Last Trail

The one major conquest that remained for serious European mountain climbers was the sheer west face of the Aiguille du Dru, which rises over the Chamonix Valley to 12,247 ft. above sea level. To blaze this last unclimbed trail in the Alps, four tough young Frenchmen roped themselves together with 70-ft. lengths of nylon and started up.

Led by Adrien Dagory, 29, a Paris candymaker, and Guido Magnone, 30, a cardboard-box manufacturer, who was a member of the first team to scale "unconquerable" Mount Fitz Roy (alt. 10,958 ft.) in Patagonia, the climbers approached the Dru with a healthy respect. In earlier assaults on it, they had been beaten by a rockslide and a five-day snowstorm. This time hunger and thirst stopped them about 650 ft. from the summit after they had scaled an obstinate diedre, a rock ledge jutting out like the edge of doom. Forced to return to their base camp, the mountaineers picked up more food and an extra supply of pitons, the big spikes with eyelets through which climbers string safety ropes.

Racing up again against threatening weather and a lately arrived team of Italians, the climbers took a longer but safer route, up the Dru's north face and over to the point where they had left off earlier. Nearing the needle-like summit, the second man loosened a great boulder that plummeted so close to Dagory that it ripped off his knapsack and scattered a cascade of bright Jordan almonds down the mountainside. But by late afternoon the four men were perched atop the Dru, waiting for aerial photographers to record their triumph. Europe's last unconquered passage had been opened.

Back in his candy shop last week, Adrien Dagory felt all hemmed in. "It's too stuffy indoors," said he. At week's end he took his wife and young son out camping under the pines of Fontainebleau Forest. There Adrien spent his day scrambling up & down piddling little 15-and 20-ft. rocks. "It's not the real thing," he explained, "but it helps to perfect your technique."

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