Cold Haul is Andy Kirkpatrick’s 2003 film, documenting his and Ian Parnell’s attempt to climb an iconic and notorious Alpine route. The route will take them up the west face of the Drus in the Mont Blanc massif. Pioneered by Jean-Christophe Lafaille and, at the time, unrepeated, it is considered one of the most difficult big-wall climbs in the Alps.
The film takes us to the start of their journey, in a little station where they wait for a funicular (the best form of transport yet invented) to take them up to the route again. The narrator tells us how Ian and Andy recently had to abandon an attempt four days in, after an equipment bag rip sent vital items careening into the valley below.
Back in the present, they’ve finally gotten themselves and their quarter-ton of equipment to the bottom of the route.
The view from the bottom of the ‘hardest route in the Alps.’ Photo: Screenshot
Of course, storm clouds immediately appear and force them to shelter. After three days with no improvement, Andy elects to climb anyway. But the challenge is not climbing through below-zero temperatures and wet snow; it’s finding the route. Lafaille’s A5 pitch is nowhere to be seen. Eventually, they decide to chuck the plans and just find their own way up.
The two climbers, seen from a passing helicopter. Photo: Screenshot
Up the Drus
A helicopter passes by, finding them about halfway up the main pillar. Ian talks to the camera, still cheerful. By his estimate, they’re only two or three days from the top. But they’re beginning to be in a bad way, exhausted and starving. The cold is very hard on the belayer, and they’re only getting around 1,000 calories a day.
“My body’s starting to fall to pieces,” Andy laughs. Then they climb on. As they move up the wall, they haul their heavy gear up behind them, disassembling, moving, and reassembling their portaledge with some difficulty. They also still aren’t exactly on the Lafaille route, their original goal. The first free ascent of the Lafaille route wasn’t until 2025.
Then the weather, never good, now turns truly nasty. Hungry, frozen, and exhausted as they are, they judge that the snow has closed off their retreat; there is no way out but through.
Climbing through the whirling snow. Photo: Screenshot
On the ninth day, they assess the situation. They have one pitch left of the Lafaille route, which they’re now on, then a few more to the summit. But they’re almost out of food, Ian fears frostbite, and the weather won’t let up.
“I think that I can imagine how people die of exhaustion,” Andy says. They elect to keep climbing and do not die of exhaustion.
Instead, after a final, brutally cold push, they reach the top. “Who thought it?” Andy asks. “Two working-class lads like us find our way to the hardest route in the Alps.”
On the way back, they miss the last train.
