The first thing that hits me is the silence. As Jacques Brun and his D140 Mousquetaire II disappear into the distance, it is suddenly very, very quiet. I look around. Then the full craziness and impact of my predicament hit me. And I start to feel very, very small.
Five minutes ago, I was happily ensconced in the left seat of a Jodel Mousquetaire, banking around some of the tallest peaks in Europe, taking in the beautiful summer sunshine reflecting off of gleaming-white glaciers with one of the most experienced and famous mountain flying instructor pilots in France. Flying in close proximity to jagged rock pinnacles dividing icefalls and glacial fields isn't something you want to do with just anybody, but Jacques has over 23,000 hours of flight time in and around these mountains.
And because we were in a plane equipped with retractable skis, and because the morning conditions were just so beautiful, Jacques offered to let me land on one of the glaciers. So far, so good. We checked the conditions, then came back around, skimming low above the glacial field until we gently intersected its rising slope. Jacques increased the power to keep us moving up the steepening slope and turned around to take off again.
Unfortunately, the ice gripped hold of the skis faster than we could offset. We ended up halfway through the turn, parallel to the bottom of the slope, but unable to get the plane to rotate the rest of the way downhill to take off again. Jacques leaned over and opened up my half of the canopy. "I need your help," he said over the noise of the running engine. "Go to the wingtip and push back as I add full power. That should rotate us. But once the plane turns, I don't have brakes, so I'm going to have to take off. Make your way down to the tracks down there ..." He gestured to some tracks further down the glacier, where the slope was shallower and the snow was in the sun. "... and I'll come back and pick you up there."
I DID think to grab a fleece jacket as I nodded and climbed out of the plane. But focused on the needs of the mission, I didn't take anything else. I climbed gingerly off the Mousquetaire's low wing and made my way carefully around the down-slope wing until I was at the front edge of the wingtip. The ice was thick this morning, I noted as I kicked two toe-holds through the crusty surface to give me some traction to push against.
I leaned into the wing as Jacques ran up the engine, and the plane started to shift. I ducked under the wing as it pivoted sharply toward me, then turned in time to see Jacques lifting off and heading out toward the lower end of the glacier.
I watched the plane get small in the distance, the sound of its retreating engine quickly swallowed by the vast, uninhabited silence of the glacier and its surrounding mountain peaks. And there I was. Standing in the midst of all that majestic snow, rock and ice.
Alone.
Eleven thousand feet and miles away from civilization.
Oh, yeah. And in my running shoes and shorts, because I hadn't exactly planned on doing any glacier hiking this morning.
It all seemed amusingly surreal until I took a step downhill. My foot slid out from under me, and I only barely managed to catch myself. This ice was serious, and I didn't have the Gore-Tex pants, gaiters, mountain boots, crampons and ice axe I'd used to navigate these conditions just two days earlier on the Dassault Mont Blanc expedition. Getting down to that track in the sun was going to be a lot harder than it looked. For a minute, I considered simply sliding down the glacier on my tail end. But then I considered the impact of rough, uneven ice scraping along bare legs and thought better of it. No, I was going to have to walk.
Using the technique I'd acquired just days before, I lifted one foot and jammed my heel through the ice to make a heel hold, shifted all my weight down to that foot, and then rammed my other heel into the ice a few inches further down the slope. Ten minutes later, I was breathing hard, drenched in sweat, and was still only partway down the slope. But as I stopped to catch my breath, I surveyed the sparkling snow of the Glacier du Tour and the jagged peaks of Petite and Grande Fourche behind me, and wished I'd at least had the presence of mind to grab my camera on the way out of the plane. It WAS, after all, a staggeringly beautiful scene.
Fortunately, Jacques recognized that I could use some help, climbed out of the plane (now returned to the glacier) and used his mountain boots to chip a stairway of sorts for me the rest of the way. So a few minutes later, we were back in the Mousquetaire and on our way again.
We banked around to the right and did a touch and go on another section of the glacier, waving at some nearby mountain climbers along the way. Jacques then headed straight for a wall of jagged rock peaks. Or so it seemed. I mean, there WAS a little notch in the ridge, but surely he didn't plan to ... oh, good lord, was he really going to ... pass through it??!! Nearby rock gave way so abruptly to a vast abyss of altitude that my stomach almost dropped as dramatically as the landscape beneath us. I think I even gasped with surprise. And, okay, a little bit of glee. Again, not something you want to do with just anybody, but no mere roller coaster gives a thrill ride like that!
I laughed out loud, and Jacques smiled. "Fun, no?" he said.
Fun, oui !
