In reply to Tim Mottin:
Sorry for the huge slab of text but can't find a way to attach a Word file. Some recollections of Snell's Field in 1973:
...The steering on our van failed one last time on the narrow lane leading to our final destination – a clearing known as Snell’s Field in the forest outside Chamonix. An approaching motorcyclist swerved and narrowly missed us.
‘F*** me,’ Claire said. ‘What a plonker.’
It was still early in the season and so Snell’s Field, a notorious hangout for impecunious British climbers, had yet to lose its forest glade charm. The hamlet of tents would swell to a town by mid-July, and by August the urban sprawl would extend into annexed bays and clearings until it took on the appearance of a squatter camp.
We pitched our faded cotton Vango next to a small blue tent in the far corner of the field. No sign of our new neighbours. The only evidence of occupancy was a bar of soap tucked under the flysheet. I guessed they were out on a climb.
That night, as we sat around the communal log fire, the regulars introduced us to the lore of Snell’s Field. A typical anecdote began with some well-known climber hiding a stick of stolen salami down his trousers to evade supermarket security, then moved on to a graphic description of how he lost his wallet down a squat hole in the hut lavatory, and ended with him successfully climbing some mighty mountain only to trip over on the descent and fall a thousand feet down a snow couloir. Eating, crapping and climbing – those were the three main elements of life at Snell’s Field. The regulars also warned us not to team up with Brian Lobber (not his real name), the unluckiest climber in the Alps. ‘He came out a fortnight ago but fell off his first route and ended up in hospital’ – pause for general laughter – ‘and then bugger me if this afternoon, just a day out from hospital, he wasn’t almost knocked off his motorbike by some wazzock driving on the wrong side of the road.’
We met Brian a couple of days later. Fortunately he didn’t recognise the van. To ease his frustration at being stuck in the valley, one of the lads had loaned him a stack of stolen porn mags. Brian was leafing through these outside his tent when the gendarmes arrived to make one of their regular sweeps through Snell’s Field. His leg was in plaster so he couldn’t run into the forest as fast as the other assorted robbers and reprobates. The gendarmes took him away, still protesting his innocence.
Within a fortnight of our arrival in the Alps, the tented village at Snell’s Field had grown into a city of plastic palaces. The framework for these rococo extensions came from natural materials gathered from the forest by day, while the glazing came from rolls of polythene sheeting borrowed from a local construction site by night. Residents initially furnished their palaces with primitive log seats, though stacking chairs and table parasols began to appear as cafe culture took hold (to the detriment of actual cafes, it must be said).
On rest days we would lounge inside our conservatories, planning the next climb and drinking beer chilled by the glacier outflow that ran through the forest. We had every comfort and convenience apart from one – a lavatory. At least the minefield we laid in the surrounding forest gave gendarmes planning another raid pause for thought.
Climbing gave Claire and me a reason to escape the squalor of Snell’s Field, yet while on the mountain – tired, cold, terrified – we wished only to be back in our cosy plastic home, tucking into our favourite meal of horse liver and chips. Life is so difficult up on the mountain. You can’t sleep. You can’t stay warm. You can’t satisfy your hunger and thirst. You can’t even take a dump in comfort. Tip-toeing across a booby-trapped forest floor is nothing compared to dropping your pants halfway up an icy gully with an avalanche bearing down on you.
Mundane chores structured our days in Chamonix. We would rise at 11am, collect the previous night’s empties for the refund, then drive into town to check the weather reports. If mauvais temps had been forecast for the following day, we would buy a cake from the patisserie, call at the supermarket for more beer – on principle we always paid for ours – then return to Snell’s Field to read fantasy novels and climbing guidebooks until it was time to start eating and drinking and sleeping again. If, on the other hand, the forecast promised beau temps avec un risque d'orages après midi (there was always a risk of afternoon storms), we would go to the Bar National to toast the success of our coming mission. Then we would pack our rucksacks with ropes, hardware, and bivouac gear, and catch the funicular railway or cable car to the plateau from where we would begin the approach walk to hut or bivouac site.
...(after our final failure to climb a mountain) Sullen, we drove back to Snell’s Field and packed up the tent for the journey home. Most had already gone, leaving the dilapidated remains of their plastic palaces flapping in the wind. The atmosphere had soured in the valley. There had been a punch-up at the Alpenstock bar involving British climbers – chairs flung over the bar, people diving out of windows, that kind of thing. Some of the locals had taken revenge in the streets, and two innocent New Zealanders were beaten up. No doubt the Alpenstock story would be re-told with glee around the log fire at Snell’s Field the following year. But I didn’t want to be there. I was sick of this place. Sick of the inertia, the moral slide.
We never did get to meet our neighbour in the small blue tent. The bar of soap was still there when we left, tucked under the corner of the flysheet. He’d been gone two months now. No-one seemed to know anything. Is that how it happens? Do you simply break through into a crevasse or fall into a bergschrund and disappear until your body emerges from the snout of a glacier fifty years later?
