Last summer, Antoine Rattin had a broken arm in a sling and an ugly wound on his face, near his temple.
Everyone wondered what had happened to the guard of the Goûter refuge, an almost obligatory step on the way to the top of Mont Blanc (4,808 meters), and no one missed his answer: “It was in the Grand Couloir…”.
In reality, he had been reborn.
Mountain guides and most Spanish mountaineers know this place as “the bowling alley”, a horizontal pass of just 100 meters in length that constitutes one of the black spots of the massif.
Crossing this corridor means exposing yourself to a somewhat maddening game in which you have to prevent the rocks that roll down the slope from dragging you or killing you.
Hit by a medium block, Antoine Rattin was thrown about 15 meters down the slope but was able to stop.
The less fortunate are picked up by the helicopter hundreds of meters further away, and taken to the morgue.
Between June 15 and September 15, during the height of the season, an average of 21,350 people have crossed said point since 2017, resulting in an annual average of 3.7 fatal accidents.
Antoine Rattin passes by the fateful place many times each summer, as do many high mountain guides, who short rope their clients and spend a few seconds crossing from one safe area to another.
They are the most tense seconds of the entire day, a tension that will be repeated upon their return from the top.
All these data come from a study by the University of Savoy Mont Blanc that allows for the first time not only to prepare an analysis of the risks assumed by mountaineers on the two most frequented routes, but also to quantify them.
In the mountains there are two main types of dangers: objective and subjective.
The latter have their trigger in the actions and decisions of the mountaineers, as well as in all the errors (logistical, knowledge, physical preparation, overestimation of their capacity, poor equipment, etc.) that they may commit.
Objective dangers refer to the terrain and, although it is possible to prevent their impact to a certain extent, it is a risk to be assumed when practicing any type of activity in the mountains: rockfalls, snow avalanches, storms, lightning, cracks in glaciers. … In an unprecedented way, French researchers have narrowed down in the most precise way possible a key question: What exactly are we talking about when we talk about objective dangers on the normal routes of Mont Blanc?
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The most frequented route to the top of Mont Blanc is the Voie Royale, which passes through the Goûter refuge.
The second, known as the Trois Monts, crosses the slopes of Mont Blanc du Tacul and Mont Maudit before reaching the roof of the Alps.
The objective dangers that lie in wait for climbers on both routes are of a very different nature.
Thermal conditions directly influence the frequency and quantity of rockfalls at the
bowling alley
, while they do not at all affect the fall of seracs (masses of ice) that threaten those passing through the north-northwest slope of Mont Blanc de Tacul.
In this last scenario, the seracs can fall at any time, while in the
bowling alley
less dangerous time slots can be indicated: between 2 in the morning and 12 noon, the least rockfall occurs, and especially between 9 and 10. Activity increases later, and is critical between 6 and 7 p.m.
This information is crucial to allow climbers to reduce risk exposure.
This is not the case on the north-northwest slope of Tacul, where it is very difficult to anticipate the fall of a serac and only a careful reading of the terrain that would allow the discovery of very fractured ice masses or small ice falls could provide clues when choosing the itinerary to follow.
A mountaineer crosses the 'bowling alley' towards the summit of Mont Blanc.Óscar Gogorza
On the slopes of Tacul, the average number of fatal accidents per year is 0.6, and the risk is twice as high as on the Voie Royale.
However, the aspiring to crown the roof of Europe spend much more time exposed to the potential danger of the Tacul (some even hours), while on the route that passes through Goûter the passage through the dangerous
bowling alley
is carried out in just half an hour. minute (for a fast climb).
It happens, however, that many more climbers pass through this last point, where, in addition, the frequency of rock falls is much greater.
The scientists who carried out the study point out the
bowling
alley as the most dangerous point in the Alps and, surely, on the planet.
To find out the frequency of stone falls at said point, a seismic device and a sensor were installed in 2019 that recorded the influx of mountaineers.
Between 2016 and 2020, still photographic cameras recorded all the serac falls in Tacul as well as the traffic of climbers.
In the case of the
bowling alley
, a revealing fact was recorded: a significant rockfall occurred every 37 minutes, and its size grew towards the end of the summer season.
The scientists who have prepared the work remember that there is a classification of risks: those that society tolerates are defined as “acceptable risks” and it is not worth investing to reduce them.
On the other hand, the “tolerable risk” is that with which society can live and extract a certain benefit while trying to reduce its threat (driving, or practicing mountaineering, for example).
The danger of
bowling
is three times greater than road mortality in France, which means that an average mountain climber is as likely to die in a single step as he is by driving his car normally for three years.
However, for a 45-year-old Frenchman, going to the
bowling alley
would mean a probability of dying ten times less than his normal probability of dying.
On the other hand, if a 15-year-old child passed by the
bowling alley
, he would double his chances of dying, as much as a 45-year-old professional mountaineer or high mountain guide who passes by the same place ten times a year.
Scientists recall that the conditions and danger of both scenarios on Mont Blanc will deteriorate in the future: the permafrost (permanently frozen layer of soil) on the west face of the Goûter Needle is weaker every year and its degradation is increasing. to accelerate.
The warming of the Tacul ice could accelerate its cracking and the fall of ice masses.
And then it will be necessary to review the reality of its objective dangers.
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