342 hours on the Grandes Jorasses

11 February 1971: [[René Desmaison]] and Serge Gousseault undertake the direct ascent of the Punta Walker (4208 m) on the Grandes Jorasses in the Mont Blanc massif. It is an absolute first, and a winter one at that. René Desmaison is a mature man, a mountaineering legend: his life is divided between his job as a guide in Chamonix and that of lecturer throughout France. 11 February 1971: [[René Desmaison]] and Serge Gousseault undertake the direct ascent of the Punta Walker (4208 m) on the Grandes Jorasses in the Mont Blanc massif. It is an absolute first, and a winter one at that. René Desmaison is a mature man, a mountaineering legend: his life is divided between his job as a guide in Chamonix and that of lecturer throughout France. Serge Gousseault is only 23 years old, but already boasts a considerable list of technically demanding climbs: he is only missing a big winter. The choice of destination is due to fate: having reached the base of the Grandi Jorasses, they realise that the Central Spur is already occupied by another team that left a day earlier; all that remains is the Walker, 1200 metres of smooth and insidious granite and ice, overhanging and animated by continuous snow and stone discharges! The climb is hard, technically very difficult, the environmental conditions extreme, even though good weather almost always prevails. They thought they would proceed more quickly, but one bivouac is followed by another, less and less comfortable. On the way up they retrieve the pitons, but this is not always possible. In the valley, the family's agitation grows, also because radio contact is broken and the weather changes. 17 February: Serge betrays the first symptoms of collapse. They are about 200 metres from the summit, food is scarce, pitons too, a rope has snapped: it is the beginning of the end in a crescendo of emotion that pins the reader to the chair until the conclusion of the story thanks to the intervention of Alain Frébault's helicopter. On the wall one dies, it's part of the game, but the black page of mountaineering has been written on the ground thanks to a whirlwind of misunderstandings, rivalries, reprisals, absurd formalisms and perhaps even incompetence in holding positions of great responsibility. It was a sad page that took a long time to turn and which, probably, for some protagonists remained open forever. Serge Gousseault certainly did not read or write it, because on 22 February 1971 he died of exhaustion eighty metres from the summit, after eleven days on the wall. Reviews by