Page 3 of Mountain Struggle

Gael turned and looked up at them. At five-eleven, he was a few inches shorter than Damien and Drake. His dark green eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, pointing towards the climbing packs on the ground next to them.

“This is what I do in my time off, jefe. Rémy and I were climbing nearby, so we came over to help.” Gael León was their team’s most experienced climber.

Damien nodded his head at Rémy, a mountain guide and avalanche forecaster from St. Gervais who often volunteered with the PGHM. Damien knew Gael and Rémy often went out to conquer impossible climbs together.

“How’s my favorite NATO team doing?” Rémy asked, flashing very white teeth.

“Don’t call us that,” Gael asked, sighing dramatically.

Damien laughed. Rémy was referring to the multiple nationalities that made up Damien’s team. Only he and Kat had been born in France, and in Damien’s case he was only half French. The rest of the team had come to Chamonix from elsewhere. They all spoke at least decent French―you couldn’t become a member of the PGHM without it―but each had excelled in other areas of their training.

Drake Jacobs, his Canadian second-in-command, was bilingual, of course. He was also one of the strongest men Damien had ever met―both physically and mentally. Hiro Habu, the son of a famous Japanese model and a French businessman who had come to France in his early teens, was the best dog handler Damien had ever encountered. Gael, a world-famous climber and tracker from Mexico City, had come to Chamonix for a summer of climbing and never left. Jens Melkopf, their team’s doctor, had joined them after spending a decade with the German Special Forces. And of course, Kat Barreau was the kind of helicopter pilot who could land the helicopter on a coin, in the middle of a storm.

“It’s good to see you too, Rémy. Glad you’re both here,” Damien said, sobering up. “I think we’re going to need your help.”

Drake summarized the situation for them. “The missing climbers, a man and a woman, went out early this morning to La Rébuffat. It was the man’s first multi-pitch climb, and they haven’t returned yet. It’s six-thirty p.m. now, which means we have a couple hours of daylight left to find them.”

“What are we waiting for, then?” Gael said. Damien understood the younger man’s urgency—he felt it, also, although his job was to temper that urgency with caution. The truth was, mountain rescue was intense—the rush was similar to that of leading a hard pitch, except you also knew you were helping somebody in the most terrifying moment of their life.

“I already checked at the Aiguille du Midi station, and nobody matching their description took the cable car down this afternoon,” Kat said. “Get in, we’ll circle around La Rébuffat to look for them.”

Somebody’s flash went off in his face. Damien squinted and jumped up into the helicopter, glad to get away from the growing crowd. This was a common occurrence for them, as his team’s appearance often caught the attention of visitors. The helicopter’s presence, in particular, seemed to feed into people’s morbid curiosity as they whispered among themselves, wondering what was going on.

The helicopter rose swiftly into the air. Outside the window, the mountains rose around them, tall and majestic. Damien couldn’t imagine living anywhere else—that, along with his mother’s illness, were the reasons he’d returned right after university.

Out here, in the mountains, one could walk for miles without bumping into another human being―and yet, never be alone. The dry smell of the rocks, the damp smell of the velvet trees in the summer and the frosty snow in winter, the voices of the people he’d climbed with in these mountains in the past―they were always with him up here.

A few minutes later, Kat spoke over the headsets they were wearing. “Look right, that’s La Rébuffat.” As well as being an excellent pilot, Kat knew the area like the palm of her hand.

“What is it, a 6a climb?” Damien asked.

Gael and Rémy both nodded. “It’s a 6a, yes, but it’s a long, technical climb.”

“One of our two climbers has apparently never done a multi-pitch climb before,” Drake said.

Gael shook his head. “And they chose La Rébuffat for their initiation? That’s nine or ten pitches.”

Damien said nothing. If they commented further, he’d have to remind his team it wasn’t their job to judge people’s actions, only to support them in making the right decisions and, where that was no longer possible, do their best to help them if they got in trouble. But nobody said anything else.

“Do we know how they’re doing in terms of equipment?” Rémy asked.

“They left most of their things at the refuge. They were spending two more nights there, then going back home.”

Kat interrupted them on the headset. “I see something, there, on the south face.”

At first, Damien couldn’t see anything. Kat’s visual acuity had tested at 20/10, so that wasn’t surprising. As they got closer, Damien saw it as well—two small, dark shapes huddled on a ledge.

Drake brought out a pair of binoculars. “That’s them. A man and a woman. The man is signaling to us.”

“They must be three pitches up.”

Damien addressed Kat on the headset so everybody could hear. “Can you put the helo down in that clearing below, Kat?”

She nodded. “Of course. What are you going to do?”

“We’ll climb up to them and figure out if we can move them. Be ready for take off, we might need to get them to the hospital.”

“So who’s climbing?” Gael said, rubbing his hands together.