On the west face of Les Drus by Nicolas Philibert
In late 1984, when I was offered this film (a different director was originally slated to shoot it), I hesitated a great deal. The task was to film the young virtuoso mountaineer Christophe Profit in the solo ascent of the west face of Les Drus in the heart of the Mont Blanc range, a gigantic, vertical and smooth granite wall 32,0000 feet high, interrupted by huge overhangs. I had absolutely no experience of shooting in such conditions and, even though I had done a little climbing during my adolescent and student years, I had never attained a level that would have allowed me to attack a face of this scale. Moreover, it was a good ten years since I had last been in the mountains. On the other hand, I hadn't shot anything since “La Voix de son maître” (“His Master’s Voice”), in 1978. All my personal projects were on hold and I was getting nowhere...
Three years earlier, Christophe Profit, aged barely 21, had found fame by carrying out this extremely difficult climb “100% solo” (without ropes or belays) in the amazing time of three hours and ten minutes when the best climbing teams needed a day and a half to complete it. This feat earned him the nickname of the “Summit Sprinter” and won him an immediate place in mountaineering history. The film therefore appeared as the rerun of this extraordinary feat that it would be necessary to shot not in real time but in short sequences over several days. There was a slight fiction element, a vague story that acted as a pretext and that I found fairly naïve, but I had no choice: it was take it or leave it! To cut a long story short, after a sleepless night, I accepted the commission.
Shooting on the rock face required rigorous organization that would not brook the slightest hesitation. The timing and the cost of the chopper flights, the dangerous nature of the drops, the size of the crew (with the guides, one for each of the twelve members of the film crew), the complexity and slowness of our movements, the rope manoeuvres, the manipulation of the film equipment, each element of which had to be roped up to prevent it from falling into the void at the first false move, not to mention the risk inherent in every high mountain climb - falling stones, the unexpected arrival of bad weather, falls or accidents - conferred an epic dimension on the whole undertaking.
For each of the key moments in the climb, the positioning of the two cameras was the object of lengthy preparatory discussions with Christophe, Sylviane Tavernier, his partner at the time – who would become the first woman to join the prestigious Chamonix Guides Guild a few months later - and Dominique Radigue, another young and extremely brilliant climber with whom Christophe often formed a team when he wasn't climbing “solo” and who would go missing the following year on the slopes of Aconcagua. These discussions were soon shared with the guides that we had hired and whose cool heads would prove precious throughout shooting. In turn, I had done a little scouting by helicopter and had even climbed the first third of the face with Christophe and Dominique, up to the famous “45-metre fissure” that, to my great pride, I had managed to cross without ropes and belays.
Laurent Chevallier, behind his camera, was a peerless photographer. He filmed instinctively, with an incredible sense of framing. He had already shot a number of mountaineering films and allowed me to profit from his experience. The head of the second unit, Amar Arhab, was also extremely imaginative but, unlike Laurent, he had never done any mountaineering and tried to dispel his fear by cracking endless jokes. As for Bernard Prud’homme, he was the epitome of discretion. Both a sound engineer and a mountain guide, the acting chairman of the Chamonix Guides Guild, with his more than six-foot frame he gave off an incredible impression of strength and invulnerability.
Each morning, the helicopter would drop us on the face at a different spot, painstakingly scouted and “equipped” by the guides, the equipment in question consisting of a few expansion pegs that we could hang ourselves and our material from without any worries. In several spots, the guides had also left, safe from prying eyes, packs with space blankets, drinks, food and first-aid kits in case bad weather forced us to bivouac on the face.
The drops were moments of extreme tension. However skilled our pilot was, the closer we got to the rock face, the greater the risk. We never really dared to talk about it but each one of us knew that the slightest fall of rock on the chopper's blades or a sudden gust of wind would have disastrous consequences. To carry us all up to the shooting location, no fewer than four trips were required from the DZ (dropping zone) in Chamonix, and a fifth one was required for all our gear. In some cases, the sheerness of the rock face prevented the chopper from getting close. We then had to be winched down to a spot higher up the face, or be dropped on the north face that is not as steep, and get to the planned spot by belaying or crossing the face. These operations were very impressive. The helicopter would hover, its blades spitting at times just three feet from the face, creating a terrific din and risking loosening rock at any second. Each in turn, we had to move to the outside of the craft, stand on the runner, gently pass the line of the winch through our harness, “sit down” in the void and let ourselves be lowered thirty or forty yards until reaching a minute ledge were a guide would grab us tightly and hook us up to the nearest piton. Later, I was shocked to hear the pilot tell me that, if ever there was a problem, he would just need to pull on a lever to cut the winch cable and sacrifice the man at the end of the line by dropping him. A good job he never needed to do it!
Once the whole crew was on site, we started to take up our positions, with each one of us moving to his assigned spot. This could take another two hours. Finally, we called Christophe by walkie-talkie. He would then take the chopper and join us up there.
During the first few days, he would cover one tough section after another with such ease that it was unsettling. Of course, seeing him alone without a rope, lost on the vast face three times higher than the Eiffel Tower, where the slightest mistake would lead only to a fatal fall, was a pretty impressive sight… However, if he climbed so nimbly, that meant it couldn't be that complicated! How could the audience perceive the difficulty of his undertaking?
But the ascent of the famous “90-metre dièdre” would soon reveal his feat in its full dimension…
I can still see Christophe in the middle of this terrifyingly tough section, totally smooth and overhanging, split by a narrow crack along its middle. Even though he has 2,600 feet of space beneath his feet, this doesn't seem to bother him, he carries out his movements with extreme precision. But, all of a sudden, he stops, hesitates, looks for his holds… He tries again but no, it's clearly not working! Quick, he can't stay there like that! Quick, quick, he's not going to last long! Tension is at a peak. A few yards away from him, a little further up on the left, we are powerless to help. All of a sudden, gripped by a surge of adrenalin, he starts screaming, insulting the mountain, and begins to climb back down a few yards, reaching out blindly with his leg, feeling around with his foot for the tiniest ridge. If ever it doesn't hold… but it holds! Then the other foot and so on… At last, he reaches a minute knob of rock, the tip of each foot resting on just a fraction of an inch, his hands bolted into the crack. Quick, we throw him a rope, he ties himself too it. Phew! What a relief. Those three minutes lasted a lifetime!
Later, during editing, I insisted on keeping this sequence. Christophe wasn't too keen on the idea. He was afraid it would harm his “image”. But he would end up coming round to my way of thinking: more than any other, this scene would allow the audience to measure the scale of his feat and would give the climber, suddenly vulnerable, a "human" side that he wouldn't have had without it.
Today, the appearance of the west face of Les Drus has changed significantly. In 1997, then in 2003, and again in 2005, a series of rock falls affected the structure of the mountain and destroyed a number of historic routes, offering climbers a brand-new mountain. But it will no doubt be years before the rock stabilizes.
