The Beckoning Silence

by Simpson, Joe

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so. Not as many as Anderl of course, but yes, we have climbed in Nepal, Africa, India and South America.’

  ‘South America? In Peru? Did you ever read that story about the English climber who broke his leg and was crawling many days alone? What a story!’

  ‘Er, yes,’ I said warily and saw that Ray was smirking.

  ‘This is the man,’ Ray said to Traudl and she stared at me in surprise then clapped her hands together in delight and reached out her arms to give me a hug. She spoke rapidly to Heckmair and I felt my ears begin to redden. He simply looked at me and nodded his head slowly with his lips pursed in a knowing smile.

  ‘It was so hard for you, no?’ Traudl asked.

  ‘Yes, it was hard but it was our mistake. These things happen in the mountains. We were lucky.’

  ‘But so strong. Alone, all those days.’

  ‘Accidents happen in these places,’ I said, feeling embarrassed. Heckmair nodded in agreement. ‘When you were on the wall it was a very close thing, wasn’t it?’ I said to him.

  ‘Yes, it could have been different,’ he said reflectively and I thought of him falling on the Exit Cracks and Vorg holding up his hand and having his palm pierced by Heckmair’s crampons. They had been so very close. They could just as easily have been one of the Mehringers or Hinterstoissers of the Eiger’s history and I could see he knew that all too well. Perhaps that was why he felt so uncomfortable with the hero-worship of non-climbers. As he said, they didn’t understand.

  We, of course, immediately became hero-struck schoolboys posing proudly as Simon took our photographs with the great man and his wife. As we set off to scramble up the west flank Simon waved us over to the camera.

  ‘You can just see them now,’ he said. ‘I think they’re starting up the Difficult Crack.’

  I peered through the viewfinder, momentarily lost as the scale of the wall swam in and out of focus.

  ‘Just right of dead centre,’ Mark suggested helpfully and suddenly I spotted the two tiny figures dwarfed by the immense surge of the Röte Fluh looming over them. I drew a sharp intake of breath and then stood up and stared at the face. I could see nothing with the naked eye. Ray rose slowly from the eyepiece and glanced at me.

  ‘It certainly puts it into perspective, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It’s bloody huge.’

  Simon introduced us to Hanspeter Feuz and I put forward my plan about leaving from the Stollenloch the following morning. Hanspeter seemed happy to help out and we agreed to meet on the first train up in the morning. He would swing it with the station master, no problem, he said.

  * * *

  At the top of a spectacular rock pillar protruding from the west ridge Ray and I sat eating sandwiches and discussing our plans for the morning. Behind us lay a 1000-foot drop down into a vertiginous gully falling towards the meadows at the foot of the north face. The face was obscured from our view by the bulk of the Röte Fluh looming into the air on the opposite flank of the gully.

  ‘Listen, if we get a good head start from the Stollenloch we could consider going beyond Death Bivi tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Well, maybe,’ Ray said reluctantly. ‘You mean, try and reach the Traverse of the Gods and bivi there?’

  ‘It would be a long day, I admit,’ I replied. ‘But I suppose it depends what time we reach Death Bivi. I wouldn’t want to cross the Third Ice Field to the Ramp in the afternoon. Too much risk of stone-fall.’

  ‘There is a bivi site in the Ramp,’ Ray pointed out. ‘The Spanish bivouac, it’s called.’

  ‘I thought that was up in the Spider where Rabada and Navarra died?’ I said, referring to the two Spanish climbers who had been pinned down near the top of the Spider in August 1963.

  ‘Who were they?’ Ray asked and I described what had happened to the two Spaniards.

  After obstinately fighting their way up the face in almost continuously bad weather Albert Rabada and Ernesto Navarra had succumbed to exhaustion and hypothermia after six days’ desperate climbing. It seemed strange that at no point on the climb, despite the ferocious weather, did the two men once consider retreating. It was a decision that would slowly kill them over the ensuing days of storms. Harrer, writing in The White Spider, had been struck by the Spaniards’ courageous and stoical persistence but equally baffled by it.

  The tragic part was that they were both endowed with too much noble courage and spirit; alas, they matched it with too little and poor equipment, totally inadequate protection from the cold, and too little experience. In the reality of mountains it is fatal to lose one’s sense of realities.

  The men were last seen on 16 August. One man, Navarra, had reached a stance on the rocks at the top of the Spider while his companion, Rabada, lay slumped on the icy slopes of the Spider 100 feet lower. In December of the following winter three Swiss climbers, Paul Etter, Ueli Gantbein and Sepp Henkel, abseiled from the summit and reached the top of the Spider where they found Navarra encased in ice standing on a small rock stance. He was securely tied to a rock piton holding the wire-tight rope leading down to his friend. He still wore his crampons from which the front points were missing and his ice hammer was hanging from his wrist. One hundred feet below Rabada lay as if asleep, almost encased within the ice of the Spider. He was wearing a blue fleece jacket and held his ice axe across his chest in calm repose. He had removed his crampons, also without front points, and laid them on the ice above him. The taut rope ran through two well-set ice screws up to where Navarra still stood in death hauling hard on the frozen rope.

  The Swiss spent three hours hacking Navarra out of glacial armour before they could lower his body down to the point where Rabada now lay entombed within the stomach of the Spider. The men bivouacked at this macabre camp site and spent six hours the following morning trying to extricate Rabada, who, by all accounts, was a huge man. Lashing the two corpses together the three men then abseiled and lowered their gruesome burden directly down to a bivi at Death Bivouac, thus avoiding the complicated traverse into the Ramp and back across the Third Ice Field. When they awoke the two bodies were gone. The pitons had ripped free, perhaps shattered in the icy winter temperatures or more likely swept from the face by rock-fall or a falling cornice in the night. Over the following two days the three men descended the rest of the face, so making the first-ever descent. Their main intention, however, had always been to relieve the rescue services from a commitment that few wanted to undertake.

  ‘So, that bivi they made with the bodies in the Spider was what you thought was the Spanish bivi?’ Ray asked.

  ‘I’ve never heard of a bivi in the Ramp. What if it stormed in the night? I’ve heard the Ramp can turn into a continuous waterfall.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard that, too,’ Ray agreed. ‘And it’s somewhere below the Waterfall chimney pitch. It’s also pretty small and cramped.’

  ‘No, I don’t fancy that,’ I said. ‘But if we can’t reach the Traverse of the Gods in a day I’ve read that there is a good bivi site to the left of the Ramp ice field: good enough for six people apparently. The French party with Rebuffat used it in 1952 during that epic ascent when they joined up with Hermann Buhl.’

  ‘Well, that’s certainly a better option,’ Ray commented. ‘At least there we will be out of the main drainage line of the Ramp. Having said that, it would be a shame not to stay at Death Bivouac. It’s just one of those places you have to stay at, isn’t it?’

  ‘Like a night in the Ritz?’ I said. ‘I know what you mean, though. It’s so redolent of all that history it would be a shame just to rush past it.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got all those options, haven’t we? Let’s just see how things pan out and adapt ourselves to whatever seems to be the best plan, eh?’

  When we returned from our sortie on the west flank we spent an hour watching as Heinz Zak and Scott Muir climbed the Second Ice Field. The two tiny figures were joined by three others, Will Edwards filming them as they climbed, belayed by his two guides.

&
nbsp; In an instant the face came into perspective. When previously we had searched the wall with our binoculars, vainly trying to recognise distinctive features such as the Hinterstoisser Traverse or Death Bivouac, we had been confused by the sheer immensity of the mountain. Now that we could watch tiny figures creeping up the Second Ice Field the scale of everything suddenly became apparent. It was good to be able to watch them on the Difficult Crack and know at last exactly where it was instead of the vague idea we had been used to. But on the other hand, it was quite sobering to see how utterly insignificant the climbers appeared in the centre of that massive amphitheatre. Peering through the huge camera lens of the Channel 4 crew was an extraordinary experience. The climbers, although small, were no longer simply dots barely distinguishable from rocks on the ice field. I watched, fascinated, as the arms and legs of the climbers made distinct and familiar movements, swinging axes, clipping gear, taking in the ropes. The moment I pulled back from the eyepiece and stared at the face they disappeared as if they had never existed.

  Hanspeter Feuz arrived by the camera and asked us about our plans for the morning. We explained the options we had run through and he seemed to favour a stop at Death Bivi. In the course of our conversation we took turns at the camera watching the climbers’ progress and gleaning invaluable advice from Hanspeter. He had been part of the team that had been filmed live climbing the face the previous year and I promptly blamed him for awakening the dream I had cherished after Ray had sent me a video recording of the climb.

  Hanspeter was trim, athletic and obviously incredibly fit, which made us very conscious of our own lack of preparation in that department. His immaculate English and open, charming friendliness soon put us at our ease and banished my suspicions about arrogant and aloof Swiss guides. The insights he gave us on key sections of the face were both priceless and confidence-boosting. As we watched Heinz and Scott start up the Second Ice Field he pointed out the best place to exit the Ice Hose and where to break left across the ice towards a distinctive inverted triangle of rock breaching the top of the ice field.

  ‘Have you been involved in any rescues?’ Ray asked, a little too hopefully.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Hanspeter replied. ‘Too many.’

  ‘On the face?’

  ‘Yes, I work with the mountain rescue service as well as guiding.’

  ‘I imagine that there are regular accidents each year on the face,’ I said. ‘But I’ve heard that the guides now use long-line techniques and can reach victims on virtually any part of the wall.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true but it is still very dependent on the weather,’ Hanspeter replied. ‘We use 180-metre wire cables and suspend a guide from these and fly them into the face. This way the helicopter can remain high and far enough away from the face to avoid rocks hitting the rotors.’

  ‘One hundred and eighty metres?’ I said in astonishment. ‘That’s 600 feet, for God’s sake.’ Hanspeter laughed at my expression. I had once been suspended 60 feet below a helicopter in a dramatic rescue on the Drus above Chamonix, and watching that silk-thin wire twisting and clicking as I wheeled through the sky thousands of feet above the Nant Blanc glacier had been a deeply unsettling experience. The idea of a 600-foot wire was nightmarish.

  ‘Yes, it is exciting but it works,’ Hanspeter said. ‘There have been no fatalities on the wall for ten years now.’

  ‘Ten years?’ Ray and I echoed incredulously.

  ‘I’d have thought there would have been at least a death every year,’ I added.

  ‘Well, that was true before we developed the long-line system,’ Hanspeter agreed, ‘because in those days it took a long time to get onto the wall safely and we could only reach a limited number of places. I think because of this there were fatalities either because injured climbers had to wait too long for rescue and died of their wounds or they tried to descend, or even climb out in bad conditions and this killed them.’

  ‘Well, that’s worth knowing,’ Ray said. ‘You don’t happen to have a mobile phone number for us?’ he added in jest.

  Within minutes I was keying in Hanspeter’s number, the number of the Grindelwald guides office and the Mountain Rescue centre number.

  ‘Let’s just not have an accident, eh?’ I suggested.

  ‘Yeah, the phone bill would be enormous.’

  ‘We might film you guys on the ice field tomorrow, if you don’t mind,’ Simon said. ‘It will be a long-distance shot but it’s the only way we can film two climbers without the cameraman and guides in the frame.’

  ‘No problem,’ Ray replied.

  ‘I’ve got to go now, guys,’ Hanspeter said, picking up his rucksack and radio. ‘I’ll see you on the first train in the morning.’ We waved goodbye as he hurried away, talking urgently into his radio.

  ‘Are the team stopping at Death Bivouac tonight?’ I asked Simon.

  ‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘In fact, Hanspeter has just left to arrange the helicopter drop. He’s talking to the pilot now.’

  ‘Helicopter drop?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re dropping them Thermoses of hot water, prepared hot meals and beer. Heinz insisted on beer.’

  ‘Beer? What about dancing girls?’

  ‘Not enough room. Beer was more important, apparently.’

  ‘Now that’s the way to climb,’ Ray said approvingly as we headed for the train.

  ‘How do you feel about it now?’ I asked.

  ‘Good,’ he said as the train pulled in. ‘And bumping into all these people from history.’

  ‘He’s a real hero of yours, isn’t he?’

  ‘Heckmair? Definitely. All those Munich climbers were amazing, Hermann Buhl as well.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I said. ‘It was guys like Cassin and Bonatti who really inspired me. I suppose I admired Heckmair for the Eiger but I’ve never really known that much more about him. Still, I’m glad I’ve met him. That’s Cassin, Bonatti and Heckmair ticked off.’

  ‘Where did you meet Bonatti?’

  ‘At the Banff Film Festival. I could barely speak. I felt like a snotty schoolboy. We shook hands and he rattled on in Italian, very passionate and expressive and I didn’t understand a word of it. His wife translated and said how much he had enjoyed my book. I nearly choked. I picked up a menu and asked him to sign it, feeling like a fool.’

  ‘I felt like that with Heckmair,’ Ray nodded. ‘We’ve got to climb it now,’ he said fervently as the train pulled out of the station and we both craned our necks to look at the face sliding past the windows.

  ‘You know,’ Ray added thoughtfully. ‘It’s not every day you meet someone who has had a personal audience with Hitler.’

  I stared at him open-mouthed. It suddenly put the history of the man into sharp perspective.

  14 Look well to each step

  The train rattled slowly through the lush meadows past the hamlet of Alpiglen, curving beneath the foot of the Eiger’s shadowed north wall as it headed towards the cluster of hotels at Kleine Scheidegg. Both Ray and I craned our necks to look up at the face. It was grey, menacing and inhospitable. We were silent, each quietly contemplating the coming climb. I looked at Hanspeter Feuz, tanned, handsome and smiling. I wondered what I looked like. I’ve probably got pupils like saucers. I smiled and glanced back at Ray, who hadn’t taken his eyes from the face.

  Looking over his shoulder I could see where ice dribbled from the lower reaches of the Spider, hanging in the weightless chill of frigid air above the colossal roof of the Second Ice Field. The dark gash of the Ramp cut leftwards from the top of the prominent arête of the Flat Iron. For some reason the Third Ice Field was obscured by the angle we were looking at the mountain. I thought of being up there alone. I thought of Adi Mayr and wished I hadn’t.

  Of all the dramas of success and tragedy that have been enacted on the Eiger’s vast north face it was Toni Kurz’s fate that affected me most powerfully. Brave, resourceful, obdurate, he died alone, despite Herculean efforts to save himself. Few could fail to be moved
by the pathos of his lonely and torturously drawn-out death. It has stayed with me throughout my climbing life and after Siula Grande it became an even more poignant, haunting memory.

  Adolf Mayr’s fate, or Adi as the young Austrian climber was known to his friends, also struck me with resounding force. When I learned that some climbers actually chose to climb alone – solo climbing as it is known – I was quite dumbfounded. The concept seemed so overwhelmingly dangerous I couldn’t for the life of me work out why anyone would even consider undertaking such a rash and perilous ascent.

  On a few occasions I have tried my hand at solo climbing and I confess that I am not a great fan of the pastime. Sometimes it has made sense to un-rope and solo up ice fields, when moving roped together would otherwise entail the risk of both climbers being pulled to their deaths if one slipped or was knocked off. I have climbed a few alpine peaks alone and gained a certain degree of satisfaction afterwards, but it was mainly to do with being glad to be alive.

  Although physically and technically quite capable of solo climbing, mentally I feel that I am poorly equipped for the task. Soloing on mountains I feel alone and miss the shared companionship of a partner to enjoy the adventure. On rock I am simply intimidated. What I can never get out of my mind is that however well I might be climbing there are two elements that make what I am doing an unacceptable gamble.

  First, I am keenly aware that we are all fallible, even the very best. We don’t plan to do it; it just happens. Climbers die because they make mistakes. Death is the price you pay if you are too human at the wrong time.

  The second thought that I find hardest to shake off is that even if I climb immaculately there is no guarantee that the medium I am climbing – be it snow, ice or rock – will behave in the same accommodating manner. The tiny edge of rock that I am pulling on may snap with such startling speed that I would be falling before I have a chance to grab another handhold. However much I might believe in myself, I still have to play Russian Roulette with the chance of a hold breaking off.