Maintenance staff had been clearing ice from the lines since early morning and, for a few hours, Kirov was concerned that they would close the cable car down. Now they stood not in a group, but scattered amongst the others, the only difference between them and the other late season climbers and skiers that their packs were heavier. Otherwise they were dressed in brightly coloured ski jackets and hats and two were wearing traditional salapets under their jackets. Anyone would have noticed that their skis were covered, and close observers would have noticed that the boots were all randonee, for ski touring rather than simple downhill. Three of the six Spetznatz soldiers now wore light beards and one, with supreme confidence, leant indolently against a wall and chatted up two German girls.
A car number flashed up on the sign and they all began to move forward, their fifty kilogram packs seemingly light in their hands.
The easy confidence they exhibited when faced with the prospect of the coming days was testament to their training. Four of the six had done the advanced winter survival course, phase one in the Ural mountains and phase two in Siberia. They had lived off marmots and sable, pulled down reindeer and killed them with their bare hands and lived in snow caves, being hunted for weeks on end by their equally talented colleagues. One of them had lost a finger of his left hand, frost-bitten during a forced march in the endless February night in the mind numbing cold above the Arctic circle. For them glacier, crevasse, snow and ice were routine conditions. They were arguably the finest winter troops in the world.
They went up in two separate cars, the second half arriving twenty minutes after the first group and joining them at the end of an ice tunnel that opened out onto the ski run and the valley blanche.
Kirov took one look and knew that they would have to get away quickly. The visibility had closed right in and the ridge line down to the ski-off area was only an expanse of loose powder, yet to be trampled down by anyone foolhardy enough to go out. It was bitterly cold and the winds added fifteen degrees of chill to the already sub-freezing temperatures. The air was thin and, as Kirov breathed in, he reminded himself that they were twelve-and-a-half-thousand feet up.
With this in mind, he watched the team donning skis and adjusting packs. The cloud swirled away for a second and, for the first time, he got a good look downward to the flat plateau at the bottom of the steep access ridge. Jesus Christ, he thought, Quayle has climbed this for fun!
As soon as the last man was clear of the tunnel and had his skis on, he lifted one of his poles to signal he was ready. A woman, one of the several people who had turned back from the prospect of walking the ridge in boots and crampons, was watching from the end of the ice tunnel, unable to believe what she was seeing. These men were going to ski the edge, diagonally off the ridge down to the plateau, and she held her breath as the first led off. If she hadn’t been watching so intently, she would have heard the only word said, and may have even been able to tell by its tone it was an order. But she spoke no Russian and would not have been able to understand it anyway – and, as the last man dropped off the steep edge, she shook her head and walked back into the tunnel, knowing not to bother telling anyone because no-one would believe her anyway. One crazy hotdogger maybe, but seven men, one after another, wearing huge packs, in Randonee boots? No way!
The new loose powder was crisp and squeaky and flew upwards as they moved with precision down the slope. The cloud had closed in and Kirov – who had given up the lead to his senior NCO – watched with pleasure as he swung the team expertly round the ridge and onto the plateau. There they stopped and, without speaking, dropped their packs and began reversing their gear quickly in the cold. The inner side of each man’s outer clothing was white and, as they reversed the garments and pulled them on again, they began to look like soldiers again, winter troops in snow camouflage. The last items pulled on were white gloves, white balaclavas and white thermal smocks, that covered the packs on their backs, and broke the outline. Now the only things not white were the skis, and for that they had spray paint. That could wait for tonight and their first bivouac above the Leschaux glacier opposite the refuge.
Soon they had pushed off again, down the long gentle approach to the Valley Blanche, now a line of white shrouded figures almost invisible against the snow. From here they would ski for two hours down hill and glacier, before moving up the Leschaux glacier towards the awesome, almost vertical, broken slabbed beginnings of the mighty Grand Jorasses.
Below, in the valley, the Chamonix Bureau De Guide charged with the safety of people in the mountains closed the
