Long Day in Chamonix

I spent a whole summer living in Snell's field in the early eighties. The scene was very interesting at the time. All of the beautiful people hung out at the video bar which constantly replayed Patrick Edlanger soloing stuff in Verdon, guys doing extreme skiing, etc.

I don't really know how to put it, but the hot local climbers hung out with "The Beautiful People." Cham got to the point where if you did something hard, you would lose points because you didn't paraglide down, or solo it for a camera or whatever.

Then during the day, it could be very normal. Edlanger bouldered with us one day. He just showed up one day and joined in.

I remember a story I heard from John Bouchard, who was one of the first Americans to guide there. He married into one of the old climbing families there. He told me this French bedtime story that was kind of like Red Riding Hood, except the little girl was killed.

Somehow the moral was that it is OK to get whacked, as long as you look good. No kidding. Bouchard was trying to explain the cultural differences, and it was pretty good.

The scene there was insular. Part of it was the history and who you were and all that..on the pure local scale.

I really never had to hunt for a partner. If anything I had to run them off. I had Dean Hobbs, Walt Shipley, and Duane Raleigh with me, and mainly climbed with Duane.

For some reason, the Germans in Snells really liked us. We partied and had lots of fun.

The English were a fairly tough crowd. I think that there was still that old working class badass thing happening. They could get spooky when everyone was tanked on beer at the Bar Nash.

That said, there was a Scottish guy who we climbed with. He was super cool and funny.

This was a long time ago, and if you lived out at Snell's Field, you just didn't hang with the locals. They were in town.

I am quite certain that Snell's had a lot to do with it. For the young who don't know about it, Snell's field was a grassy field about the size of Camp 4. There were no rules, it was free, and had no restroom. So you could tell what month it was just by how close the turds were to each other in the treeline surrounding it. It was totall packed with tents belonging to climbers from every country on the planet, but the eastern block countries were still under communist rule and there were few of them. Enough to hang out and drink beers with, but not many.

No french lived there. It was fullblown ghetto. Since everyone at least walked by and occasionally sat down for a beer or to smoke hashish through an ice screw, it was easy to make friends. A whole gaggle of Germans moved over with us and they were great fun.

So imagine a Camp 4 with no restroom and no rules and no Americans. In those conditions, the locals just didn't hang there. We would see the hot climbers all clean and dressed up hanging with the beautiful people in the video bar, which we didn't visit that often.

I remember one evening in the Bar Nash. Somehow I ended up with a big group of Czech climbers. There was this one guy who spoke good english and was wearing a beat up Lhotse South Face expedition sweater. He wanted to know all about Yosemite and said that he desperately wanted to climb El Cap. So I said, "Hey, come over and we'll do the Nose! It's easy!"

Then he shook his head and held up his hands. He was missing all or part of most of his fingers....

So at that time, the French were all clean and lived in town. Everybody else was crammed into this tiny ghetto where there was a lot of interaction. So it sure seemed like we were a lower racial class of humanity. They sure looked at us like that. We scarfed showers at the swimming pool showers, weared the same t-shirt for weeks, and were all just like climbing bums in Camp 4. Everyone knew everyone. If you wanted to do a certain route, finding somebody to do it with was piss easy.

There was also the weather. When a storm went through and dumped a lot of snow, you had to have at least one clear and warm day for the routes to dry out, avalanche clean, and generally get back into shape. So a storm took a minimum of 3 days out of the shedule if you wanted to do anything hard.

So drinking was a huge part of the social scene. The Bar Nash was the hub of the English speakers, although most of us knew enough french to get by. This attracted a lot of Germans and Swiss who all speak english. There were so many languages that it was hilarious.

Walt and I would go into town, get a cup of coffee, then go buy a couple of bottles of trappist ale, which is like Old English, but even fouler and much stronger. Two bottles of that and you were hammered. We became such fixtures that the old ladies recognized it and would walk by laughing.

There wasn't all that much climbing down in the valley back then, but enough to boulder or rock climb on non rainy days.

The english back then were rough and tough. It got kind of spooky when they got hammered. I had to drag Shipley out of a group of them once because they were going to kick his ass.

It was great fun. When I say I was an ass, I just mean that I was very young and very cocky. It never bothered anyone. I'm just older and mature now.

I think that the loss of Snell's field broke the back of the social structure in Chamonix. Yeah, it was a turd filled ghetto, but it crammed together several hundred chomping at the bit climbers. One of the best motivating environments I could think of. So and so would do a hard route and everyone wanted to know about it. Then you would hook up with somebody.

That one time I did the Fissure Brown with a Welsh kid, he had been hanging with us for a week talking spray. So I took him up there assuming he could climb. Well, he jumared every pitch, even the 5.7's. He made me take hero shots of him and all that.

So, yeah, you could screw up and go with a bad partner. It was more funny than anything, but I never trusted his belay.

So I think that nowadays, when people might stay in a hotel in town, or pay lots of money for the legal campgrounds around town, which were unthinkable for us, money-wise, it is a totally different dynamic. Before, everyone was together, literally elbow to elbow. Now it is different.

How many people still spend a summer on a buck a day? Back then, everybody.

You only had to open your mouth to find a partner. There was the usual pecking order like any bunch of climbers, so your ability was known as the summer went on.

All in all, I would say that it was the best and most productive season during my whole life. Right up there with the valley days.

But yeah. There was for sure friction between the French and the English, who seem to have a long history of dislike for each other. When we went into a store, people were much nicer to us when they found that we were Americans instead of English, and I can remember the English and the French insulting each other.

They were cool that our French was so lousy after I explained that I grew up in cowboy country near Texas, and nobody from my town ever visited Europe, so spending their time on a language was usually spanish.

One on one with the people was excellent other than Paris. Just be polite.

Fun times. I hope I have adequately explained the social dynamic.

We were all so cheap that we never spent a night in a huts, which are full of guides and clients. We would hike up in the evening, cook coffee until midnight, and then blast off. You would be amazed at how well you can climb with a headlamp.

So all of the climbers were a huge and poor dirtbag society that ranked with camp 4. It was better than Camp 4 because there were no rangers, and everybody climbed when the weather was good.

These days, dirbagging it has decreased a lot. Climbers own pets, have good clothes, and the absurdly unclean dirtbag lifestyle has faded. Not completely, but to a great point. So imagine the French all staying at the Awhanee, and every other country staying in a mad max version of Camp 4. Then you have it.

I learned one thing from that summer: the French are more free than we are. Walt Shipley's antics are well known to those who knew him. He would go into full Walt mode and nobody cared. They were just amused. The same behaviour in Yosemite would put Walt in jail, which I think did happen.

You could do anything you wanted as long as it didn't hurt or bother anyone too much. It was a super friendly environment, and when I got back, I couldn't believe how restricting life is here. You have to act and behave to a certain standard or go to jail in the U.S. In France, you could do nigh anything. Nothing ruffled the French.

Swizerland was considerably more stuffy. Switzerland was more like Disneland were you had to pay to use a restroom and everyone behaved.