by Simpson, Joe
‘I know,’ Mark nodded.
‘They just fell,’ I said in confusion. ‘Nothing hit them, nothing.’
Ray stepped up to the eyepiece as Mark replayed the short segment of film, then pulled away sharply the moment he saw the leader begin to fall, not wishing to see any more.
‘I expected them to be hit by rocks, but they just slipped,’ he said, staring at me. ‘It looked so commonplace, something we’ve all done.’
‘I know, but not there, with that stone-fall, not there,’ I said and turned away. We walked out into the sunshine and I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
‘I wish I hadn’t seen that now,’ I said, feeling subdued.
‘I don’t,’ Ray said, firmly. ‘I know what they did wrong now. I know we won’t make the same mistakes.’
‘But they made so many mistakes,’ I persisted. ‘It doesn’t make sense. Why move together in that rock-fall? Why no ice screws at least? Why didn’t they back off? If they hadn’t fallen off they were climbing into a nightmare on the Flat Iron.’
‘We all make mistakes, Joe,’ Ray said, ‘for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they were scared – stressed out – not thinking straight. That ice field must have been terrifying. Remember what Simon said about watching them ducking and trying to take shelter all the way up?’
‘All the more reason to put gear in. Stones are no respecters of climbing ability.’
‘Well, they took a gamble and it didn’t pay off,’ Ray said. ‘Perhaps they thought the climbing on the ice field was easy, so moving together was the fastest option. Their decision-making was bad, but we all get it wrong sometimes. With luck they might have got away with it and we’d be none the wiser.’
‘Maybe,’ I shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now, I suppose. It just makes me angry.’
‘Look, they were simply doing what we wanted to do, climbing the Eiger, living a dream. It was their choice and their risk. We can’t blame them for that.’
‘No, I know. You’re right,’ I agreed. ‘Hell, I’ve screwed up enough times in the past, so who am I to talk?’
‘I suspect you wouldn’t have done that, though,’ Ray said.
‘Too cowardly?’
‘Too experienced, I’d say.’
Hanspeter and a policeman arrived and we went inside to give our statements. When I asked about the solo climber neither the policeman nor Hanspeter seemed overly concerned, which puzzled me. I had thought that a search of the face with a helicopter was the least that should be done, but the official policy seemed to be that if no relatives requested a search then nothing would be done. It seemed a strange policy to me. I pointed out that the three of us had seen the climber and he had never been seen again but it was to no avail. If the man had turned up in Grindelwald, having told no one about his plans for the Eiger, how would any relatives begin to know where to initiate a search?
The mystery deepened a few hours later when Heinz Zak and Scott Muir arrived at the hotel, having descended from the summit that morning. They were stunned to hear of the fatalities and even more appalled to learn that the party had been moving together without protection. Heinz Zak pointed out that the ice had been perfect and that good screws could have been set quickly.
‘I don’t understand it,’ I agreed. ‘Perhaps they were distracted. That rock-fall would have been very stressful.’
I asked whether anyone had seen the solo climber. Everyone presumed he had retreated in the face of the obviously deteriorating weather. Yet no one had come past us. Perhaps he had come to grief trying to abseil down the Ice Hose? We would never know.
I mentioned to Hanspeter that an English tourist had spoken of seeing two falls that day but the feeling was that either the solo climber would turn up or some day his remains might be found at the foot of the face. I let the matter rest, although it disturbed me. I glanced up at the wall and hoped he was climbing safely out of the Exit Cracks as we chatted in the sunshine. In truth, I felt certain that he was dead. I remembered the huge waterfalls and the curtains of hail and the endless noise of the rock-fall.
Early that afternoon Ray and I boarded the train and rode down to Grindelwald. I didn’t look at the face as the train rattled past its base. We walked slowly, feeling subdued and introspective, up to the front door of the chalet and were surprised when it flew open and there were Alice Steuri and Anna Jossi staring at us as if we were ghosts. Anna threw up her arms.
‘You are alive! You are alive!’ she cried and held her face in the palms of her hands, looking as if she were about to cry. ‘Those poor boys. So bad, so bad.’
‘We heard about the accident,’ Alice said. ‘We heard it was two Englishmen so we knew it was you. It was so terrible.’
‘I have come from the church,’ Anna said. ‘I was saying a prayer for you boys. So many times they do not come back and now, again, it had happened. I was very sad. But you are alive. It is a miracle.’ She opened her arms and hugged us both affectionately.
We were quite taken aback. We had been so caught up in events that we had completely forgotten that Alice and Anna might have been concerned for our welfare. We apologised profusely but they kept smiling and thanking God.
That evening we drank gin on the lawn and watched the sun setting on the Eiger.
‘We’ve got a week left,’ Ray said. ‘Shall we have another go?’
I stared at the face, remembering the film.
‘I’m not sure I want to,’ I said.
‘Good,’ Ray said. ‘That’s what I was thinking. We could go somewhere else, I suppose. Maybe have a look at the Piz Badile?’
‘No, I’ve had my fill of climbing,’ I said, glancing at Ray. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Might as well. I’ve had enough of looking at that thing,’ I said, nodding at the Eiger.
‘I’d still like to climb it,’ Ray replied, looking expectant. ‘I really enjoyed being up there. I want to go back. How about it? Next winter? Next summer?’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I’m not sure what I think right now. I don’t want to die on that bastard,’ I said vehemently. ‘I said that on Chaupi Orco after the avalanche. I said it after Alea Jacta Est with Tat. I said it after Siula Grande and Pachermo. I’ve said it a lot. And one day it will happen. Perhaps I should listen to myself. I’m tired of all this … this death thing …’ I waved my hand helplessly at the mountains.
‘I know,’ Ray agreed. ‘But I don’t want to leave it on this note. It’s been everything to us. We can’t end like this. It could have been so good, meeting Anna Jossi and Heckmair, and all that. It still can be.’
‘Do you think so?’ I looked at Ray, who shrugged. ‘I’ll sleep on it,’ I added.
The next morning as we packed the gear into the car Anna Jossi came down and invited us into the chalet. Lying on her dining-room table was the Alpiglen hotel register, open at the page where Mehringer and Sedlmayr had signed their names. She asked if we, too, would put our names in the book. We were flattered but protested that we hadn’t climbed the wall and didn’t deserve to put our names in such a revered book. Anna insisted that we did so.
‘You came back,’ she said solemnly. ‘That is important. You came back.’
We signed our names on a fresh page and took photographs of Anna and the register and Alice Steuri presented us with gifts of Swiss chocolates in a box incongruously shaped like the north face of the Eiger. As we turned to leave Ray smiled at Anna and said, ‘We’ll see you next year.’
‘Oh no,’ Anna said. ‘You are not going on the wall again?’ She looked searchingly at the pair of us.
‘Maybe,’ Ray said. ‘We’re thinking about it.’ I said nothing.
As we drove out of Grindelwald I thought of our plan to drive away, having successfully climbed the face, and throwing our climbing gear out of the car windows. It would have been good.
‘Hang on,’ Ray pulled the car into the kerb.
‘What?’
‘We haven’
t told the girls.’
‘What girls?’
‘The waitresses at the restaurant. They probably think we’re dead.’
He swung the car around and we drove back into the town and parked in front of the restaurant. We wandered onto the balcony and took our favourite seat in the sunshine.
‘You’re alive!’ a startled voice said behind me and I glanced at Ray.
‘This is getting repetitive,’ I muttered as she rushed off to fetch her friend. They, too, had heard the news of the accident and knew we had been killed.
‘I told you it is dangerous,’ they chorused.
‘It’s as dangerous as you make it,’ I qualified their comment and listened as we were told off yet again. When Ray mentioned we might return next year I thought we were going to get our beers poured over our heads. We waved farewell as we drove off on the ten-hour slog back to Holland. Ray took the first three-hour stint at the wheel and I sat brooding on what had happened. I hadn’t appreciated how distressing the experience had been. Ray seemed to have dealt with it with pragmatic and sanguine confidence. As far as he was concerned our safe retreat and sensible decisions made him feel all the more sure that we could climb the face safely. It was ironic that the accident seemed to have erased any worries that he had previously held and yet it had hit me harder than I had expected.
For two weeks I wished that I had not chosen to view the film of the fall. The stark black and white images kept replaying through my mind. I would wake in the middle of the night with a start, having seen it in my dreams. Sometimes I was watching from a distance and occasionally I awoke in a cold sweat, having somehow become one of the falling figures. There was something chillingly familiar about the film sequence that seemed to be affecting me profoundly. I knew it wasn’t the shock of watching the two young men die. We had tried to be rational about it, coldly analysing what had happened. It evoked a sense of pity for their fate, anger at why it had happened, and a sombre realisation that it might very well have been us.
I think Simon Wells’s obvious distress had probably influenced me most of all. I was suddenly confronted with a friend who believed he had witnessed my death. It made it very personal indeed.
When I returned home I mulled over the idea of returning to the Eiger but because I was unable to get the images of the fall out of my mind I felt uncertain about committing myself to going back. There soon followed a number of reports on the accident in the national papers, some of which were appallingly inaccurate. The habit of taking stories from wire services and believing the facts to be true without making any attempts to check them seemed remarkably irresponsible. Perhaps more importantly than simply being sloppy journalism, it was confusing and upsetting for the relatives and friends of the two men to read such conflicting and inaccurate reports.
Consequently I was telephoned by a representative of the British Mountaineering Council and asked whether I could call Matthew Hayes’s brother and describe what had really happened. I was willing to make the call but uneasy. I was angry that people already suffering traumatic grief should be put in this position by shoddy journalism.
When the phone was answered I was taken aback to find that I was talking to Matthew Hayes’s mother. At first I didn’t know what to say. ‘Sorry’ seemed so inadequate. She was calmly philosophical and remarkably controlled. I tried to describe the storm and the events that had followed but I shied away from offering any criticisms or personal details. She told me that Matthew had been a great fan of my writing and said that he would have loved to have met me. I didn’t know how to respond.
The mountains were the love of Matthew’s life. He had told his mother that he always felt that if he had a choice in the matter he would prefer, when the time came, to die in the mountains. I understood the sentiment, but as always it made me feel guilty to have survived so many accidents and be a helpless witness to someone else’s fate.
Later Matthew’s brother rang me. He had introduced Matthew to climbing. This time I was a little more detailed in my account of what had happened and although I had to say that the pair had made mistakes I did not intend to be critical. I knew that his brother as a fellow climber would want to know all the details. We both knew that climbers, all climbers, make mistakes. Every friend of mine who has died has at some point made a mistake which has led to their deaths.
When Simon and I did not take enough gas on Siula Grande it was later to force us into a series of actions that led inevitably to the cutting of the rope. It was our fault. When Mal Duff and I moved together in high winds on the north ridge of Pachermo without placing protection I was dragged off when his crampons failed and he fell. I could try and argue that the crampon failure was out of our control but that would be avoiding the issue. A couple of well-placed screws would have saved me from the injuries the fall was to inflict. When I was avalanched on Les Courtes in 1981 I was guilty of being lazy and inexperienced and reckless. I don’t suppose anyone could have guessed that the huge rock pedestal which Ian Whittaker and I bivied on while climbing the Bonatti Pillar on Les Drus would detach and fall into space forty-five minutes later. Our error lay in looking for a bivi ledge after night had fallen. In daylight we might have been able to see that there was something unstable about the pedestal. We were responsible for the subsequent accident and subsequent rescue simply by having made that choice.
Before I had set off for the Eiger I had signed a publishing contract to write a book about what the mountain meant to me. It had always fascinated and repelled me in equal measure. The White Spider had an enormous influence on me as a youngster and the images and stories had left an indelible mark upon my mind. Ray and I had wanted to climb the north wall mainly to pay homage to those heroes of ours who had been that way so many years before. If we had succeeded it would have been the crowning achievement of both our climbing lives. As climbers of a generation brought up on a diet of alpine mountaineering literature, the Eiger had dominated our thoughts from the time of our very first alpine seasons. We knew that if we quit climbing without at least having one attempt on the wall we would always regret it.
I had decided to attempt the face long before I thought of writing the book. The book was never meant to be about our climb and it was certainly not dependent on our success. What interested me were the psychological barriers that we would have to confront, the fears and personal weaknesses that might be exposed. In the end it exposed rather more than I wished and reawakened bad memories that I had thought had been well buried.
Both Ray and I had reached a crossroads in our mountaineering lives and we had made a choice to make the Eiger our last route. Whether it was age or cynicism, fear or weakness, somehow we both sensed that mountaineering was no longer the passion it had once been for us. I had felt guilty thinking such thoughts, as if it was somehow a betrayal. I had always thought I would just go on and on, returning to the mountains at will until fate took its course.
As it turned out, I fell back in love with the Alps. The time spent in Grindelwald, the people we met, and the climbing we experienced made the trip a very special time for both of us. The fact that it ended so tragically didn’t present any reasons for not returning and attempting the face again. If anything, it strengthened our desire to climb the route. It was everything that we had hoped it would be and we didn’t want to walk away with that fatal storm as our last climbing memory. We had confronted our own deep-set fears about the climb and come out stronger for the experience. We had a clearer sense of the scale and geography of the route and had been given a graphic reminder of how unexpectedly dangerous the mountain could become, however easy or hard the technical climbing. Above all, and to our enduring delight, we had felt comfortable to be climbing on this famous route and our confidence had been boosted by the experience. We loved every moment of it, even the storm and the stone-fall. Feeling confident in such conditions and effecting a safe and efficient retreat was a satisfying confirmation that we knew what we were doing. We had completed a long apprentice
ship in the mountains and had a greater depth of experience to draw upon than we had hitherto realised.
At first I could not understand why the sight of two men falling had had such a deep effect on me when Ray had been able to get over the experience so swiftly. I took it as a sign of weakness and felt irritated with myself. Of course such a sight would be upsetting to anyone but it went deeper than simply distress. There was, I realised, something alarmingly familiar about the fall. It was Pachermo all over again. It was almost as if I was seeing myself falling in that same helpless state and it brought back a rush of memories and fears that I hoped I had seen the last of.
As I had viewed the film footage I felt that I knew what these two men were desperately hoping for. I surfaced from the brutal impact of my fall in a concussed and bloodied state. I had been lucky. I saw in those fleeting black and white images how it should have been for me and felt shaken. I took it as a warning. It was, I suppose a purely selfish response which I couldn’t help.
When I thought of the fall it took me back to the time I had stood at the Swallow’s Nest after hearing the news of the deaths from Simon on the phone. I had looked away at the distant storm clouds broken on the buttresses of the Wetterhorn. The late afternoon sun had lit their bellies with a sheen of gold. Some, still darkened with the last of the storm’s fury, roiled in the chill, clear air – vainly putting up a fight, their detonations noiseless now, the flames of lightning muted and compressed as the storm drifted away across the mountain. The light seemed shot through with layered colours as the clouds drifted on the wind and the heat of the sun ate through their disintegrating forms. The cool swirling colours of the fading storm made for a dream-like air and I felt as if I was floating in the summer shallows of a river pool looking up at the passing clouds. I knew I was trying to see the beauty before my eyes, trying to block out the ugliness of what had just happened.
As the clouds dissipated into smaller separate white layers I recalled being told that clouds are rafts for souls as they drift towards paradise, breaking their bonds with earth. As the departing soul rises the colours become lighter, more refined, blue through gold to the sharpest silver until there is no more than a luminous white, too bright to comprehend. Eternity in its flawless balance can be nothing other than the most brilliant white. I turned and stared into the sun until the intense light seared my retinas in a sharp white flash and for a moment my vision was black. I heard Ray swearing softly beside me.