After their fifty-seven hours on the mountain, the village inn and its occupants had given them up for dead. A hot bath, supper in bed, and twenty-four hours of sleep followed, but Gertrude woke up with frostbitten hands and feet. She had to delay her return to England until she could wear shoes again.
Her last climb of note was the Matterhorn, in August 1904, once more with Ulrich and Heinrich. Until she had climbed this final giant, she felt that she had unfinished business in the Alps. It was her last great mountain, and her interests were now to focus on the desert and archaeology. In 1926, Colonel E. L. Strutt, then editor of the Alpine Journal, wrote that there had been no more prominent female mountaineer than Gertrude Bell:
Everything that she undertook, physical or mental, was accomplished so superlatively well, that it would indeed have been strange if she had not shone on a mountain as she did in the hunting-field or in the desert. Her strength, incredible in that slim frame, her endurance, above all her courage, were so great that even to this day her guide and companion Ulrich Fuhrer—and there could be few more competent judges—speaks with an admiration of her that amounts to veneration. He told the writer, some years ago, that of all the amateurs, men or women, that he had travelled with, he had seen but very few to surpass her in technical skill and none to equal her in coolness, bravery and judgment.
La Grave, August 28, 1899
The Meije
Well, I’ll tell you—it’s awful! I think if I had known exactly what was before me I should not have faced it, but fortunately I did not, and I look back on it with unmixed satisfaction—and forward to other things with no further apprehension. . . .
Gertrude and her two guides, Mathon and Marius, left La Grave on Friday afternoon and walked to the inn. The next evening, accompanied by two Germans, they arrived at the hut, where they were joined by a young Englishman called Turner and his guide, Rodier. All seven crammed in for the night.
We were packed as tight as herrings, Mr. Turner next to me, then the two Germans and Rodier. Mathon and the porters lay on the ground beneath us. Our night lasted from 8 to 12, but I didn’t sleep at all!
At the Snow Line
I gave my skirt to Marius, Mathon having said I couldn’t possibly wear it. He was quite right, but I felt very indecent . . . We had about two hours and a half of awfully difficult rock, very solid fortunately, but perfectly fearful. There were two places which Mathon and Marius literally pulled me up like a parcel. I didn’t a bit mind where it was steep up, but round corners where the rope couldn’t help me! . . . And it was absolutely sheer down. The first half-hour I gave myself up for lost. It didn’t seem possible that I could get up all that wall without ever making a slip. You see, I had practically never been on a rock before. However I didn’t let on and presently it began to seem quite natural to be hanging by my eyelids over an abyss. . . . There were two little lumps to hold on to on an overhanging rock and there [was] La Grave beneath and there was me in mid-air and Mathon round the corner holding the rope tight, but the rope was sideways of course—that’s my general impression of those ten minutes. Added to which I thought at the time how very well I was climbing and how odd it was that I should not be afraid.
The Barre des Écrins, September 4, 1899
The wind blew merrily, and the snow swept round in clouds. However, at last it ended in a great big enormous schrund, and I thought I never should let myself down round the corner of it, but I did after all. I was now in rags, so I put on my skirt for decency—at least Mathon did, for I couldn’t feel at all with my fingers. . . . We felt we had a real good day’s mountaineering behind us; but it was too long—nineteen hours. . . .
Starting with the 1900 season, her guides were Ulrich and Heinrich Fuhrer. They met up at Chamonix and discussed her ambitious plan to climb Mont Blanc. Her success in managing this and the Grepon and Dru went to her head.
I am a Person! And one of the first questions everyone seems to ask everyone else is “Have you ever met Miss Gertrude Bell?”
Ulrich is as pleased as Punch and says I’m as good as any man, and from what I see of the capacities of the ordinary mountaineer, I think I am. . . . I rather hanker after the Matterhorn and must try to fit it in. . . .
[I feel] keener and keener the more I do, the fact being that I now feel a considerable amount more confidence in my power of doing things. Guess I can manage any mountain you like to mention.
In just two weeks in late August and early September 1901, Gertrude climbed seven virgin peaks, one of them first-class and two “old” peaks, all of them new routes or first ascents. She began with the thirteen-thousand-foot Schreckhorn, continued with the peaks of the Engelhörner range, and finished with the most challenging climb of the year, the first-class traverse of the Urbachthaler Engelhorn itself.
September 8, 1901
The Urbachthaler Engelhorn
We . . . halted at the bottom of a smooth bit of overhanging rock. The great difficulty of it all was that it was so exposed, you couldn’t ever get yourself comfortably wedged into a chimney, there was nothing but the face of the rock and up you had to go. . . . Here we were on an awfully steep place under the overhanging place. Ulrich tried it on Heinrich’s shoulder and could not reach any hold. I then clambered up on to Heinrich, Ulrich stood on me and fingered up the rock as high as he could. It wasn’t high enough. I lifted myself still a little higher—always with Ulrich on me, mind!—and he began to raise himself by his hands. As his foot left my shoulder I put up a hand, straightened out my arm and made a ledge for him. He called out, “I don’t feel at all safe—if you move we are all killed.” I said, “All right, I can stand here for a week,” and up he went by my shoulder and my hand. It was just high enough. Once up he got into a fine safe place and it was now my turn. I was on Heinrich’s shoulder still with one foot and with one on the rock. Ulrich could not help me because he hadn’t got my rope—I had been the last on the rope, you see, and I was going up second, so that all I had was the rope between the two guides to hold on to. It was pretty hard work, but I got up. Now we had to get Heinrich up. He had a rope round his waist and my rope to hold, but no shoulder, but he could not manage it. The fact was, I think, that he lost his nerve, anyhow, he declared that he could not get up, not with 50 ropes, and there was nothing to do but to leave him. He unroped himself from the big rope and we let down the thin rope to him, with which he tied himself, while we fastened our end firmly on to a rock. There we left him like a second Prometheus—fortunately there were no vultures about!
Lady Bell writes that Gertrude told her later that Ulrich had said to her after their successful climb of the Engelhorn, “If, when I was standing on your shoulders and asked you if you felt safe, you had said you did not, I should have fallen and we should all have gone over.” And Gertrude had replied, “I thought I was falling when I spoke.”
It was 7 o’clock before we reached the foot of the rocks. It was too late and too dark to think of getting down into the valley so we decided that we would sleep at the Engen Alp at a shepherd’s hut. . . . At 9.30 we hove up against a chalet nestled in to the mountain side and looking exactly like a big rock. We went in and found a tiny light burning; in a minute 3 tall shepherds, with pipes in their mouths, joined us and slowly questioned us as to where we had come from. . . . We said we . . . would like to eat and sleep. One of the shepherds lighted a blazing wood fire and cooked a quantity of milk in a 3-legged cauldron and we fell to on bowls of the most delicious bread and milk I ever tasted. The chalet was divided into two parts by a wooden partition. The first part was occupied by some enormous pigs, there was also a ladder in it leading up to a bit of wooden floor just under the roof, where the fresh hay was kept. Here I slept. . . . It was so enchanting waking up in that funny little place high up on the mountain side with noisy torrents all round it. The goats came flocking home before we left . . . they bleated loud complaints as they crowded round the hut, licking the shepherd’s hand.
In 1902, Ulrich put Gertrude through her paces, climbing several “impossibles” by way of preparation for the unclimbed northeast face of the highest mountain in the Oberland, the Finsteraarhorn.
Meiringen, August 3, 1902
The Attempt on the Finsteraarhorn
On Tuesday we set out at 1 a.m. and made for a crack high up on the Wetterhorn rocks which we had observed through glasses. We got up to it after about 3 hours’ climbing only to find to our sorrow that . . . it would have been madness to attempt it for we could see from the broken ice on the rocks that the great blocks were thrown from side to side as they fell and swept the whole passage . . . ; we turned sadly back. I record this piece of prudence with pleasure.
The Second Attempt
The arête . . . rises from the glacier in a great series of gendarmes and towers, set at such an angle on the steep face of the mountain that you wonder how they can stand at all and indeed they can scarcely be said to stand, for the great points of them are continually overbalancing and tumbling down into the couloirs . . . and they are all capped with loosely poised stones, jutting out and hanging over and ready to fall. . . .
Crossed the séracs just at dawn. . . . We breakfasted then followed a difficult and dangerous climb. It was difficult because the rocks were exceedingly steep . . . it was dangerous because the whole rock was so treacherous. I found this out very early in the morning by putting my hand into the crack of a rock which looked as if it went into the very foundations of things. About 2 feet square of rock tumbled out upon me and knocked me a little way . . . till I managed to part company with it on a tiny ledge. . . .
About 2 o’clock I looked round and saw great black clouds rolling up from the west. . . . We . . . pushed on steadily for another hour while the weather signs got worse and worse. . . . The first snow flakes began to fall. . . . We were then 1000 feet below the summit. . . . We sat down to eat a few mouthfuls, the snow falling fast, driven by a strong wind, and a thick mist marching up the valley below, . . . then we crept along the knife edge of a col, fastened a rope firmly round a rock and let Ulrich down on to a ledge below the overhang of the tower. He tried it for a few moments and then gave it up. The ledge was very narrow, sloped outwards and was quite rotten. Anything was better than that. So we tried the left side of the tower: there was a very steep iced couloir running up. . . . Again we let ourselves down on the extra rope to the foot of the tower, again to find that this way also was impossible.
But even with the alternative before us of the descent down the terrible arête, we decided to turn back; already the snow was blowing down the couloir in a small avalanche, small but blinding, and the wind rushed down upon us carrying the mists with it. . . . By the time we had been going down for half-an-hour we could see nothing of the mountain side to the right or to the left except an occasional glimpse as one cloud rolled off and another rolled over. The snow fell fast and covered the rocks with incredible speed. Difficult as they had been to go up, you may imagine what they were like going down when we could no longer so much as see them. . . .
We . . . got on to a sloping out rock ledge with an inch of new snow on it; there was a crack in which you could stand and with one hand hold in the rock face, from whence you had to drop down about 8 feet on to deep snow. We fixed the extra rope and tumbled down one after the other on to the snow; . . . I shall remember every inch of that rock face for the rest of my life. . . . We toiled on till 8, by which time a furious thunderstorm was raging. We were standing by a great upright on the top of a tower when suddenly it gave a crack and a blue flame sat on it for a second. . . . My ice axe jumped in my hand and I thought the steel felt hot through my woollen glove—was that possible? I didn’t take my glove off to see! Before we knew where we were the rock flashed again . . . we . . . tumbled down a chimney as hard as ever we could, one on top of the other, buried our ice axe heads in some shale at the bottom of it and hurriedly retreated from them. It’s not nice to carry a private lightning conductor in your hand in the thick of a thunderstorm. It was clear we could go no further that night, the question was to find the best lodging while there was still light enough to see. We hit upon a tiny crack sheltered from the wind. . . . There was just room for me to sit in the extreme back of it on a very pointed bit of rock. . . . Ulrich sat on my feet to keep them warm and Heinrich just below him. They each of them put their feet into a knapsack which is the golden rule of bivouac. The other golden rule is to take no brandy because you feel the reaction more after. I knew this and insisted on it. It was really not so bad. . . . I went to sleep quite often and was wakened up every hour or so by the intolerable discomfort of my position. . . . We tied ourselves firmly on to the rock above lest as Ulrich philosophically said one of us should be struck and fall out. The rocks were all crackling round us and fizzing like damp wood which is just beginning to burn . . . And as there was no further precaution possible I enjoyed the extraordinary magnificence of the storm with a free mind: it was worth seeing. Gradually the night cleared and became beautifully starry.
The day came wrapped in a blinding mist and heralded by a cutting, snow-laden wind. . . . When we stepped out of our crack in the first grey light about 4 (too stiff to bear it a moment longer) everything was deep in it. I can scarcely describe to you what that day was like. We were from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. on the arête; during that time we ate for a minute or two 3 times and my fare was 5 ginger bread biscuits, 2 sticks of chocolate, a slice of bread, a scrap of cheese and a handful of raisins. . . . Both the ropes were thoroughly iced and terribly difficult to manage, and the weather was appalling. It snowed all day sometimes softly as decent snow should fall, sometimes driven by a furious bitter wind which enveloped us not only in the falling snow, but lifted all the light powdery snow from the rocks and sent it whirling down the precipices and into the couloirs. . . . The couloirs were all running with snow rivers. . . . As soon as you cut a step it was filled up before you could put your foot into it. But I think that when things are as bad as ever they can be you cease to mind them much. You set your teeth and battle with the fates. . . . I know I never thought of the danger except once and then quite calmly. . . . We had to fix our rope in [the chimney] twice, the second time round a very unsafe nail. I stood in this place holding Heinrich, there was an overhang. He climbed a bit of the way and then fell on to soft snow and spun down the couloir till my rope brought him up with a jerk. Then he got up on to a bit of rock. . . . Ulrich came down to me and I repeated Heinrich’s process exactly, the iced extra rope slipping through my hands like butter. Then came Ulrich. He climbed down to the place we had both fallen . . . , then he called out “Heinrich, Heinrich, ich bin verloren” and tumbled off just as we had done and we held him up in the couloir, more dead than alive with anxiety. We gave him some of our precious brandy on a piece of sugar. . . . We thought the worst was over but there was a more dangerous place to come . . . a steep but short slope of iced rock . . . now covered with about 4 inches of avalanche snow and the rocks were quite hidden. It was on the edge of a big couloirs down which raced a snow river. We managed badly; . . . Ulrich and I found ourselves on a place where there was not room for us both to stand. . . . He was very insecure and could not hold me, Heinrich was below on the edge of the couloir, also very insecure. And here I had to refix the extra rope on a rock a little below me so that it was practically no good to me. But it was the only possible plan. The rock was too difficult for me, the stretches too big, I couldn’t reach them: I handed my axe down to Heinrich and told him I could do nothing but fall, but he couldn’t, or at any rate, didn’t secure himself and in a second we were both tumbling head over heels down the couloir. . . . How Ulrich held us I don’t know. . . . I got on to my feet in the snow directly I came to the end of my leash of rope and held Heinrich and caught his ice axe and mine and we slowly cut ourselves back up the couloir to the foot of the rock. But it was a near thing and I felt rather ashamed of my part in it. This was the time when I thought
it on the cards we should not get down alive. . . .
And so we went on for 6 hours more of which only the last hour was easy and at 8 found ourselves at the top of the Finsteraar glacier. . . . It was now quite dark, the snow had turned into pouring rain, and we sank 6 inches into the soft glacier with every step. . . . Not a single match would light. Then we tried to go on and after a few steps Heinrich fell in . . . almost up to his neck and Ulrich and I had to pull him out with the greatest difficulty and the mists swept up over the glacier and hid everything; that was the only moment of despair. . . . Here we were with another night out before us. And a much worse one than the first, for we were on the shelterless glacier and in driving drenching rain. We laid our three axes together and sat on them side by side. . . . My shoulders ached and ached. . . . Before we expected it a sort of grey light came over the snow. . . . We could hardly stand but after a few steps we began to walk quite creditably. About 6 we got to where we could unrope—having been 48 hours on the rope—and we reached here at 10 on Saturday. . . .
Now that I am comfortably indoors, I do rather wonder that we ever got down the Finsteraarhorn and that we were not frozen at the bottom of it. What do you think?
In 1904, Gertrude made her last climb, the Matterhorn.
A Woman in Arabia Page 8