It was so cold I cried, says Alps climber after record solo ascent

A French mountaineer has become the first to scale one of the most formidable north faces in the Alps alone and in winter.

Charles Dubouloz ascends the north face of the Grandes Jorasses. Picture: Seb Montaz via Getty Images

A French mountaineer has been acclaimed in the climbing world after becoming the first to scale one of the most formidable north faces in the Alps alone and in winter.

Charles Dubouloz, 32, spent six days and five nights climbing solo in icy winds and temperatures as low as minus 30C, inching his way up a near-vertical wall to the 4208m summit of the Grandes ­Jorasses.

Part of the Mont Blanc massif, its rock-strewn side is one of the alpine “trilogy” of north faces, along with the Eiger and Matterhorn.

The dangerous 1100m “Rolling Stones” route that Dubouloz chose was first opened by a four-man Czech team in 1979 and was scaled in winter by two Slovenian free climbers in 2014, but tackling it alone, hauling two bags with 35kg of gear, was unprecedented.

“This is a rare performance that will be recorded in the annals of the Mont Blanc massif alongside the great names of alpinism,” Montagnes Magazine said.

Christophe Moulin, one the climbing world’s elite and a veteran of a team conquest of the same north face in the winter of 2006, said: “What Charles has done is a great achievement. It’s the ordeal of testing himself and tapping into his resources. It’s almost in the realm of meditation.”

Dubouloz spoke of his fear and doubts as frostbite afflicted his hands and feet two days after leaving the entrance point at Courmayeur. “My hands were in shreds. The skin was all torn and there were cracks everywhere,” he said. He ate almost nothing except sweets boiled in water, and struggled to sleep in a hammock. He spent one night half-sitting on a ledge. On the fourth day, he dropped his telephone into a crevice, never to be seen again.

“I chose (the route) because it represents the difficulty in the massif well,” he said.

“It’s very long, very dry in winter, and then there’s this super-steep headwall, with overhanging cracks in bad rock.”

He told Agence France-Presse: “I admit, I often got scared. There were stretches, including one in particular on very bad rocks, where I was scared all along. There are blocks that move, you have to climb on eggshells.

“When I got to the top, I cried a lot. I lay down. I felt a huge sense of accomplishment.”

Waiting for him at the summit last Tuesday was Seb Montaz, a videographer who had used an easier ascent to record the exploit.

“This encompasses everything that there is in the practice of alp­inism,” Dubouloz said. “What attracted me is that you have to know how to do everything in an efficient way. You have to know how to climb the difficult walls with wide margins. You have to be very skilled at handling the rope. Everything is harder on this type of route.”

He hit a final hurdle when he arrived exhausted and 5kg lighter at Courmayeur and asked for a room in a hotel because the Mont Blanc tunnel to Chamonix was closed for the night.

“We ended up in a cheap hotel where they didn’t want to let me in because I didn’t have my Covid passport with me,” he said.

His proof of vaccination was on the lost phone.

The Times