The Ascent of the Grande Sassière

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In 1860, when Savoie had become part of the kingdom of France, William Mathews, British mountaineer and founder of the Alpine Club of London in 1857, returned to the Tarentaise, arriving in Tignes on the evening of 3 August. As he had been to the region before and experienced the wiles of the people of Tignes and Val d’Isère, this time, not wanting to rely on the natives of either village, he brought with him the famous guide from Chamonix, Michel Croz, and a porter.

Michel Croz was certainly the best guide at that time. Later, in July 1865, he was the first to conquer the Matterhorn with the Englishman Edward Whymper, though tragically he perished during the descent when he and three others, roped together, fell to their deaths.

For the moment, however, he is in the Auberge Saint Roch with William Mathews, who later recalled:

"The Hotel Saint Roch had not made any alteration since our last visit. Following the annexation of Savoie to France, the frontier now stretched along the crest of the mountains to the east of the Tignes valley, and 14 Sardinian and two French customs officials were stationed in the village, ready to pounce on any unsuspecting traveller. The hotel had only two rooms, and the French officials had taken the lower one. In the upper room there were three beds. One was reserved by a Sardinian, I took the second, and Monsieur Croz and the porter shared the third. Our evening meal consisted of a vermicelli soup and an omelette, followed by more vermicelli in a broth. Mercifully the wine was very good, as it is everywhere in the Tarentaise."

The next day, 4 August, the weather was too bad for climbing, so in the afternoon Mathews walked to the Tignes lake. The sky was overcast:

"but the scene was no less beautiful. The water was as clear as crystal and the lake was surrounded by meadows and wildflowers.”

On 5 August 1860 the weather was deemed suitable for an ascent of the Grande Sassière at 3747m. With his usual shortness of manner, Mathews scolded Madame Florentin who was late for breakfast and in no hurry to produce the food supplies which were to go into their packs, but inspite of this, the ascent passed without incident. Michel Croz followed the advice of a shepherd and climbed via the west ridge, which has since become the classic itinerary for the Grande Sassiere.

There was great disappointment at the summit when they found an old cairn made of rocks and timber, showing that they were not the first to climb this peak. But Mathews was pre-occupied with finding the famous Mont-Iseran which was featured on all the maps of the region but was nowhere to be seen on the ground itself. With the help of his measuring instruments which the porter had heaved up to the summit, he made several cartographic observations and measured the altitude, and concluded, finally, that Mont-Iseran did not exist, and he later sent a communication to this effect to the London Alpine Club.

The fact of not being the first to reach the summit of the Grande Sassière puzzled him, as he knew of no documented account of such an ascent. It was a herdsman from Tignes who later told them that the first ascent and the building of the cairn was the work of Bertrand Chaudan of Tignes, who had died before 1860 so could not be contacted for his own account. Chaudan, with two companions, had made the ascent and built the cairn to facilitate the readings of planimeters and altimeters as ordered and executed under the First Empire of Napolean Bonaparte.

But returning to Mathews, we find him after his ascent of the Grande Sassiere, on the evening of Sunday 5 August back at the Auberge Saint Roch. Wishing to get to Pralognan with Michel Croz and his porter the next day via the Col de la Leisse and the Vanoise, our three mountaineers went to bed early, but they could not sleep because on Sunday evening the young men of Tignes had the habit of coming to the inn for entertainment:

"I had not been in bed for half an hour" wrote Mathews "when the dining room, separated from my room by a simple panel, started to fill with clients. A large number of young people of the village had come to finish their Sunday with a party and for three quarters of the night they turned the house into pandemonium. They drank, clinked glasses, sang, shouted, crashed their feet on the floorboards and their fists on the tables, played, quarrelled, and even as they left the inn each one continued to shout and scream like lunatics".

He would not be surprised to find that little has changed in the Espace Killy when it comes to nightlife.

Translated from a story by Jose Reymond, in ‘J’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans”.