Photo: Mike Berard

Just Like a Woman From Pau
By FRANÇOIS BURBAUD

The sun was shining and all the vales down the Néouvielle peak in the Pyrénées were glittering with fresh spring powder. Our goal was the Turon, a dome near the peak that is a thousand feet lower and doesn't require climbing to get there, only skiing. It was 6 o'clock and Christian and I departed quietly between the frozen lakes. We had slept in the car since the La Glère hut is still closed at this time of year. A hole near it proved other mountaineers had looked for shelter outside last night, or another night in the past week.

After two hours we began to ascend the Coume Estretre saddle. I led the way up and became so exhausted in the couloir that my face had become as blue as the icy snow at the usually windy col. On the ridge above I was obliged to put studs on my boots soles. Christian remained a few hundred meters behind.

Then I noticed someone else was gaining on me. He had the look of a champion and was going fast. "El Turon, esta por alli?" the boy asked as he passed me. He was the sort of guy who did this as a one-day, intense training session. The Basque country is more industrialized and crowded than the deep southwest of France and is full of young athletes like him.

I finally reached the flat amphitheatre, but now I needed to stop every five meters. The arrival was another 300 feet above and I was despairing to get there. After a hard hour I succeeded and laid down on the ground. I leaned back on the same rock as the Spanish boy I met earlier. We were both waiting for our companions—he looking to the Campbiel peak on the other side, I to the slope they were coming from.

"Como estas?" he asked me, pulling tobacco out of his pocket and whistling to himself.

"Fine, fine," I answered. "A stunning day." It was 1 p.m. and I was trying to regain consciousness when I saw her coming. It was as if I was sitting on the edge of heaven on the first morning of the world, waiting for the apparition I had been promised by God in the mountains.

Her arms were open and she was well balanced on her long legs. She stopped on the dome a few meters from me and unzipped her jacket. Her full breast stretched her white top. She took off her cap and waved her long, dark hair. It seemed as a commercial for a shampoo brand. Surely a helicopter had deposited her on the slope.

My Spanish companion stop whistling. I guessed he was as astonished as I was.

She removed her seal skins and glanced around, smiling at us. I was about to talk to the green-eyed beauty, the sort of natural talk you permit when sharing the same thing, when two of her companions arrived. "Hey, you won," they said. She had won their love, I thought.

During my recovery of crushing energy bars, I couldn't stand to have my tired eyes on her. She and her companions took several photos in front of the Néouvielle. Listening to their merry chatting, I heard they were from Pau, the nearest important town in the valley.

Christian finally arrived and we decided to go down quickly in order to put the first scars in the intact snow. I thought it would make up for my frustration. I did my best to ski down the first slope thinking that maybe we—she and I—could meet again later.

After that first run I asked Christian, who also is in his forties, whether he had found her nice. "She is just like a woman from Pau," he said. "Very pretty."

It was such a practiced answer that I have always kept it in mind when getting domes.

                                                                                        Next: number 4


 Discuss this story in our Workshop forum