| At the Counter! |
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Next to the nasty winter we’ve been having, the common topic over the counter has been the spiraling economy. It reminds me of a story about the Italian mountaineer, Walter Bonatti (b. 1930). July 1961 Three Italians, Walter Bonatti, Andrea Oggioni, and Roberto Gallieni arrive at hut on the col de la Fourche in the Alps. It is their jumping off point to be the first to climb the Central Pillar of Freney, a smooth rock obelisk 400 feet high that sits atop a 2,000-foot pedestal of broken granite. The three Italians were shocked to find four Frenchman already in the hut. Two teams. One goal: to be the first. In that unusual spirit of sudden camaraderie found only in the wilderness, they form one team. Day One: climbed about a third up the pillar. The cracks were still heavily iced, slowing their progress. They bivouac for the night. Day Two: reached the base of the obelisk when a brewing snow storm struck. Thunder and lightning flashed and roared. A Frenchman was struck and badly shocked, but able to continue. They settled down to wait out the snowy inferno. Day Three: the storm intensifies. Summiting is impossible. So is retreat. But what storms deliver in hostility is juxtaposed by their duration. Storms of malice never last long. They would settle in and wait it out.
Bonatti emerges as natural leader, rousing the men and convincing them they must get down off the Pillar. Their frozen clothes are armor plating and the ropes copper piping. But once off the pillar, it is worse than ever. Up to their chest in snow with only a few feet of visibility. Night now. With a preternatural sense of direction, Bonatti leads them to the Col de Peuterey. They resign themselves to another bivouac in the cold guts of a crevasse. Day Six: the couloir is swept with avalanches. Return by the familiar route is out of the question. They begin working down a rib of rock. One Frenchman, the youngest in the party, is unable to go any further. Dies right in front of them. Further along, another Frenchman collapses. They can not haul him for they were all near the end of their strength. Bonatti decides they would have to get down and send rescue up. The Freney Glacier. Bonatti shows his uncanny sense of direction once again picking their way carefully to avoid crashing through into the myriad of crevasses that scar the glacier. Night comes. Off the glacier, on a nearby col, an Italian collapses. One of the remaining Frenchmen stays with him. Bonatti leads the way in the direction of a station where they can get help. The remaining Frenchman shows signs of delirium. Bonatti and Gallieni tie him to their ropes trying to drag him along. The delirious Frenchman attacks them. Bonatti cuts the rope and leaves him. They make it to the station. Rescue is sent. Of the seven, only two die. All seven should have died. That anyone survived at all is attributed to the skill and determination of Walter Bonatti.  “If in normal conditions it is skill, which counts, in such extreme situations, it is the spirit, which saves.” - Walter Bonatti.These are extreme times. We’ve been hit with a storm that won’t go away. Our skill, our knowledge fail. Fear is at our shoulder whispering, whispering, always whispering. We’re pressed – all of us, each in our own way. But I find comfort in the words of Walter Bonatti. He’s faced the end, the nothingness that lurks just ahead. Yet, he survived as well as saving those around him. He knows. In extreme situations skill will fail. Knowledge will fail. But there is a Greater Strength. Looking inward. For it is with the spirit that we reach God. - Doug
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