supplies. The expedition made another try by helicopter. It was impossible to land the big machine, but the guide dropped his rescue packages to the boys along with a note telling them how to reach a safer spot. As the helicopter hovered off, its passengers could see the boys start along in the direction indicated.

Next day the air force tried again with another helicopter--a big Sikorsky 58 with two pilots and two guides aboard. A great gust of snow temporarily blinded the man at the controls as he attempted a landing. The big machine lurched and crashed to earth, its rotors crumbled. The guides leaped out to find Vincendon and Henry in the snow more dead than alive, their legs frozen, their faces black with frostbite. "I'm going to die," murmured Vincendon.

The guides carried the boys to the helicopter, wrapped them in sleeping bags and turned their attention to the pilots. One, an air-force major, had no climbing equipment. The other, a sergeant copilot, was injured and suffering from shock. There was no hope of getting everybody up to the shelter hut that stood some 500 meters above. The guides decided to leave the boys and drag the airmen up as best they could, but in the attempt the injured sergeant slipped into a Crevasse and hung there unconscious. Saving his life cost the others all the strength they had left. In answer to radio calls for help, the air force dropped more guides on the mountain, but their problem was soon less a matter of rescue of the two climbers than of simple survival for themselves.

In the Hut. By now eight in all, the rescue party had to face a fearful decision: whether to try to drag or carry the half-dead boys up the slopes to the refuge hut or to save themselves by making the ascent alone. They chose to leave the boys behind. Day by day the storms raged about their hut; then at last the angry skies cleared, and two more helicopters whirred over the mountain. In three hazardous trips to the Grand Plateau, 13,126 ft. up on the mountain, the helicopters brought down the stranded men, but the pilot decided that he dare not try to land near the two boys who still lay, possibly still alive, abandoned in the wreck of the first helicopter. "I have decided," the air-force chief of rescue operations announced at last, "to cease operations. I cannot take the responsibility of risking more lives."

"Too many people," agreed the father of Jean Vincendon, "have risked their lives already."

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