‘Well, it’s a lot to swallow at the moment, Chris,’ said John. ‘I’ll have to think about it. Offhand it sounds good – except I think it should have happened later, after we had actually reached the top of the Pillar. How did this decision come about?’
I told him what had taken place and we left it at that. In a way, I had forced the decision on John and his fears were well grounded. There was always the risk that in the final analysis it might have seemed that we had got help from the Germans when, in fact, the very reverse had occurred. Had I climbed with Layton that day, and had we then actually dropped a rope to the Germans, it would have been obvious that it was they who had needed the help. But I was tired of all this manoeuvring – wanted to get my pictures – so had made the decision.
Layton and Karl reached the top of the Pillar just after midday and dropped a 300-foot rope straight down the groove which had defeated the Germans. I jumared up it, while Layton started up the next pitch, a great rock corner that led to a huge roof overhang.
He moved up quickly and easily. It was very steep, but the cracks were deep and sound – it was just a question of hammering away. I hung on the rope just below Karl as he belayed Layton, taking my final pictures from the face itself. Layton, a hundred feet above, was spread-eagled below the overhang, the do-ing, do-ing, do-ing of his hammer had a joyful ring to it, and I think we all felt that the climb was very nearly in the bag.
It was time for me to start my long descent and I went down without regret. My ambitions were concentrated on the photographs I was taking, not on reaching the top of the Eiger Direct. And I spun down, down, down, precise, careful, for if you aren’t, you’re dead. Clip on the karabiner, brake on to the rope, check the gates are facing the right way and are closed, lean back, slide and zoom down the rope, in a single effortless leap to the next anchor piton – clip into that with a spare karabiner, remove the brake from the rope, replace it, check it, check it again, and down again.
It took only one and a half hours to get from 300 feet below the White Spider to the bottom of the face. Picking up my skis, I pointed them downhill, and with less grace than on the ropes, plunged through the deep powder snow of the famous White Hair Run below the Eiger, down to the rack-railway track that led up to Kleine Scheidegg. I had finished with the Eiger’s face. In four days’ time the whole climb should be finished. Next morning I would realise my ambition of climbing the West Ridge to photograph Layton and the Germans as they reached the White Spider. John and Dougal would be climbing the fixed ropes to reach the Death Bivouac that night.
March 20th. The weather still perfect. Mick Burke has now replaced Don Whillans as my assistant and we are scrambling up the broken rocks and snow slopes of the West Ridge. Dougal and John are on their way to the Death Bivouac and Layton is out in front, cutting the final steps up into the White Spider. We reached the crest of the ridge in the late afternoon, hot, tired and sweating. Winter had crept away during our long siege of the face, and spring had now pounced upon us. The afternoon sun had crept round the face, and was now bathing the summit rocks of the Eiger in its soft rays. I could see climbers in the White Spider, tiny little red flies, sitting – too complacently, perhaps – in the middle of the Spider’s Web. Two of the Germans were spending the night there. John, Layton and Dougal were at the Death Bivouac, all set for the summit push.
As Mick and I scrambled back down the West Ridge, in the gloaming, it seemed as if everything was, at last, fitting into place. Another couple of days and I should be taking those summit shots as John, Dougal and Layton cut up those last hundred feet or so of ice-field, to reach the top of the Eiger.
– CHAPTER THIRTEEN –
EIGER DIRECT: THE SUMMIT
When we reached the Kleine Scheidegg hotel, late that night, Peter Gillman had some disturbing news for us.
‘There’s a bad weather forecast, with a front coming in from the Atlantic,’ he told me.
‘Does John know?’
‘Yes, I told him on the evening call.’
‘What’s he planning to do?’
‘He wanted to make a push for the summit tomorrow, but he’s worried now, and says he’ll wait to see what the forecast is.’
Next morning we were ready for the radio call at 7 a.m.
‘How’re things?’ John asked.
‘Not good, I’m afraid. The front seems to be moving in to the west coast of Europe. Could be here tomorrow.’
‘I don’t want to be caught out on those summit rocks. We’ll stay where we are and see what it’s like at midday. Could you give me another call then?’
‘Okay. Let’s hope it’s better.’
Up on the face, a restless Layton decided to come back down to Kleine Scheidegg for more supplies, to have a beer and see his girlfriend. He set off at about 9 a.m. Now, so close to success, all they had to do was to wait for two fine days, and then they could tackle those last 1,500 feet to the summit. Back at Scheidegg I spent the morning preparing gear for my own coverage of the arrival at the summit, and then went through the daily ritual of getting the weather forecast. This entailed phoning not only the airport at Geneva but also the weather centre in London, in order to get a rounded pattern of the progress that frontal systems were making across the Atlantic. There was a touch of superstitious confidence in all this, as if we believed that the favourable interpretation of one forecaster might actually change the inexorable march of a storm – we were the modern-day suppliants to the gods.
The London forecaster was more encouraging than the man in Geneva, saying that the frontal system seemed to have slowed down, and might take another twenty-four hours to reach the Alps. I was just leaving the phone kiosk when Mick Burke came into the hall.
‘Have you had a look through the telescope recently?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘You should. The Germans don’t seem to believe in weather forecasts. I’ve just seen one in the Fly.’
‘Christ. That means they could reach the top by tomorrow. I wonder what John will do?’
In the call at midday, we told John both about the improved forecast and the progress of the Germans. This altered the situation completely, for it meant that the going between the Spider and the Fly (the name we had given to the small snow field above, and slightly to the right of the Spider) must be quite easy.
John now had no choice. The Germans were obviously going for the summit, and if he chose to sit it out, waiting for the storm to pass, his own opportunity might well be missed. I urged him to move up the fixed rope to the Fly that afternoon, so that they could make their bid for the summit the next day. It was the obvious course, and one that he had arrived at on his own. He made his decision.
‘I guess we’ll go for the summit tomorrow. Tell Layton we’re sorry we can’t wait for him. He can always join the Germans; they look as if they’re planning to put a second team up there, once the fixed ropes have been placed.’
John and Dougal sorted out their gear in the Death Bivouac and set out an hour later – Dougal first, followed by John.
Back at Scheidegg, Pete Gillman, who had just happened to come out to the big binoculars to see what progress they were making, swivelled the glasses towards the face, and began following the line of the fixed ropes from Death Bivouac, up towards the Spider. At full magnification the figure of a man could be discerned quite clearly – not just as a black dot, but as a real person, with arms and legs. You could even pick out the thread of the fixed rope through the eyes of these binoculars. The magnification was so great that it was very easy to get lost, having swung the lenses across the bewildering maze of rock and ice.
Suddenly, as Peter followed the line of rope towards the top of the Pillar, something flashed down across the lens. A dark shape; flailing arms – but were they? Could it have been imagination? Perhaps a rucksack had been dropped. A stone? Pete cried out, and soon a small group gathered around the telescope.
‘I think someone on the face could have fallen,’ he told us.
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‘Could it have been a rucksack?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think so; I’m sure it had arms and legs.’
I gazed through the binoculars, first searching the face. There were two little figures on the Spider, one of which must be Dougal. Then, by searching the rocks below the Spider, I hoped to find John, slowly climbing the fixed rope, but could find no one. Perhaps he was hidden behind a buttress of rock, or in one of the gullies that led to the Spider. I dropped down the wall, through the eye of the telescope, to where someone was stirring outside the German snow hole on the Flat Iron, then on down to the foot of the face. Scanning the snows at the base of the Eiger, all the time trying to convince myself that it could only have been a rucksack that had fallen, I found something – a dark smudge in the snow. It could have been a rock, or a sack – but I knew, we all knew, that it was John Harlin.
The only way to find out for certain was to ski over, and I set out with Layton, taking with us one of the walky-talky radios. I still tried to convince myself that it was a rucksack that had fallen, but that even if it were John, there could be a chance of his having survived the fall by going into deep powder snow. We skied in silence, each dreading what we might find. We came to some gear scattered in the snow – the contents of a rucksack.
‘It was only a sack,’ I shouted, in a wave of relief that, somehow, I knew was not justified.
And then I saw something above us. We plodded up through the snow to where John Harlin’s body lay, grotesque, distorted by the appalling impact of his 5,000-foot fall, but still horribly recognisable. There was a strange, terrible beauty in the juxtaposition of the bent limbs of this man, who had devoted everything to climbing, and finally to this project and to the face towering above. It made a perfect photograph – a picture that said everything that could possibly be said about the North Wall of the Eiger. I was horrified with myself that I could even think in this way; I knew that I could never take such a picture.
We could not bear to look at him for more than a few seconds. I forced myself to feel his heart, though the fact that he was dead was painfully, totally obvious. Having turned our backs on him, I opened up the wireless, and in a voice that I found impossible to control, told Peter that it was John who had fallen. I asked him to arrange for a party of guides to come for the body, and then Layton and I returned to Scheidegg. I could not have borne carrying him down myself, I was much too upset.
Back at Scheidegg, I became involved once more with the climb as a whole. What had caused the accident? Was it a broken rope, or had he failed to clip in with his jumars correctly? The latter seemed unlikely. John, for all his ambitious schemes, was a supremely cautious and very competent mountaineer. We could only surmise. Now, what would the others do – Dougal and the Germans, poised so close to success but threatened by the change in the weather which was already showing itself with an advance guard of high cirrus marching over the western horizon? Late that evening, we made contact with Dougal on the Germans’ walky-talky set. Karl Golikow had come down the fixed rope from the Fly to bring the radio to him.
‘The rope parted,’ Dougal told us, ‘just above the Pillar. It went over a particularly bad spot just there.’
‘What do you plan to do yourselves?’ I asked.
‘We’ve talked about this,’ he said. ‘Our first reaction was to come back down, but then we realised that if we did this, John would have thrown away his life for nothing. We want to finish the route. It’s what John wanted to do more than anything, and we reckon that this is what he would have wanted us to do.’
‘I think you’re absolutely right,’ I said; ‘but what about gear; did much go down with John?’
‘All the food and our bivvy tent, but there’s just enough up here.’
The next day was spent in getting reorganised for their summit push, and in getting their gear up into the Spider. There were four Germans, Jorg Lehne, Gunther Strobel, Siegi Hupfauer and Roland Votteler, with Dougal. As they worked, the clouds crept over the sky and built up for the storm. The safest course would have been to pull back to the Flat Iron bivouac to sit out the storm, for there was insufficient snow in the Spider or the Fly to dig a proper snow hole. But this was impossible on psychological grounds. After the tragedy they could never have continued the siege in cold blood – it was a matter of making one last desperate attempt, and in doing so they intended to preclude any possibility of retreat, for they had to lift the fixed ropes behind them, in order to give themselves enough for their summit push.
Action absorbed some of our grief. If they were going to make their bid for the summit, I had to be there, not only to record their arrival, but to act as the nucleus of a rescue party, in case they needed help. There was now barely time to climb all the way to the top of the Eiger, and anyway I needed more gear than Mick Burke and I could carry. I decided to use a helicopter, which would cost the Telegraph well over £200, but it seemed worth it.
Mick and I spent the rest of the day in preparation, and took off late that afternoon. The helicopter was flown by a squat, tough-looking little Frenchman, who couldn’t speak a word of English. The machine itself looked ridiculously fragile, as we piled ourselves and our gear into it.
Clouds were now scudding over the Jungfrau, and the bowl, formed by the two edges containing the North Wall of the Eiger, was filled with cloud. Somewhere in there were Dougal and the four Germans. The helicopter buzzed crazily up the side of the Eiger.
‘Est que possible au sommet?’ I shouted.
He shrugged. ‘Pas possible.’
We were now above the Eiger Glacier, a large cwm between the Monch and the West Ridge of the Eiger. The higher we went, the less possible were the landing spots we saw; crevasses gaped, the slopes stretched up into the clouds.
The pilot muttered ‘pas possible’ once again, and pointed down towards Scheidegg. There seemed no choice but to go back.
As the helicopter darted downwards I had a sense of failure. We could not, must not go back down – but what else could we do? Obviously he could drop us, far below the summit, on a part of the mountain where I had never been before, but we could never have carried the mound of gear all the way to the summit. Nearly back at Scheidegg, I realised suddenly what we had to do. We could leave most of the gear in the helicopter and get him to drop us on the glacier. We would still be a lot nearer to the summit than if we had to walk all the way from Kleine Scheidegg. I tapped him on the shoulder, gesticulated upwards and he, with a resigned shrug, that said ‘these mad English don’t know what the hell they’re doing’, turned the helicopter back up the mountain. Mick and I quickly readjusted the loads, dumping most of the food, all the cine gear, and some of the climbing equipment.
It was a crazy, exciting feeling as we skimmed back up, close to the snows. When high enough, we hovered at about six feet – it was too steep to land – and he gestured for us to jump out, a frighteningly final gesture. So what if there was a hidden crevasse at the point of landing – only one way to find out – jump! And I did. The snow leapt up at me, and I was there, in one piece, with the slipstream of the helicopter hammering at me.
Mick chucked down the gear and came after me. The pilot gave us a wave and the helicopter suddenly careered up into the sky, leaving us lonely and vulnerable, as it quickly shrank into a small speck. There we were, on the flanks of the Eiger, crevasses around us, the North Face of the Monch, dark, dominating to one side, and a great snow slope in front, leading up towards the top of the Eiger. We shouldered our rucksacks and started up the slope; it wasn’t particularly steep, but the snow conditions were most frightening. The crust of snow was firm and hard, beaten into position by the winds; but beneath, it was soft and powdery. As we made our way up it, the top surface on either side of us cracked, sending lines racing across the smooth surface of the snow, a sure sign that we were on windslab, the most dangerous of all avalanche snows. The crust was not anchored to the snow beneath, but was merely resting on steep powder and could break away in a si
ngle catastrophic slab, as much as a hundred yards across, with us on it. In a place like this, there could be little chance of survival, and none at all of a rescue party coming to dig us out.
We tiptoed up the snow, hardly daring to talk, as if the resonance of our voices might trigger off an avalanche. When, at last, we reached the top of the slope and the ridge connecting the Monch with the Eiger, we were exposed to the full blast of the gale, and it was very nearly dark. Having scrambled up the ridge, finding no suitable spot for a snow cave, we knew we would have to look for a snow bank on the flanks. I stumbled forward in the dark, working my way across a steep snow slope. It was impossible to tell whether there was a drop below of five, fifty or 500 feet. Without somewhere to dig, we would have scant chance of survival.
Eventually I found a snow bank, brought Mick across to me, grabbed the shovel and started digging. At least I was able to keep warm as I worked away in the shelter of the snow, while all Mick could do was to sit, huddled outside, waiting for me to dig out enough snow for him to creep in behind me. There was an odd sort of enjoyment about the entire venture. Perhaps it was because we were on our own, with a simple, independent aim. And although now in the midst of a most savage storm, we still felt in complete control of our destinies. Our position was certainly more dangerous than it had been that night on the Eiger Direct when we had been trying to establish our snow hole on the Flat Iron. Then, I had been nervous, almost cowardly, partly I suspect because I was not in command of the situation, having type-set myself as the photographer. Now, I was in command. Mick depended on me, in much the same way as I had depended on Dougal and John. The very level of this responsibility made me forget any fear that I might have experienced.
It was nearly midnight before we finished. There was no sound of the wind in the hollow we had dug out of the snow, and we were able to relax and sleep. We woke in the morning to cool, filtered light. It was impossible to tell whether the storm was still raging, or whether it had cleared up into the perfect day. I discovered soon enough, by sliding down the short curved tunnel. Fresh blown snow, banked high in the entrance, had to be cleared by digging away with my hands before I could tell what the weather was like in the outside world.
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