Tales of the Alps – Isabella Straton
In mountaineering history, there are many stories of mountain men – often local guides and their wealthy clients. Stories of talented women climbers are less frequently told, yet numerous women accomplished major ascents in the nineteenth century. One of these was Isabella Straton.
Born in 1838. Straton was an upper-class Englishwoman who found herself wealthy and independent in her early twenties following the death of her parents and sisters. She inherited the family fortune and an income of 4000 pounds a year – a large sum in Victorian England.
Isabella was introduced to climbing by her friend Emmeline Lewis-Lloyd, an early Welsh mountaineer. Young, financially independent and rebellious by the standards of the time, the two women climbed together on numerous expeditions to the Alps and Pyrenees throughout the 1860s and early 1870s. Their most celebrated exploit was the first ascent of the Aiguille de Moine in 1871 with guides Jean Charlet and Joseph Simond. After Lewis-Lloyd gave up climbing in 1973, Straton continued to climb – mostly with her favourite guide, Jean Charlet.
Pointe Isabelle
In 1875, Isabella Straton and Jean Charlet made the first ascent of an unnamed 3761 metre peak close to the Aiguille du Triolet in the Mont Blanc Massif. Charlet named the peak Pointe Isabelle in honour of Straton. The pair achieved many other notable ascents in the Alps including the Aiguille du Blatiere and the Aiguille du Midi in the Chamonix valley. This was long before a cable car carried tourists to the top of the Midi. Over in Switzerland they climbed the Dents du Midi, and the Dom.
Mont Blanc in Winter
Ninety years after the first ascent in 1786, Mont Blanc had yet to see a winter ascent. In 1876, three teams were to attempt this elusive prize. The first attempt was made by another pioneering female climber, the American Meta Brevoort, along with her nephew William Coolidge – himself destined to become a renowned mountaineer. The second attempt came from Mr James Eccles of Blackburn with French artist Gabriele Loppé. Both teams were forced to turn back just below 4000m because of bad weather. After his attempt, Loppé commented that contrary to popular belief the winter temperatures at altitude were not notably colder than those in summer.
On 28th January, Isabella Straton set out with two guides, Jean Charlet and Sylvain Couttet, as well as two porters, M. Simond and Michel Balmat. The route would have taken them up the steep climb to La Jonction, itself a difficult proposition in the snow. Here they could step onto the glacier leading to the Grands Mulets. The tracks left by Eccles and Loppé facilitated their climb this far, and they arrived at close to 8pm. Unlike the first summer ascensionists in 1786, they benefitted from the shelter of the original Grands Mulet refuge built in 1853.
Setting out at 5am the following morning, there were few remains of the tracks to aid progress above the refuge. They progressed to the Grand Plateau at 11am and arrived at Les Bosses (at about 4500m) by 2.30 in the afternoon. By now the temperature had dropped from -11 to -17 Celsius, but the skies were clear and the wind was light.
Crevasse fall!
At this point, the party was only a few hundred metres from the summit. Success seemed close as they worked their way upwards along the Bosses ridge. The porter Simond was at the rear, and the last to cross any snow bridges. After the first four had passed a section without incident, the snow suddenly gave way beneath him and Simond fell into a crevasse hidden beneath. Shaken but not seriously hurt, he found himself stuck at a depth of four metres. The rest of the party were able to carry out a rescue, but it was a long and difficult process. After the delay, the approach of the early winter evening forced the party to turn around. They returned to the Grands Mulets refuge where they arrived at around 5pm.
The group took a rest day at the refuge to recover from their exertions. Simond himself, feeling concussed after the crevasse fall, decided to return to the valley.
Second attempt
The following morning, the four remaining members of the party set off even earlier at 3.40am. The weather was calm and clear, but with more wind than on their first attempt. They made good time as far as the Grand Plateau, which they reached after four hours. As they continued higher, they were assailed by a violent north wind which made progress slow and difficult.
Straton, Charlet and Balmat all suffered from frozen fingers and hands, but no one showed any inclination to turn back. Sheltering as best they could, and rubbing their extremities with snow to generate friction, they continued to climb. The snow was good, and steps could easily be cut with a swing of an ice axe. This was still a few decades before the invention of modern crampons in 1909. Alpinists on steep snow and ice had to cut steps into the surface to make progress, and the harder the ice, the more laborious the process.
Finally, the party reached the summit of Mont Blanc in the latter part of the afternoon. The view would have surely been incredible, the more so for being the first people ever to see it in winter. However, darkness was not far away and the colours of the sunset illuminated their descent to the Grands Mulets. The team passed a fourth night at the refuge before descending to the valley where they were greeted with much celebration. Isabella Straton became an instant sensation in the climbing world and much was written on the acheivement in both mountaineering journals and the general press.
Isabella Straton’s Wedding
After the successful ascent, Isabella Straton asked Jean Charlet, to marry her. As a local man from a poor family Charlet was hesitant. He had spent a lot of time with Straton over several years of climbing together, and the pair had grown to know each other well, yet he was aware that their stations in life were vastly different. Before becoming a guide, he had been an animal herder and then a carpenter, while Miss Straton was a member of the landed gentry back in England. In the age of the Victorian mountaineers, such considerations were taken seriously.
Charlet asked his superiors in the Chamonix guides company whether any regulations would prevent him from marrying his upper-class English client. Finding no impediment in the company rules, and after assuring himself that Isabella did not want him to give up climbing, Jean Charlet agreed to the marriage.
The wedding itself was a grand occasion with no expense spared. It took place in November the same year in Chamonix. A procession of horse drawn carriages made a great spectacle in the valley. Afterwards the couple settled in Argentière, just a few kilomtres from Chamonix.
Aiguille de la Persévérance
In 1881 Straton and Charlet completed the first ascent of another unnamed peak, this time in the Chamonix Aiguille Rouges. This range lies across the valley from Mont Blanc and is now home to the Brevent and Flegere ski areas as well as the Aiguilles Rouges Natural Reserve. The mountains here are not as high, and they lack major glaciers or summer snow and ice. On the other hand, they do offer rock climbing challenges at all difficulty levels, including many classic climbs.
The two climbers started by ascending to Lac Blanc. They made their way beneath the Aiguille du Belvedere and across the long-vanished Glacier Blanc before reaching a col below their peak without facing serious obstacles. Although their objective was a relatively modest 2901m in height, its needle-like shape made an impressive looking summit. At the time, Charlet described it as one of the highest and one of the steepest in the range.
From the col they ascended cautiously. Whenever their route took them onto the north side of the peak they went one at a time. Evenutally, they reached a steep rocky shoulder which had repulsed their efforts on two previous occasions. At one point, Charlet almost fell when the rock he was holding came away in his hand. Somehow, they made it to the top of what he later described as a perilous climb. After the rocky shoulder, the remainder of the route to the summit followed a ridge described as steep and narrow but not extremely difficult. They remarked on the peak’s similarity in shape to the Matterhorn and built a cairn on the summit.
The descent
They descended carefully, happy to distance themselves from the difficulties above. Charlet swore never again to repeat the difficult and dangerous ascent, but also noted wryly that mountaineers’ promises are worth as much as drunkards’ promises.
Straton and Charlet arrived at la Flegère, nowadays a cable car station central to the ski resort. By the 1880s, the site was already home to a mountain restaurant named Le Pavillion. The proprietor, a Monsieur Paccard, told them that the ascent had been anxiously watched. The telescope installed for his patrons had never once turned to the Mont Blanc side of the valley for the duration of the climb. Paccard offered them a bottle of Champagne to celebrate, and they toasted their first ascent. Isabella and Jean Charlet decided to name their peak the Aiguille de la Persévérance. Straton’s biography notes that the name was in honour of “the perseverance that they had shown before they had dared to confess their affection for one another”.
Isabella Straton and Jean Charlet continued to live and climb in the Chamonix valley, buying a chalet in Les Frasserands. Their children were introduced to climbing at a young age, and set their own climbing records. Some years later their grandchildren would open the Point Isabelle hotel in the centre of Chamonix. The hotel is still open and until recently was run by the Charlet-Straton family. In Argentière, the main street is now named Rue Charlet-Straton in honour of the famous climbing couple.
