The Beckoning Silence

by Simpson, Joe

  ‘That settles it, then,’ Ray said confidently.

  ‘You know, we might be climbing well,’ I added, ‘but there is no way either of us are as fit as we used to be or will need to be for the Eiger.’

  ‘Better get training, then,’ Ray said confidently. ‘How long have we got? Five months. We’ll be fine, kid. You keep looking at those videos, familiarise yourself with the face,’ he added.

  ‘Listen, I’ve read so many books on the bloody Eiger I think I know it like the back of my hand now. Whenever you see a mention of the Eiger in any climbing books there is always some epic story involved.’

  ‘Stands to reason,’ Ray replied. ‘What’s the point of writing about a perfectly successful but uneventful climb? This sort of thing is self-perpetuating. The rat needs feeding.’

  ‘You mean like a self-fulfilling prophecy?’

  ‘Yeah, that sort of thing. As if people are so conscious of the history of the place that they inevitably start making it themselves.’

  ‘No, I don’t buy that,’ I said. ‘It is just a mountain in the end. Strip away the history and it is just another hill.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’ Ray exclaimed and burst out laughing.

  ‘Not really,’ I muttered sheepishly. ‘But if you think about it, when we went to Siula Grande it was just a mountain. When we came back it suddenly had some pretty serious history and now Buhler has just added to it. But the mountain itself hasn’t changed at all, has it? I mean, we didn’t think twice about attempting the west face. It was just a series of problems. There was no psychological baggage at all. All we have to do on the Eiger is see through all the tragedies …’

  I put the phone down and thought about our decision to climb the Eiger. I felt the fear but it was overwhelmed by a keen sense of anticipation. Ray was right. It was where we should be, win or lose. And thinking about it, failure is never quite so frightening as regret.

  '...the beckoning silence of great height.' Eiger North Face, September 2000.

  Trudle and Anderl Heckmair with Joe and Ray. Kleine Scheidegg. September 2000.

  Sedlmayr and Mehringer's names in the Hotel des Alpes Register, Grindelwald.

  Joe, Anna Jossi and Alice Steuri, with the register, Grindelwald.

  Joe beneath a sunset-washed Eigerwand

  (left) A sombre Ray packs for the climb. (right) A sobering reminder of previous attempts.

  Joe climbing the Difficult Crack.

  The face turns into a deadly trap after a violent storm.

  Ray belaying as the storm sweeps in.

  Joe crossing the Hinterstoisser Traverse during the storm.

  Ray at the Swallow's Nest.

  Ray dodging stone-fall while retreating across the Hinterstoisser Traverse.

  Alpenglow over the Scheidegg Wetterhorn.

  Joe at the Swallows Nest

  Joe retreating on the Hinterstoisser Traverse

  The North Face of the Eiger from the Kleine Scheidegg Hotel.

  The Eiger looms above Kleine Scheidegg.

  10 Against the dying of the light

  As I drove slowly up the winding road twisting through a forest of pine trees I thought about what we had come to do. You’re here now, kid. No turning back, I thought and I was surprised at how calm I felt. I looked at the picturesque town of Interlaken built on the banks of the lake and surrounded by meadows and woodland. The landscape was astoundingly beautiful, almost unreal, since it was the sort of thing you saw on a chocolate box and never expected to see in reality.

  I knew that soon the valley would open outwards as we approached the small hamlet of Grindelwald and there looming above it would be the immense north face of the Eiger. Friends had told me what an imposing and intimidating sight this was and how its vast dark shadowed wall could deter a previously enthusiastic north wall climber into wary submissiveness. I thought of all the Eiger books I had read over the summer, absorbing the countless photographs and the list of tragedies played out in full view of the watching tourists. I had constantly asked myself whether I wanted to be doing this and every time the answer came back, stronger and more positive with each time of asking. Yes, I really do. I want to follow in the footsteps of those climbers. It is how I had always climbed in the Alps, paying homage to the heroes I had read about by climbing their routes.

  Reading the books had been my way of breaking down the psychological baggage associated with the wall. From every implacable story there was a lesson to be learned – when to turn back, where the dangers lay, what decisions to make – and I began to feel as if I knew the face intimately. I imagined all the things that could go wrong and then tried to decide what my best decisions would be – retreat or push on, sit out the storm or risk the stone-fall and avalanches of a descent. Sometimes I gleaned a little extra information that I knew might be vitally important and I stored it away in my memory for just such a moment.

  I remembered reading Chris Bonington’s accounts of his early attempts on the face in his autobiography I Chose to Climb. Chris and the legendary Don Whillans had turned back from one attempt on the north face when they had reached the Second Ice Field. They had sensed that the weather was changing and realised that they still could safely make an abseil retreat down the Ice Hose and the First Ice Field to the shelter of the Swallow’s Nest. This eighteen-inch wide bivouac ledge sheltered by an overhang was perched spectacularly on the edge of a huge rock band. From there they could use the old fixed ropes, now routinely left in place, to reverse the Hinterstoisser Traverse and make their way slowly down the remaining 2500 feet of broken walls and ledges to the foot of the face.

  It was from this point that Toni Kurz’s fateful party had struggled desperately to reverse the Hinterstoisser Traverse in 1936. The four-man party had reached the Death Bivouac, Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer’s high point of the previous year – so called because it was here that Sedlmayr and Mehringer had frozen to death. On the first day of their climb Andreas Hinterstoisser had discovered what was to be the key to the climb and had brilliantly unlocked this crux rock barrier that gave them access to the heart of the face. When he and his three companions – Angerer, Rainer and Toni Kurz – had safely followed him across the glistening shield of slabby rock they retrieved the traversing rope that Hinterstoisser had so expertly fixed in place. From that point onwards the door back to safety was now locked behind them.

  Despite desperate efforts Hinterstoisser couldn’t climb back across the traverse when they were forced to retreat, nursing Angerer who had suffered head injuries from a rock-strike. Hinterstoisser spent hours in frustrating and exhausting attempts to climb sideways across the glassy shield of rock that was now coated with a hard film of verglas.

  The weather worsened and the rock-fall began spitting down accompanied by avalanches and waterfalls. Watchers at the telescopes in Alpiglen and Kleine Scheidegg could sense that a tragedy was beginning to unfold. The men were trapped. From the lower lip of the First Ice Field, adjacent to the Swallow’s Nest ledge, they attempted to abseil directly down the great rock barrier that lay between them and the easier ground of the lower face. This vertical rock face dropped beneath them occasionally jutting out in overhangs and roofs. The line of descent also lay in the path of torrents of rocks and avalanches, sweeping from the rim of the First Ice Field above them. Somewhere down on the icy rock wall lay the gallery windows – the great open holes tunnelled from the rock by the builders of the Jungfrau railway. This railway had been carved through the heart of the mountain to carry tourists up to the Jungfrau Joch, the col between the summits of the Monch and the Jungfrau. The gallery windows were positioned in the centre of the face and had been created primarily to dump rock spoil down the face from the excavations after 4 kilometres of tunnelling. Once the tunnel had been completed the gaping holes were developed into spectacular viewing windows for the hordes of tourists eager to look down the forbidding, ice-plastered precipices of the north face.

  In 1936 the beleaguered party had tried to ab
seil directly down to a ledge that ran across the wall and which would with luck lead them to the safety of the Stollenloch, a small workers’ access window. They almost made it.

  It was a bold decision in the days when abseiling was fraught with danger. Modern braking devices had not been invented and traditional friction abseils were used, winding the heavy, wet ropes across the back of the shoulders, around the chest and down between the legs to brake the speed of descent. It was precariously difficult to control. As Hinterstoisser and his three companions slid down through the tumult of avalanches and whistling stones Von Altmen, the Sector Guard stationed at the gallery windows, opened the huge wooden doors and looked out into the storm, searching for any sign of the retreating party. He was delighted to hear a cheery yodel. All was well despite the severe conditions. He ducked back inside to make a warming pot of tea for the young climbers who must have been exhausted after four days on the face.

  Two hours later when no one had arrived he looked out of the window again. Conditions were more ghastly than ever, with mists rising from the abyss below as stones and slides of snow rushed down from the black emptiness above. This time there was no cheery acknowledgement to his shout, only the despairing cries of one man – Toni Kurz – shouting for his life. His companions were dead and he was hanging helplessly on the rope, spinning in space. Some dreadful calamity had caused Andreas Hinterstoisser to be swept from his abseil stance – a direct blow from stone-fall or an especially heavy rush of avalanching snow. Hinterstoisser had fallen the entire length of the face. Rainer had been dragged up by the weight of Kurz and Angerer who had been swept from their stance. Rainer, pulled tight against his karabiner clipped to the abseil piton, had frozen to death, unable to free himself. Below Kurz the lifeless body of Angerer swayed in the wind, strangled by his own rope.

  A hurriedly organised party of rescuers managed to climb from the Stollenloch up 300 feet of iced rock slabs to a point 300 feet below where Kurz dangled. As night came on apace the rescuers realised that it would be impossible to climb up to the stricken climber directly. They told him to stick it out for the night despite his despairing pleas. It was an awful decision since they knew he would not survive the night unprotected from the savagery of the storm. In the dark, on that face, there was no one capable of the climbing feats required to reach Kurz. Not even the brilliant Hinterstoisser, one of the best climbers of his day, could have made such a climb.

  Toni Kurz endured a long despairing night. For me, this was all that was hard, uncompromising, stern and nightmarish about mountaineering. It was a freezing, lonely night as he swayed on a slender rope, swinging backwards and forwards as the stones sang by and the icy gale lashed at him, bleeding the warmth from his body. Above him the rope played across the frozen corpse of his friend while beneath the wire-tight rope trembled as the wind swung Angerer’s corpse from side to side. All Kurz could do was endure. When at last morning broke the guides were astonished to find that the young Berchtesgaden guide was still alive and calling down to them in a strong, clear voice.

  The long, cold hanging had ravaged his body. Ice plated his jacket and trousers. His left hand, exposed when he lost his mitt in the terrifying fall, had been quickly frozen. By morning his entire left arm was grotesquely congealed into a solid, immovable claw. His core temperature was critically low, yet he had stoically hung on, waiting for the faint glimmer of dawn, praying for the sound of friendly voices.

  Despite the benefit of daylight the guides attempting the rescue could climb no nearer than 130 feet from where Kurz hung out over the abyss – a single rope length from rescue. The cliff was so overhanging that they could not see Toni Kurz swinging freely in the wind. Attempts to fire a rope up to him using rockets failed as they whizzed futilely into space. Kurz was weakening fast. The guides insisted that he try to descend the rope beneath him as far as possible and cut away Angerer’s body. Then he had to climb back up and cut free some of the loose rope connecting him to Rainier’s contorted, lifeless form.

  Despite a useless, frozen arm Kurz completed this exhausting manoeuvre, clinging tenuously to the rope with the hook of his frozen limb, as he cut the rope with his axe. He expected to see his friend’s body wheel down into the chasm. Angerer didn’t fall. During the night his body had swung against the wall and become frozen to the rock. When Kurz gathered the freed rope he painstakingly untwisted the triple hawser-laid strands and knotted them together. It took five hours of unbelievably frustrating toil as Kurz struggled to untwist the stiff, wire-like rope with an incapacitated arm and numb, blackened and swollen fingers. He tugged desperately with his teeth and fought to knot the stiffened rope into sections of cord. Eventually he had a thin cord just long enough to reach the arms of his dispirited rescuers.

  As the hours passed Kurz’s strength was ebbing fast. By the time the fragile cord came snaking down the guides knew there was very little time left.

  He had displayed phenomenal endurance, strength and mental stamina in his struggle to live. That was all it had become – a lone figure fighting for his life, able to draw on nothing but his will power.

  An avalanche thundered down, battering Kurz’s decrepit body and almost sweeping the waiting guides to their death as they attempted to fasten a climbing rope and a sling equipped with karabiners, pitons and a hammer to the cord. Suddenly a boulder spun down through the air, almost decapitating one of the rescuers. Then came the frightful rushing noise of a body plunging towards them. Angerer’s body – torn free from the grip of the ice – plummeted to the foot of the wall.

  Kurz barely had the strength to haul up the heavy rope with the hardware swinging and clattering against the rock wall. Still the rope was not long enough. The guides spliced on another rope and at last they could see that Kurz would be able to reach them. Unfortunately the knot joining the two ropes together hung in space just out of their reach. Somehow Kurz would have to by pass the blockage. They said nothing.

  Kurz’s body appeared over the rim of the impending wall, legs dangling and spinning in the air as he slid painfully down the rope. Slowly, he inched down towards the knot joining the two ropes. He had threaded his abseil rope through a karabiner clipped into his waist belt to increase the friction on the thin rope. Gripping it with one glacial, insensate hand must have been appallingly difficult yet he managed to creep down towards his rescuers. Inch by inch the tortured figure came swinging down until the knot came up against the vice-like grip of his frozen hand and then caught against the karabiner. It would not pass through the snap link. He was hanging in space, unable to get his weight off the rope, and it was now impossible for him unclip the karabiner. He was locked into the system.

  He thumped helplessly at the hardened knot, uttering pitiable groans of agony. He bent forward in a pathetic attempt to bite the knot down to size as his grotesque left arm pointed stick-like into the sky. He mumbled incomprehensibly through bleeding lips, his face blotched purple from frost-bite and emotion. The guides strained to hear him.

  Then in a firm, lucid voice he spoke aloud. ‘I’m finished,’ he said and lolled forward, his body tipping so that he hung from the waist, arms dangling by his legs, swinging gently in the breeze. He had died at the very point of rescue, almost within arm’s reach of the guides. The piteous photograph of his corpse hanging in space with icicles growing from his fingers and the points of his crampons will remain in my mind for ever. Days later, the guides used a knife tied to a long pole to cut him free.

  Rainer had been prophetically quoted in the press before the ascent saying, ‘We don’t want to die, we’re still young and want to live. We always leave our way down open. We know that it takes luck and we have to count on that.’ Then he added ominously, ‘If it is possible to do the Wall we’ll do it – if not, we’ll stay up there.’

  His luck ran out. Rainer’s body was found crumpled on the screes at the foot of the face, melded into stones as if he had become assimilated into the very fabric of the mountain. He was carried home to be bu
ried in Salzburg. During the search for their bodies the guides found Max Sedlmayr, who had died the previous year. His companion, Karl Mehringer, frozen into the ice at the edge of the Second Ice Field, would not be found for another twenty-seven years.

  A month after the tragedy Kurz’s twisted body was eventually found in the icy depths of a bergschrund at the base of the wall, extracted, wrapped in a tarpaulin and carried down to Grindelwald. The following year Hinterstoisser’s body was found by Matthias Rebitsch and Ludvig Vorg during their first unsuccessful attempt on the wall. So ended one of the most powerful and poignant episodes ever to be enacted on the Eiger.

  From the mumbled, fragmentary and incoherent sentences that Kurz had uttered, the guides managed to piece together what had happened to the retreating party. Hinterstoisser was off the rope when hit by stone-fall, perhaps because as the best climber he was trying to fix a secure piton placement for the next abseil, and he fell the length of the face. A second volley of rocks then knocked the remaining three men from their stance, trapping Rainer and strangling Angerer. Tattered scraps of bandage found wrapped around Angerer’s skull proved that he had suffered a serious head injury.

  For the helpless guides it was a terrible experience. When Sedlmayr and Mehringer had died the previous year they had done so alone, hidden within the maelstrom of the storm that had pinned them down in the centre of the wall. Toni Kurz, however, died in the full pitying gaze of his fellow guides. Arnold Glatthard, one of the guides, said, ‘It was the saddest moment of my life.’ I have always been haunted by the story of this brave young man’s vain but heroic fight for life. As Heinrich Harrer wrote in The White Spider,