Conquistadors of the Useless

by Roberts, David, Terray, Lionel, Sutton, Geoffrey

  Spouts from the waterfall kept breaking over me. Despite the waterproof cape I was blinded and half in the water, which came in through the seams, down my neck and along my sleeves. Eventually I climbed out into a wide ice gully, and there, just where I needed it, was an old piton to which I could tie myself while hauling the sacks and bringing up my partner. When he reached me we looked at the time: it was nearly six o’clock.

  We both looked like drowned rats, but it was no time for mutual commiseration. The place where we stood was exposed to stone fall, and we were still far from easy ground. The next thing was to traverse across on little nicks to the rock spine which formed the true right bank of the gully. Here everything got easier again, and we pushed on as fast as possible. It was still hailing hard, and thunder could be heard in the distance. We hoped it was only a local storm, but it was certainly very worrying. Since our dramatic ascent of the Walker we were only too uncomfortably aware of how dangerous it was to be caught by storm on a high face. At all costs we must get the worst of the difficulties behind us that evening. This didn’t seem an impossible task – we should reach the Spider in two hours, and another two hours from there ought to see us on the top.

  After a while we found a ledge on our right which appeared to end in a vertical sixty-foot wall, and I immediately set off along it, moving delicately over rock like piled-up crockery, Louis, however, reckoned that the traverse must start higher up the couloir, and called me back. I retorted that this was exactly like the aerial photo we had seen of the four men traversing during the first ascent, but he argued that this ledge was so situated that it couldn’t be photographed from the air at all. My dislike of argument made me give in as usual. Convinced that he was heading into a blind alley, I suggested that he climb up a bit and have a look. After forty feet he came across a duralumin piton. It seemed obvious to me that this had served to protect a retreat, but he heaped noisy sarcasms on my head at the very idea, particularly as there was a sort of uninviting traverse line at his own level.

  He was off again, without leaving me time to argue, along a delicate ascending traverse on horribly loose rock. It was getting dark, and when my turn came I did not take out all the pitons in order to save time. Fifty feet higher there seemed to be a terrace of some kind which it looked as though we could reach. Excited at the prospect I led straight through, but after thirty feet came up against extreme difficulties. Lachenal then tried a bit farther to the left, climbing with his usual agility. Soon afterwards he called down:

  ‘Another ten feet and I’m there.’

  Almost at once, however, all movement ceased, and he started to curse.

  ‘Just a little high voltage and I’d be there, but the pegs are all so loose it’s too dangerous. It might go over on the left: I’ll have a look.’ Through the murk and the gathering darkness I saw him descend a little, then disappear round a corner. We were in a sort of Scotch mist. Everything I had on was drenched, and I began to freeze with the inaction. The rope had stopped running out some time ago, and sounds of hammering and falling rocks showed that Louis was in trouble. The atmosphere was depressing in the extreme. Cramped to the face in the foggy dusk I felt utterly alone, and my determination began to melt like sugar in the rain. Suddenly I heard a strangled cry and a heavy sound of stones. Faster than thought I braced myself to take the strain of a fall, but nothing happened. I shouted up:

  ‘Louis, what’s going on?’

  After a moment a panting voice replied:

  ‘I pulled off a big piece of rock, but I just managed to grab something else in time. Don’t worry, it’ll go now.’

  So our lives had been saved only by Lachenal’s lightning fast reaction! Suddenly the full seriousness of our position came home to me, and my whole being revolted against this mad nocturnal climbing. I called out pleadingly:

  ‘For pity’s sake, Lili, don’t push it. If you go on like this we’ll have an accident. We’ve got to get back into the couloir before there’s no light left at all.’

  Louis grumbled that the pitch would be easier now the loose rock was gone, and that there was a ledge above him, but the conviction had gone out of his voice and I sensed that he was half won round. This time I refused to give way, and shouted back:

  ‘You silly bugger, if you won’t come back I’m not going to give you an inch of slack. You can damn well bivouac where you are.’

  This argument seemed to convince him, because he thereupon climbed back down to me. It was now ten o’clock at night, and the darkness was almost total. By feeling around I found a crack which might take a piton, and after several tries succeeded in hammering one home. We unroped and installed a rappel. Louis went down first, and I was just starting to follow him when at the precise moment my weight came on the rope the piton came out. I just managed to grab the rock in time. A shiver ran through me from head to foot, but after a few moments of confusion I managed to pull myself together. I forced myself to bang in another peg, but by now I was working in pitch darkness and the rock was so rotten that it just broke up under my blows. After several futile attempts I came back to the original crack and inserted a rather thicker peg than the previous one. It seemed all right, but all my confidence had drained away. Rigid with fear and not daring to trust all my weight to such a dubious point of support, I tried to climb down while still keeping the rope round me in a rappel position. This is in fact always a bad idea, and after only a few feet I slipped and came heavily on the rope. For a moment I thought the worst had happened, but in the event the peg stood up perfectly to the strain and I abseiled back to Lachenal in normal fashion.

  We now had to abseil again, but this time on two really sound pegs. The situation remained serious for all that because we were above the wall which overhung the ramp, and we were painfully aware of the fact that our rope was too short to reach it. This meant that we had in effect to reverse the difficult ascending traverse, an operation which, between the darkness and the rotten rock, turned out to be delicate in the extreme. If either of us came off we would dangle under the overhangs, a position from which it would not be easy to get back.

  Once again Lachenal went down first. Conscious of the danger he moved slowly, making the most of his dexterity. These moments were almost unbearable to me, alone and motionless in the dark. Finally there came a cry of joy: he had reached one of the pegs I had left in on the way up, and the click of a karabiner told me he had clipped one of the ropes into it. But he had to reach the second peg before he was out of the wood. Finally another click told me he was there, and shortly afterwards he called to me to follow. My own descent was easy due to being held through the pegs from below.

  I had noticed certain rather indefinite balconies on the true right bank of the couloir on the way up, and I now suggested we try to regain them. We eventually found a place where we could sit down about midnight. Exhausted as we were, it took an enormous effort of will to arrange the necessary minimum of safety and comfort. We were soaked to the skin and shivering with cold, and the thought of pulling on a nice dry quilted jacket did one good. I stripped to the waist in the icy drizzle and drew mine on with a feeling of positive luxury. It had remained perfectly dry, rolled up in my rubberised elephant’s foot.

  Unfortunately Lili had not taken the same precautions, and his down-filled jacket turned out to be no better than a saturated sponge. Even after he had wrung it out it had lost all its warmth, and there was no doubt but that he would pass a chilly night. Eventually, by dint of throwing down some stones and building up others, we evolved tolerable positions some twenty feet apart from each other. I wasn’t in the least bit hungry, but I forced myself to eat in order to conserve my strength. I recommended Louis to do the same, but he could hardly choke down more than a mouthful or two.

  Our water bottles were still fairly full thanks to the various torrents we had crossed during the course of the day, but we simply lacked the willpower to make a hot drink on our little meta-
cookers. I didn’t take long to doze off, but soon woke up feeling strangled; I had slipped off the ledge in my sleep and was hanging on the rope. I clambered back to my resting place, but as this was no more than a notch in a little ridge on which I was straddled I slipped off to one side or the other every time I went to sleep. Despite my utter exhaustion I spent a wretched night. Lachenal was better placed, but he was so cold in his drenched clothes that his teeth never stopped chattering the whole night long.

  Round about three o’clock in the morning we heard the rumble of a storm in the distance, but although the occasional flash of lightning lit up the clouds around us nothing happened on the Eiger. The drizzle had stopped and it was getting colder.

  We were now seriously worried, and began to discuss our best course. On the Walker our retreat had been cut off in any case, so there had been no decision to make – it had just been a matter of getting up or getting killed. The situation here was more complex. We knew that the previous summer Krähenbühl and Schlünegger had got as far as this before being caught in a storm, and had managed to retreat to safety despite the snow, the avalanches and the shaky pitons. There was therefore an undeniable possibility of saving ourselves by going back, however dangerous the attempt might be. Although I was in despair at having to give up when the goal was so near this seemed to me the wisest course. Lachenal on the contrary calculated that we could be on the top in a few hours, and that it would be more dangerous to go down than to go on. If he told me once he told me twenty times that the well-known Grindelwald guide Adolph Rubi had personally assured him that the couloir from the Spider to the summit was just an easy scree slope, and I had to admit that Heckmair’s account in Alpinisme seemed to confirm this theory. After all, his party had gone up it in spite of bad weather and frequent avalanches.

  But in my heart I was only half-convinced. Without quite liking to say so, it seemed to me that Louis’ judgement might be affected by the apparent proximity of success. He had dreamed yearningly of this climb for so long that he would go to any length for it. In the end, however, his enthusiasm and his will to win carried the day. In the bitter murk of dawn the way down looked anything but attractive. We had come here for an adventure, and now we had got it we might as well make the most of it.

  By five o’clock we were already at work on the tottering crockery of the traverse. The air was heavy, and all the indications were that it would snow before long. We could only go as fast as possible and hope that providence would grant us a few hours’ respite. After two pitches on which I felt that the whole mountain might collapse around us at any moment, I came at last to a solid platform. An abandoned lantern and a piton with a loop through it showed that last year’s attempt had ended here. A short traverse on ice now led to the foot of an uninviting-looking wall, the first few feet of which overhung. To begin with I couldn’t find any cracks that would take a good firm piton, but eventually I succeeded in inserting an ice peg in a wide crack in the rock at arm’s length, on which I then heaved up for all I was worth.

  The morning frost had covered the damp rock with verglas, and the holds were all encrusted with old snow. I climbed in crampons with my sack on my back to save time, but in the circumstances I was far from happy on such a vertical face. Every hold had to be cleared individually, and progress was both slow and painful. After forty feet I was close to a ledge, but once again there was an overhang in the way and all the cracks were too wide to hold a peg. Well, I would simply have to do it without. I could just reach a small incut hold which might solve the problem … but no, I was too tired, and I could feel the weakened fingers of my right hand opening out under the strain. If I tried to force it I would peel off. Three times I tried, and three times I had to return hurriedly to my holds. The last peg was twenty feet below, too far to justify deliberately risking a fall, but at the same time I could hardly let six feet of rock stop me now. By feeling around with my left hand I discovered a better crack, and in a very awkward position managed to plant one of the specially thick pitons that Simond had kindly made for me. What would have happened if I hadn’t talked him into doing it I don’t know! With this security, anyway, I was able to go to the limit. I gathered myself for the effort, and a moment later I was on the ledge.

  Most unfortunately my peg hammer had caught under the overhang as I moved up, and the violence of my effort had broken its leather sling. Its loss was a potential disaster. From now on it would be practically impossible to recover any pegs we put in, and I dreaded to think what would happen if anything went wrong with the other hammer.

  The ‘Traverse of the Gods’ turned out much easier than I had expected. The rock was certainly loathsome enough for anybody, but there were several old pegs in situ which made it safe. We climbed the Spider as fast as we could go, not stopping to take any belays or cut any steps. Fortunately the ice was fairly soft, and broken bits of rock sticking out of the snow here and there also helped. Victory now felt quite close, and we rushed into the base of the couloir with shouts of enthusiasm. At first its easy angle seemed to confirm Adolph Rubi’s predictions. We penetrated into a constricted gully, and an old piton showed that we were on the right road. Shortly, however, we came up against a thirty-foot step of compact, vertical rock covered in verglas an inch thick.

  I got up six feet or so, placing the two front points of my crampons on tiny holds, then nearly came off. There seemed to be nowhere to put a peg, and I returned disconsolate. Louis then tried in his turn, and got a peg through the verglas half an inch into a superficial crack behind. By some miracle he then managed to move up on this precarious support and repeated the operation on four more equally doubtful pegs before he arrived at the top of the pitch. It was a real tour de force. I made vigorous use of the rope in climbing up to join him, and had no trouble in tweaking the pegs out with one hand.

  The slope now gave back again, and we were able to move up steadily in spite of the verglas which covered everything. After a few more pitches we once again fetched up short against a step of light-coloured rock. The step was split by an overhanging crack which we could have laybacked quite quickly in normal conditions, but this technique was ruled out by the verglas. I thrutched my way painfully up to the overhang, where I eventually succeeded in planting a long ice peg.[4] By bridging until I was practically doing the splits I got another peg above the overhang, but it was hammered into a pile of slates that didn’t inspire me with much confidence. There was literally nothing else to pull up on, so for lack of any alternative I grabbed the peg with both hands and tried to walk my feet up the wall. They kept skidding on the ice, but I had almost done it when there was a ping! and I found myself twenty feet lower down, behind Lachenal but still upright. The whole thing was so sudden that I hadn’t even the time to be frightened, and the strain had been taken so gradually that I felt no shock whatever. Louis goggled at me clownishly: ‘What’s the idea – are we playing birdies?’

  Then he added more seriously:

  ‘Nothing broken? Do you want to have another go or shall I try?’ Furious at the incident and still hot with the effort, I replied:

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll have another shot. Don’t worry about it, it’ll go this time.’

  I went at it again without a moment’s rest. This time I got the second peg in more reliably and mantelshelfed onto a good hold. Now I had to cross a slab to the left, an operation rendered delicate by the ice. The weather was more menacing than ever. Sullen clouds were sinking lower and lower, and sounds were becoming hushed. Everything pointed to a heavy snowfall before long. I looked desperately for ways of avoiding the icy slab, but there seemed no other way out. It just had to be done, and quickly: it was a matter of life and death.

  Deliberately shutting off my imagination I pushed the points of my crampons into the black ice and set off across the slab. There was nothing for the hands and no opportunities for guile. By concentrating all my forces and accepting all the risks I got across, though more th
an once on the verge of falling. It did not take long to haul the sacks and bring up Lachenal, who took a pull on the rope to save time. Another overhang loomed above us: would this diabolical couloir with its verglas and its overhangs never come to an end? This one looked really unclimbable, and we could not imagine how the Germans had dealt with it. Perhaps we could escape round the corner to the left into the next couloir? A few moves took me out on to a little shoulder which overlooked it, but it looked even worse than the last one. Suddenly I noticed a rope jammed in a crack, and at the same moment the solution became clear: the Germans had abseiled to a ledge below which led round to yet a third couloir.

  I grabbed the rope, taking no notice of its decayed state, and a moment later I stood at the base of a wide, steep chimney. Naturally it was full of ice and looked far from prepossessing, but with some very wide bridging and plenty of optimism it ought to go. No sooner had Lachenal reached my side than I was off, bridging so wide that at times it seemed I might pull a muscle. The rock was extremely compact and practically impossible to peg, but just as I had almost run out of rope I found a place where I could get a piton in an inch or so, and with this pitiful belay Lachenal had to be content.

  It began to hail heavily and a torrent of hailstones poured down the gully, but luckily a convenient overhang saved us from the full weight of it. The difficulties now seemed to be diminishing at last, and a tremendous feeling of joy began to seethe inside me. I knew now that we were saved. The main obstacles were all behind us and there was nothing more that could conceivably hold us up, even though the hail had turned into big, thick-falling snowflakes. But an hour more in reaching this point and our chances would have been halved.

  Presently we came to a steep slope of broken-up rocks. Knowing the summit so near we were torn with impatience and had been climbing together as fast as we could, but I quickly realised the danger of such haste on ground as delicate as this. It seemed best to take no further chances, but to belay carefully pitch by pitch. Lachenal grumblingly agreed, and we went on at the steady pace of the traditional mountaineer.