At the end of 1981, three very young elite mountaineers, the British Nick Colton and Tim Leach and the Basque Javier Alonso-Aldama, Javo, abandoned mountaineering almost at the same time. The first two did it unexpectedly; the third brutally. Although they never met, they often crossed paths in Chamonix, signing big climbs separately. A bright future awaited them. They only had to survive their activities: a mountaineer only retires if he dies or when age advises it. One day in August 1976, after climbing Pilar Bonatti al Dru, Javo had to bivouac at the summit. That night he shifted in his sleeping bag looking for some warmth and observed two points of light coming together and separating in front of him, on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses. He judged, from his privileged vantage point, that those lights could not be there. They should not have been there, because they were oscillating in unknown terrain: if the two points of light were not on the Cassin at Walker Point, nor on the Croz spur, they could only be opening a new itinerary. That’s how it went. That day, the British Nick Colton and Alex Mcintyre opened the now famous route that bears their surnames, committing in the process a small coup d’état, carrying out a replacement in the mountaineering establishment that their own compatriots had imposed at the beginning of the 70s Young people arrived with renewed ideas of purity, style, daring and commitment: the Alpine style had to prevail. Colton and Mcintyre claimed their place against the old guard of Chris Bonington, Doug Scott, Dougal Haston and Don Whillans. And his way of making a space for himself, with his elbows, had a lot to do with his bravery. That morning, Colton suffered a fall when a rock hold in his hand broke: he went flying but had time to think that the only solid point between him and his companion was a poorly placed and flimsy piton. Despite everything, Macintyre stopped his fall by supporting the weight of the rope on his shoulder. History is not made without surprises.
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In the summer of 1981, Javo and a friend completed the first repetition of the Sea-Jackson route on the north face of the Droites, the third favorite theater for mountaineers around Chamonix. That day, at the bottom of the wall, an English climber passed them and asked them the time. Since he had a rope hanging from his harness, they thought there would be another climber at the end of it, but no. Tim Leach climbed solo, he carried the rope like this so it wouldn’t bother him and he could use it when rappelling down. That same year, 1981, Javo’s life exploded. He was 23 years old. The brilliant careers of Nick Colton (26, then) and Tim Leach (23) also faded. “In some way, I feel connected to them,” concedes Javo, today a professor of Greek philology at the University of the Basque Country. In November of that same year, the breakage of a cornice swept Javo himself and his two companions from the Cordier a la Verte route: Marisa Montes and Manolo Martínez, nicknamed Musgaño. If the last two died instantly, Javo survived without it being explained yet how, but he had to leave elite mountaineering. While recovering in a hospital in Grenoble, Colton and Leach faced the imposing southeast ridge of Annapurna III (7,555 m) after having launched a new (and still legendary) route on Alaska’s Mount Huntington. The socioeconomic origins of both could not be more opposite: Colton, orphaned by his mother, had to care for and educate his siblings and contribute to the domestic economy by working hard since his adolescence. Leach, whose father was a banker, came across climbing at 16 as he might have come across rowing or cricket. His talent and coldness were exceptional given his youth. Another talented young climber, Steve Bell, accompanied them but upon seeing the sinister profile of Annapurna III, he decided to leave the company. Climbing like crazy over complex and exposed terrain, Colton and Leach reached the altitude of 6,550 meters. And they stood. No subsequent attempt on the mountain surpassed the point they reached, not even that of the powerful team of David Lama, Alex Blümel and Hansjorg Auer in 2016. When the southeast ridge of Annapurna III seemed an unattainable challenge, Ukrainian climbers Nikita Balabanov, Mikhail Fomin and Viacheslav Polezhaiko completed the climb of the century in 2021, spending 18 days on the mountain. 40 years had passed after Colton and Leach’s attempt.
Stand up, Colton. On the left, Leach with Bell at the Annapurna IIII base camp in 1981.
In 2012, Alpinist magazine interviewed both Englishmen separately. What happened on Annapurna III? There came a time when both young men understood that the commitment they faced was so unbearable that only death could alleviate it. The fear of the unknown was oppressive, distressing. The entire enormity of the mountain seemed to lean and lean on them. They may have looked at each other and said, without words: “If we go up, we will never go down; But if we go down now, maybe we will survive.” Colton claims that he was the one who made the decision to leave. Leach had become ill after inhaling gas from a defective cartridge that he kept warm in his sleeping bag. But he assures that Leach would never have accepted defeat and followed him until he died. On the other hand, Leach has a radically different version: according to his testimony, Colton told him to decide for both of them, and he chose to go down, even though the day looked bright.
They fought so hard to survive that when they reached the glacier and salvation they found themselves naked, trying to imagine what lives they wanted to have. Separately they came to the same conclusion: they wanted to live, a possibility that the avant-garde mountaineering they defended would never guarantee. In 1982, Alex Mcintyre had already died, hit by a rock on the south face of Annapurna. That year Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker also died on the northeastern edge of Everest, while another alpine style adept, Roger Baxter-Jones, fell in 1985. Being a mountaineer then forced you to face a macabre game with death. There was no room for half measures, nor steps back. Colton and Leach concluded that they needed something more in their lives: they had clearly seen their limits, a border they did not want to cross. Something died in them on Annapurna III. Something was born, also, in their consciences. Colton continued to climb as an amateur, he continued to be linked to mountaineering through the English equivalent of our federations. Leach studied architecture and led the task force for the refurbishment of London’s Royal Opera House in the late 1990s. They both gasped when they learned that Annapurna III’s southeast ridge had finally been climbed: they were so far ahead of their goal. time they were on the verge of running out of it to imagine new ways of life.
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2024-05-15 03:15:00
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