Der einzige Ausweg: Ein provisorischer Standplatz, ein Anruf bei der Bergrettung und Warten auf den Hubschrauber, während zwei Meter weiter die Nasschneelawinen ins Tal rauschen. Im Folgenden schildert Pete sein Erlebnis und kommt zu dem Schluss: ob wir überleben oder nicht, ist manchmal nicht nur eine Frage von Können und Erfahrung, sondern vor allem Glückssache.
Sunday 28th January
“God dammit...” I mutter quietly to myself. There's no-one else around to hear me, anyway. I've just spent far too long carefully sidestepping downhill, axe in hand but skis on feet, over deep runnels of bulletproof snow and bare rock, carved out and polished by last night's avalanche. Obviously, this was not part of the plan.
As I slowly creep around a shallow corner in the wide couloir, my eyes fall on a sight that makes my heart sink even further: the huge cone of snow that I had seen through my binoculars just yesterday evening, still stacked up neatly at the bottom of my exit couloir at sundown, is no longer there. It is now splayed across the glacier far below me in a fractal of ornate tendrils, each a hundred meters long, and in its place lies a narrow, rock-strewn gully, bordered by towering granite on one side, and a crumbling moraine wall on the other. “God dammit.” I repeat, quieter still.
I glance back at the cliffs above me and the south-facing slopes beyond them, glowing, shimmering in the midday sun. I don't have long. I pull the shaft of my ice axe out of the snow above me, and anchor my rucksack to the hillside with the handle of a ski pole driven into the hole. I unlock my toes and step out of my uphill ski, swap into the first crampon, then stamp out a small ledge under my downhill ski to stand on comfortably so I can do the same for my other foot. After strapping my skis to my pack and stashing one pole, I press on down the broken couloir, picking my way between patches of mirror-finish ice over the maze of spines and runnels. Even with careful, methodical movements, my progress is reassuringly faster than on skis, but too many minutes and too few meters of descent later, a faint rustle and a series of dull thuds draws my eyes downwards: the moraine has started to crumble in the heat of the day and a skull-sized chunk of granite has just peeled away from the dusty ochre wall, bouncing down the centre of my intended line of descent, before sliding to a halt among a cluster of its former neighbours, still nearly two hundred metres below me. For some reason I hear a slight giggle escape from between my curled lips, and I allow myself a short moment to wallow in the absurdity of the situation. But I know that won't help.
What I do know, however, having studied this line obsessively through binoculars and photographs over the years, is that there is a hanging snow slope sandwiched between the right-hand moraine wall of this couloir and the cliffs just above it, and that I might be able to use it to rejoin the route a little lower down, below most of the potential rockfall. Once back in the couloir, if I ski quickly enough and pretend to be much thinner than I actually am, it's entirely possible, even probable, that I won't be crushed to death by rockfall and become a pink smear on the bottom of the glacier. The odds aren't great, I admit, but they are the best I've got right now. “I don't have time for this,” I mutter as I start to climb back up the couloir, finding small comfort in my own commentary. “I literally do not have the time for this.”