Count Henry Russell

Roland might not have broken the rock, but Count Henry Russell did. Or at least he had others do it for him. Upon his request a cave was hewn just a few metres to the west of the Breche on the northern side. It is still there, cold and damp and unwelcoming. Occasionally a few hardy or thrifty mountaineers will forsake the relative comfort of the refuge and spend an uncomfortable, though doubtlessly unforgettable night in Russell’s cave.

                                                            

Russell didn’t approve of the visual impact of refuges and was an ardent opponent of any building maintaining that they spoiled the natural harmony of the mountains. He was a colourful character without whom any account of the Pyrenees would be incomplete. He was a gentleman of leisure and means, though a most intrepid and determined one. He had the luxury afforded to the independently wealthy of doing as he pleased with little thought for social convention. Old photos and sketches of Russell show him as a tall elegant, gaunt faced man of angular build, sporting a moustache and goatee. His detractors say he was completely mad, while his admirers insist that he was merely very eccentric.

He was was born in 1834. His mother was French and his father was from county Down in Ireland. During his youth he briefly attended Clongowes college, a Jesuit school near Dublin. As a young man, he traveled the globe. He explored Canada and the American far west in his early twenties and spent time among the Native Americans tribes. He trekked through the Andes in Peru. He crossed the frozen lake Baikal in Siberia, and made his way through Mongolia. He crossed the Gobi desert, eventually following the ruins of the Great Wall all the way to Peking. On the same trip he visited Japan, Macao, Hong Kong, Sumatra, Australia and New Zealand. In Melbourne he set out to conquer some peaks in the neighbouring mountains and in the attempt almost died from exhaustion, dehydration and hunger. He sailed to India, docking first at Ceylon, then on to Madras, Goa and Bombay. He became very ill in India (believe me, I empathize) and stayed for some time in a sanatorium in Darjeeling, a hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas famed for its tea plantations. Eventually he returned to France by way of Suez, Constantinople, Venice and Marseille.

He did all that before he was thirty years old. With his wanderlust thoroughly sated he settled in the South West of France and for the next four decades rarely ventured far from the Pyrenees. He bought a house on the rue Marca in Pau (not far from the castle) and another on the coast in Biarritz, which was a fashionable watering hole for the aristocracy at the time. He dedicated his time to writing books abut his travels and cataloguing the mountaineering exploits that filled the rest of his life. 

At 3298 metres the Vignemale is the highest peak in the French Pyrenees. This was Russell’s mountain. It was in 1861, shortly after his return from his odyssey, that Russell made his first of at least 33 ascensions of the mountain that became his obsession. On a clear day I could see the summit from the kitchen window. Nowadays he would hardly recognize the receding glacier, a shadow of its former self with its yawing crevasses; another victim of global warming.

 In August 1880 he ascended the Vignemale and had his porters bury him in the rock and snow with only his head exposed to the mountain air. As night fell he was caught between cold, tiredness and fatigue. His hair, his eyebrows, his moustache all frosted over. He drifted in and out of hallucinatory dreams and mystical visions and for a moment attained “Union” with the “palpable presence” of God.

After this experience he wanted to spend more time and longer periods on his beloved mountain. This was when the cave digging started. The first cave was called Villa Russell and was inaugurated in July 1882. Then, in 1885, came the Grotte des guides.  The aristocratic ladies he lured up the mountain had to have their own quarters so the following year the Grotte des Dames was completed. Next came the Bellevue at an altitude of 2378 metres. His final cave, named Paradis, was just 18 metres below the summit.

In contrast to the cave at the Breche, Paradis had the advantages of facing south and being dry and was carpeted with straw. Obviously motivated by the glacial cold, Russell is credited with the invention of the sleeping bag, having had one made to his own design out of lamb’s fleece. At one stage he considered the idea of having animals brought to his caves to examine the effects of altitude on them. Among the matters that aroused his curiosity was whether cocks would crow at over 3000 metres.

In 1889 Count Henry Patrick Marie Russell signed a contract with the Syndicat de Bareges  for the rental of 200 hectares of the Vignemale for a duration of 100 years, at the most reasonable sum of 1 franc per year. The only condition imposed was that he didn’t have the right to bar access to the mountain. He had a red door installed on the Grotte de Paradis and keys forged with his initials on them. He had become the self-appointed keeper of the mountain.

For ten years he spent extended periods in his caves inviting ladies and gentlemen of the gentry to join him for sumptuous dinners served on bone china crockery, accompanied by fine wines served in crystal glasses. After dinner, the men smoked cigars and Russell entertained his guests by playing the cello.

The summer troglodyte was a winter dandy and attended high society balls, concerts and dinner parties. He was a flamboyant dresser, given to cloaks and canes and wearing the colourful costumes he had gathered on his travels. When speaking French he was said to affect the slightest of British accents. When he spoke English, his accent was more Gallic in tone.

In 1904, at the age of seventy, he made his final ascension of the Vignemale. He spent 17 days there alone. He died five years later, in the milder climes of Biarritz, at his residence, the villa Christine and his remains are buried in a cemetery in Pau.

Nowadays, almost unnoticed by the roadside at the entrance of the village of Gavarnie, is a statue of Russell - a copy of the original that was melted down by German troops during the occupation in the Second World War. His long limbed form is immortalized in bronze, depicted sitting semi-reclined with crossed legs. One hand rests on his knee while the other supports his jaw as he gazes wistfully towards his beloved Vignemale.