‘What’s the hole like?’
‘Not too bad. Quite a bit of spindrift gets in through the opening, but we’re beginning to get it sealed off properly.’
‘How much food do you have?’
‘Should be enough for four or five days, if we’re careful.’
‘Well, good luck, I’m just off to a chateaubriand for two, all to myself, over and out.’
John and Dougal settled down to their meal of dried meat and nuts, followed by rose-hip tea. They had no books with them, but in the ensuing days found little time for boredom. Just fighting the insidious spindrift that crept through every chink in their defences, cooking and keeping their sleeping bags dry, filled the day. Both John and Dougal had a wide-ranging philosophical bent. Perched in a tiny world of their own they had complete freedom to explore their own dreams, aspirations and interpretations of what they were trying to achieve in their lives.
Back at Kleine Scheidegg, the excitement steadily built up as more and more correspondents arrived – all avid for good sensational stories. John and Dougal, in their tiny eyrie, were secure, and deeply content – but to the lay beholder down below, they were trapped in the jaws of the Eiger. The journalists allowed their imaginations free rein, producing a series of sensational stories with headlines that read … ‘It started a race … now it’s a rescue.’
Each day at Scheidegg, we phoned Geneva Airport for a weather forecast. There was a high-pressure system in the Atlantic, which seemed to be drifting slowly towards Europe, bringing with it omens of good weather. However, it remained sitting off the coast of Ireland, and the winds continued to batter the Eiger. After four days, when John and Dougal had nearly run out of food, John contracted a chest infection. At one point we had no less than six doctors, all on skiing holidays, in consultation at the end of the walky-talky.
We discussed co-operation with the Germans, joint relief operations in order to carry food to the beleaguered climbers – even skied to the foot of the face, in appalling circumstances, but all to no avail. No one fancied the thought of trying to fight their way up those fixed ropes, in the face of continuous spindrift avalanches.
At last the weather improved, but our decision had been made for us. John and Dougal had no food left, and John was too ill to think of anything other than retreat. On the 16th March they came back down. The Germans, having managed to stick it out, were already sending up a relief force, and this meant that in a matter of days they would be able to force their way to the top of the Pillar, then up what seemed the only feasible route into the famous White Spider.
I had no ambition to go back on to the face – even less to do any lead climbing – but now there seemed no choice. John and Dougal obviously needed a rest. I agreed, therefore, to go back with Layton.
We set out on the 16th, myself apprehensive, frightened of those all-too-thin fixed ropes that had by now been in position for over a month, had had dozens of ascents and been battered by several storms. Yet, as so often happens, once committed, I lost much of my fear, began to enjoy the feeling of my own fitness and the rhythmic, steady movement as I climbed the ropes, finally taking them for granted. After all, they’d been here for some time and I’d climbed them all before.
The height that had taken four weeks to gain, now, with fixed ropes in position, took a mere eight hours. The snow hole had a well-lived in look, with a rim of frozen excreta round the door, and holes drilled in the sides by urine. In a blizzard you don’t open up the entrance to relieve yourself – especially as, living in a deep-freeze, there is no smell or risk of infection.
It was a good feeling to be back on the face in the quiet peace of the little ice cave – very different from the frenetic hurly-burly of the hotel below. The following day, the weather had brewed in once again, with more spindrift avalanches spewing down the face. No question of going out. I curled up in my sleeping bag, reading a book. Layton lying beside me, tucked in nose to tail, was clenching and unclenching his great hands. He hated inactivity, was like a steam boiler, steadily building up pressure with no outlet to allow escape.
It was just as well that the next morning dawned fine. We set out early; but not early enough to beat the Germans, who were already at work high in the groove above.
‘If you can’t get across the Pillar, we’ve had it,’ I commented to Layton. ‘You’ll have a dobbing match to get past those buggers.’
‘Don’t worry, it’ll go all right,’ he replied, quietly confident.
I climbed up the fixed rope Layton and Dougal had left in place before the storm. Jorg Lehne, looking rather like a wartime stormtrooper, was paying out the rope to Karl Golikow, who was out in front on their line.
‘Morning, Jorg. Do you think Karl will get up?’ I asked.
‘Maybe. We do not like that snow bulge. It could be dangerous. What will you do?’
‘We’re going round the side. There’s a better groove on the other side of the Pillar.’
‘Ah, but the bottom of the Pillar looks very difficult. I don’t think it is possible.’
‘To Layton, anything is possible,’ I replied with less confidence than I tried to put into my voice.
Layton came up and joined me at this point – gone was the cumbersome, rather diffident backwoodsman from the States, gone the nervously tensed companion of the previous day. He was now sure-moving and confident. He went straight into the lead, kicked up a few feet of snow to the foot of the rocks, hammered in a peg, clipped in a karabiner and étrier and stepped up. A short pause; gloved hands, searching, had found another placement for a peg, nudged one into the crack, tapped it with half a dozen sure blows and repeated the previous process. He knew exactly what he was doing and where to find the right placement for his pitons by glancing at the rock rather than by trying a dozen different places. He then knew how hard to hammer the piton into the crack – not too hard, yet sufficiently to hold his weight. He was a craftsman, superbly adapted to this highly specialised form of climbing.
He reached the line of weakness that stretched round the base of the Pillar. From below, it had looked easy-angled, but now I could see that this was a relative term. It was still desperately steep, and loose into the bargain. Clusters of icicles clung to every crevice in the rock, and Layton had to clear each one away before finding placement for his pegs. I don’t think any of our own team, or that of the Germans, could have completed that traverse without drilling a succession of holes for bolts, but Layton, making maximum use of his long reach, and uncanny ability to place pitons, got across it, using the cracks and crannies which nature had provided in the rock.
This type of climbing is a slow process, and the morning slipped by as he moved and swung deliberately from étrier to étrier. I talked in a desultory fashion to Jorg Lehne, gazing down at Scheidegg, now 6,000 feet below us, and watching the cavorting black specks of the skiers as they gambolled in their world of bright sunshine.
A cry came down from above. Layton had managed to get round the side of the Pillar, had pulled the rope in, and now it was my turn to follow up his pitch using jumars, and removing the pitons. Following Layton, this could be desperately difficult, because they were placed so very far apart. I found him perched on a narrow ledge which he had cut out of the ice. Above, an ice runnel ran between steep rock-walls to an even steeper ice-field. It looked hard. I belayed myself and Layton set out once again. At this stage, I had no intention of doing any leading – I had come along in an emergency, was getting some extra pictures, and was happy to hold Layton’s rope.
But Layton was no longer moving with confidence. He, a master on rock, had little experience of snow and ice. He messed around, trying to put in an ice screw – you treat it like a corkscrew, and screw it in to its head in the ice, turning it by hand, or using the pick of your hammer for leverage. Sometimes they don’t bite easily – there’s a knack to it – one that Layton hadn’t yet learned. But at last he got it in, climbed another few feet, cutting steps in the wrong places and getting tangled
with his crampons.
‘Can’t get a bloody peg in,’ he muttered.
I was getting worried. You can’t afford to fall off on ice; the ice screw runners are of very doubtful value, and would almost certainly pull out. If he had a long fall, I might also be pulled from my stance, since his belay pegs seemed none to sound.
‘Do you want me to have a go?’ I offered. ‘At your present rate, I don’t think you’ll get up before dark.’
‘Okay, this just isn’t my scene.’
And so I found myself out in front, for the first time on the climb – something that I had never intended to do. I couldn’t help but get a thrill of excitement, mingled with apprehension. It looked a long, hard ice pitch, harder than anything I had ever attempted before.
Layton slid back down on the rope, and I set off, kicking carefully up to his top peg, and then pausing to take stock. He had reached the top of the little ice runnel and the ice now flared out, and up towards a band of rock about seventy feet above. It was around 70 degrees in angle, which was sufficiently steep to make it essential to cut hand-holds as well as foot-holds. The occasional island of rock stuck out of the ice, a sure sign that this was only a thin skin over the rock underneath.
You’ve got to be methodical on ice, working out the sequence of holds that you plan to create, cutting them with the minimum of effort, no bigger than absolutely necessary, all the time remaining relaxed, or aching calves and hand cramps will soon make steady movement impossible.
I cut my first steps; the apprehension slipped away. For the first time on the climb I was totally involved. Swing gently, not too hard or you’ll shatter the ice and it won’t form a perfect step; make three or four steps – all in the right places; make hand-holds to go for, and then step up, gently, delicately, with precision.
I’m thirty feet above my last runner, time for another, but the skin of ice is too thin to take ice screws. I clear away some ice. The rock underneath is as smooth and polished as a boiler plate – no cracks there. Just keep climbing, you can’t afford to fall off. And the ice gets thinner, not more than an inch thick, with a gap between ice and rock, which is nice for fingers which curl reassuringly round the ice rim in the little holes I have cut. But it’s frightening in another way. What if the ice around me breaks away? I’ll be clinging to an icy toboggan – all the way to Grindelwald. The thought is only fleeting – there’s no time any longer for fears, no room for the play of an over-vivid imagination. Just ice in front and the need to fashion a stairway. And a snow gangway, where the angle seems to ease twenty feet away, becomes the focal point of my very existence.
Now I’m a hundred feet above Layton, and the rope drops gracefully down to that one pathetic little piton that he managed to hammer in, some twenty feet above him. That would mean a fall of 160 feet. But I’ve reached the snow, good hard snow – you could go straight up it on the points of your crampons. I don’t feel brave any longer, and cut little steps with my axe, kick my boots in hard, and move up the ramp, slowly, steadily, to the foot of a groove that runs up the left-hand edge of the Pillar.
Cut out a stance, find the rock belay, and I’m safe. We’ve solved the problem of the Pillar and a great bubbling wave of joy rolls over me. I look up the groove. It’ll go all right – no problems there. I can see its top. That must be the crest of the Pillar and there’s no sound up there – that means the Germans have failed to get up the groove on the other side. We might have beaten them. I yell down to Layton and bring up the rope. I daren’t let him jumar up to me, since I can’t trust my belays and am afraid that his deadweight on the rope could pull them away.
As he climbs, I gaze down, across the face, with a rich feeling of contentment. It had been the hardest, and certainly the most spectacular ice pitch I had ever climbed. The complete lack of protection made it, in effect, a solo ascent, for had I fallen, I don’t think Layton could have held me.
It was nearly dark before he reached me. We hammered in some extra pitons and very gingerly abseiled back down the ice-field to the end of the traverse. The day’s excitement was not yet over, however. Layton was the first to swing back across the horizontal rope of the traverse, and I followed. Halfway across, my jumar jammed, and I found myself in an inextricable knot. Whatever I did seemed to tie me more securely in position, so that I could move neither backwards nor forwards.
Layton was waiting on the other end of the traverse.
‘Guess it’s going to be pretty cold if you have to stay there all night,’ he commented.
I continued my struggles on the rope, hanging free from the rock at the lowest point of a V formed by the horizontal rope under tension. The only way out seemed to be to untie completely, maintain my hold on the rope, and then reorganise my jumars and karabiners.
By this time, Layton had vanished back down to the fixed rope, towards the snow hole, muttering about his feet being cold. I felt very much on my own in the gathering dusk. Make a mistake now, and you’re dead, Bonington. The thought of the fall was worse, more immediate, than death. At last I succeeded in getting the gear sorted out, and was able to pull myself across the end of the traverse. Tired and hungry, I abseiled back down towards the Flat Iron. On the way across to our snow hole, I passed the entrance to that of the Germans. Jorg Lehne was sitting in the entrance.
‘How did it go?’ I asked. He looked thoroughly discouraged.
‘It is too dangerous,’ he said. ‘We had to turn back. We could get round by the side, but it would take a very long time. I wonder though, could we use your fixed rope to get to the top of the Pillar?’
‘Seems fair enough, provided you wait for us, and follow us up,’ I replied.
We had used each other’s fixed ropes in the past, but now we had an advantage over the Germans, for we had been the first to reach the one vital bottleneck which offered the only feasible route into the upper part of the face. We had to make sure that we stayed out in front.
That night, I told John the good news. ‘Sounds good – you guys have done a fine job. Dougal and I’ll come up the day after tomorrow.’
‘How do you feel now?’
‘I’ve been checked over by the hospital in Interlaken, and they say the infection has cleared up. I feel fine.’
‘Roger, good to hear. Layton and I’ll go up again tomorrow, and have a go at reaching the Spider.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘The brew’s ready now. See you day after tomorrow. Over and out.’
Our link with Scheidegg and civilisation cut off with the flick of a switch, we settled down to a victory feast of nuts, cheese and dried meat, with Calcatonic, an effervescent vitamin drink.
Next morning we were just getting ready to go out, when Jorg Lehne appeared. ‘Chris, I would like to talk to you. We have an idea.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘We should like to see this competition end. Would it not be a good idea if today Karl climbed with Layton. Then you would have a truly shared rope, and we could go on like this with our teams climbing together. Then it could not be said that one or other team had been taken to the top by the other. Do you think it is a good idea?’
I was immediately attracted to the suggestion. True, we had everything in our favour, which of course was why Jorg Lehne was appealing to us now. He was making his suggestion from a position of weakness. I responded immediately.
‘Sounds like a good idea to me, but I’ll have to talk it over with John.’
‘Why not let Karl climb with Layton today?’ asked Jorg. ‘It would give you a good chance to get pictures.’
‘That’s a good idea. Okay. Layton climbs with Karl today, but as for joining up on the route, John’ll have to ratify that.’
Had I been weak in agreeing so easily? I’ve often wondered. The previous day I had enjoyed some of the most intensely stimulating climbing I had ever known, and had certainly had my best day, so far, on the Eigerwand. The day before us held the same promise, of good climbing which would almost certainly be safer an
d better protected than the lead I had already made. And yet, photography was still my main priority. I wanted to get the best photographic record that I possibly could of this climb, and when you’re actually climbing, or even belaying someone and holding the rope, photography is very difficult. Perhaps this, more than anything, influenced my decision.
Another factor was that co-operation seemed to be the perfect way of ending the competition on the face. I had come to like and respect the Germans, as I know John, Dougal and Layton had, also. If we could all end up climbing together, it would be the perfect climax to the successful conclusion of the route.
There was still the dilemma, whether or not I should stay with the climbing team and go all the way to the top with them. At this stage, it looked as if the final push for the summit would be quite straightforward. I had no pictures in from the side, from the easy West Ridge of the Eiger. More, I had a dream of going to the summit of the mountain by the West Ridge, and then abseiling down the top ice-field on a long rope, to meet the successful team. Thus, I hoped to get the most spectacular pictures of all. I decided to go down, having photographed Layton from the top of the Pillar.
Layton and Karl set off together for our previous night’s high point, and I sat and talked with Jorg Lehne. At eight, I opened up the wireless to talk to John.
‘We’ve made a rather radical decision,’ I told him with some diffidence, for I wasn’t at all sure what his reaction would be.
‘It’s only a temporary one, until you actually ratify it. Layton and Karl Golikow are climbing together, up the Pillar, today, and I suggest that we let them do this until you get up here. We should then climb in conjunction with the Germans. This seems a good compromise to me, as it is inevitable that we are going to be following the same route to the top. What do you think?’
The Next Horizon Page 21