The White Spider

The “White Spider”

IT is common form to congratulate people on their birthdays. It is also customary to pay a suitable tribute to buildings, cities and associations when they reach a certain age. Biographies and autobiographies are written, and historical records, from the most comprehensive tomes to the smallest pamphlet. Why, then, not write a book to celebrate the birthday of a mountain, or even of a face of that mountain?

Admittedly, it is not the birthday celebration of the mountain or the face itself, but the remembrance of the day which first brought a human being into direct personal contact with it—the remembrance of the first ascent of a peak or the first successful climb of a face.

The 13,041-foot summit of the Eiger, in the Bernese Oberland, was first trodden by the foot of man just a hundred years ago, in 1858. Its North Face was climbed for the first time only twenty years ago, in 1938, and it was the climbing of this Face that first made the Eiger world-famous. Thanks to this, its name has become better-known than that of the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc. It has become familiar to millions of readers of innumerable newspaper reports; it has been mentioned hundreds of times on the radio. It became the epitome of everything tragically sensational that mountaineering had to offer the reader. When millions, who had never seen either the mountain or the Face, formed their own picture of it, it could hardly help being a caricature. What I propose to do here is to draw a true picture of it; one which will be hardly less exciting, but whose drama will be based on truth and fact, not on the uninformed imaginings of some pen-pusher. For the true story of the Eiger’s North Face is even more terrible and more glorious than men have yet been able to discover.

I am one of the party of four who, in July 1938, just twenty years ago, first succeeded in climbing the North Face. My memory of it is like a birthday celebration of my own, and has accompanied me to this day without ever diminishing in strength. Not even my great experience in Tibet, which gave such a decisive twist to my life, has ever succeeded in cancelling it out; nor did the memory ever fade during the thirteen years I spent in Asia.

I do not think any one of us who climbed that 6,000-foot bastion of rock and ice was at any time in fear of his life. But after our safe return from the venture we felt more conscious of the privilege of having been allowed to live; and this feeling of awareness has never left me since that climb of the mighty North Face. Maybe my memory of the Eiger’s Face has often given me the strength, the patience and the confidence to cope with apparently hopeless and dangerous situations, and helped me to believe in life at times when all the circumstances seemed most hostile to life itself.

Self-confidence is the most valuable gift a man can possess, but it is not a gift freely granted. The blindly arrogant possess it least of all. To possess this true confidence, it is necessary to have learned to know oneself at moments when one was standing on the very frontier of things, times when one could even cast a glance over to “the other side”. And then one had to examine oneself with unsparing clarity to establish what one felt, thought or did at such a moment.

On the “Spider” in the Eiger’s North Face I experienced such borderline situations, while the avalanches were roaring down over us, endlessly. This sector of the Eiger’s upper wall has won its name from its external likeness to a gigantic spider. Seldom has an exterior attracted a name which at the same time suits the inner nature of the object named so completely. The “Spider” on the Eiger’s Face is white. Its body consists of ice and eternal snow. Its legs and its predatory arms, all hundreds of feet long, are white, too. From that perpetual, fearfully steep field of frozen snow nothing but ice emerges to fill gullies, cracks and crevices. Up and down. To left, to right. In every direction, at every angle of steepness.

And there the “Spider” waits.

Every climber who picks his way up the North Face of the Eiger has to cross it. There is no way round it. And even those who moved best and most swiftly up the Face have met their toughest ordeal on the “Spider”. Someone once compared the whole Face to a gigantic spider’s web catching the spider’s victims and feeding them to her. This comparison is unfounded, exaggerated, and merely a cheap way of making the flesh creep. Neither the savage wall nor the lovely mountain have deserved this slur. Nor have the climbers; for climbers are not flies and insects stumbling blindly to their fate, but men of vision and courage. All the same, the “White Spider” seems to me to be a good symbol for the North Face. The climber has to face its perils on the final third of the wall, when he is tired from many hours and days of exhausting climbing and weakened by chilly bivouacs. But there is no rest to be had there, no matter how tired you are.

He who wishes to survive the spate of avalanches which sweep the “Spider” must realise that there is no escape from this dangerously steep obstacle; he must know how to blend his strength with patience and reflection. Above the “Spider” begin the overhanging, iced-up exit cracks; that is where sheer strength tells. But here the man who abandons patience and good sense for fear-induced haste will surely finish up like the fly which struggles so long in the spider’s web that it is caught through sheer exhaustion.

The “White Spider” on the Eiger is the extreme test not only of a climber’s technical ability, but of his character as well. Later on in life, when fate seemed to spin some spider’s web or other across my path, my thoughts often went back to the “White Spider”. Life itself demanded the same methods, the same qualities, when there no longer seemed to be any possible escape from its difficulties, as had won us a way out of the difficulties of the Eiger’s North Face—common-sense, patience and open-eyed courage. Haste born of fear and all the wild stunts arising from it can only end in disaster.

I remember a saying of Schopenhauer’s: “Just as the wayfarer only surveys and recognises the road he has come when he reaches some high place and can look back over it in its entirety, so we ourselves are only able to recognise and value a stage in our life when it is over.” The North Face of the Eiger and the crossing of the “White Spider” were for me an expedition and a stage in my life at one and the same time; though I only realised it a good deal later. Today I have no doubt whatever about the invaluable contribution a difficult and, in the eyes of many, an incredibly dangerous climb on a mountain can make to a man’s later life. I do not believe in a blind Fate which dominates us; nor can I unreservedly agree with Schopenhauer’s statement—” Fate shuffles the cards, we play them.” I am quite certain that we have a hand in the shuffling.

There is nothing new to be said about the behaviour of man in exceptional circumstances of danger or crisis. It has all been thought and said already. But if I had to write an entry in the autograph-album of the worshippers of blind Chance and inevitable Fate I could not find better words than those used by the Athenian, Menander, more than two thousand years ago. “A man’s nature and way of life are his fate, and that which he calls his fate is but his disposition.” This truth was brought home to me clearly for the first time on the slope of the “White Spider”. Perhaps all four of us were the fortunate owners of a disposition which was the basic factor in our successful climb; training, scientific preparations and equipment being only very necessary adjuncts.

The North Face of the Eiger was described for the first time in Alpine literature by A. W. Moore, whose splendid book The Alps in 18641does full justice to its savage grandeur. Moore, with his guides and companions—among whom there was a lady, Miss Walker—made the third ascent of the Eiger on July 25th, 1864; then they climbed a little way further, along the North-West Ridge, from which they could look straight down the precipitous North Face.

“Of the thousands,” Moore writes, “who annually pass under the shadow of this magnificent wall, which in height and steepness alike excels the corresponding face of the Wetterhorn, few can have failed to be impressed with its rugged and precipitous character. But grand and striking as is the view of the cliffs from below, no one who has not looked down them as we now did can appreciate them properly. Except in the Dauphiné, I have never seen so sheer and smooth a precipice. A stone dropped from the edge would have fallen hundreds of feet before encountering any obstacle to its progress. It is rather remarkable (and fortunate) that while the northern face of this great mass of rock is cut away abruptly, in such an inaccessible manner, its western face should be so comparatively easy and practicable….”

“Inaccessible”—it never occurred to Moore that there could be even the possibility of making a way up this wall, in which the eye can detect no holds at all. E. H. Stevens, who produced the new edition of Moore’s book in 1939, added a footnote to the above description of that terrific Face. It reads: “This is the terrible ‘Eigerwand’ (the western section of the North Face) which in the last two or three years has been the scene of such shocking disasters to several parties attempting, with reckless and ill-considered daring,1to solve this last and greatest of Alpine problems. The ascent was finally achieved in 1938.”

As one who belonged to the party which succeeded in the first ascent of the Face in 1938, I should like to observe—with due respect for our critic’s judgment—that I neither felt mentally deranged twenty years ago nor consider myself mad now.

It has been widely deplored that the very creed of mountaineering should have been debased by the climbs and attempts on this particular Face, in that it has become an arena, a natural stage, on which every movement of the actors can be followed. And the applause accorded to successful climbers on their return is argued as another outward sign of their inward decay….

Nobody regrets it more than the men themselves who climb on the Eiger’s North Face. They desire nothing more than peace and quiet; they do not want to be looked at. They long for the days of their grandfathers when nobody took any notice of climbers or bothered to watch them. Full of nostalgia for those good old days, I read the end of Moore’s account of his first climb of the mountain, the return to Wengern Alp. Alas, my yearnings for peace and quiet and a tranquil ending to that fine performance were not to be granted, even then. This is what I read: “Hence, running over the easy rocks and smooth snow, we got to the gazon at 2.40, and after a rapid walk over the pastures, amidst the firing of guns at the hotel, which was commenced as soon as we appeared in sight, at 3.10 p.m. once more arrived at the Wengern Alp, where we were received with an amount of enthusiasm and hand-shaking that was quite overpowering….”

That happened on July 25th 1864, at the height of the “golden age” of Alpine climbing. Am I really supposed to be disappointed because the climbers of the day were just human beings, with all the human weaknesses and follies? All I can do is to record, with a smile of amusement, that when we got back nobody fired off any guns to greet us. They certainly had more feeling for style and dramatic effects a hundred years ago!

When was the Eiger first climbed, then?

We know now that it was on August 11th 1858. But when I looked for a report about this still considerable achievement of a first ascent in the contemporary issues of the Alpine Journal, I had no luck at all. It was said that a Mr. Harrington or Harington had reached the summit with some guides. This was the only mention of the name Harrington, and small wonder; for the name of the first man to climb the Eiger was not Harrington at all, but Barrington. Mr. Charles Barrington.

It was not till 1883, twenty-five years after his first ascent, that Barrington wrote his long-overdue report in the shape of a letter to the editor of the Alpine Journal. From this article-in-form-of-a-letter we learn that Barrington—himself not even a member of the Alpine Club, which was just one year old at the time of his climb—arrived at Grindelwald early in August 1858 and engaged two celebrated guides, Christian Aimer and Peter Bohren, the latter being characterised by his nickname of the “Wolf of the Glaciers”. On August 6th they climbed to the Strahlegg and on the 9th ascended the Jungfrau from the cave in the Faulberg, returning to Grindelwald the same evening. Glacier-burn must have played havoc with Barrington’s face, for he describes, in his humorous way, how he spent the night, “sleeping with a beefsteak on my face….”1

But young Mr. Charles was by no means satisfied with his Alpine performances. With all the liberality of a man who hasn’t a farthing in his pocket, but still enquires the price of the World, he asked what else there was to do. Good advice costs little, its implementation is expensive. “You could do the Matterhorn—or the Eiger. Neither has been climbed as yet,” came the answer.

The Matterhorn was way over there in the Valais and would doubtless cost much more. At Grindelwald the Eiger was right in front of one’s nose and there was enough money for it. So the Eiger be it! About midnight on August 10th Charles and his guides arrived at Wengern Alp. Barrington lay down on a sofa and slept for three hours. At 3 a.m. on the 11th, Barrington, Aimer and Bohren left the inn and started off for the Eiger. As soon as they reached the rocks, Barrington, according to his own account, took over the lead. Thanks to young Charles’s delight in rock-climbing, they went up, not by the normal route in use today, but almost straight up the crest of the North-West Ridge, and reached the summit well before noon. On the descent, they followed the Couloir and went on down the slope over which the usual ascent route runs today. They still had a few adventures to contend with. Twice they were almost swept away by avalanches; fortunately it was only “almost”, and four hours after leaving the summit the three men were all safely back at Wengern Alp. Barrington ends his account thus: “Thus ended my first and only visit to Switzerland. Not having money enough to try the Matterhorn, I went home…. Had I not been as fit as my old horse ‘Sir Robert Peel’ when I won the ‘Irish Grand National’ with him, I would not have seen half the course….”

He was a true sportsman—a word with which the English chronicler acknowledges alike Charles Barrington’s exploits and the tone of his report. So it seems that the racing motif as one of the mainsprings of the Alpine urge is by no means the contribution of modern, decadent youth. It has smouldered unseen in the youth of every age, whenever that youth is as “fit as Sir Robert Peel”, and has always stirred mountaineers, starting with the Balmat-Paccard conflict, and continuing through the rivalry of Whymper and Carrel, to Buhl versus Rébuffat among the young men of today. The unique thing about the urge to climb is that it springs from many other bodily, spiritual and ethical motives besides its purely “sporting” basis. It is impossible to classify mountaineering, or to integrate it with a stratum of the cultural life of today. It must be accorded its own unique place, just as the waywardness of mountaineers cannot be eradicated from the scheme of things.

The history of the Eiger is a typical piece of Alpine history. First came this Charles Barrington who, in all the simplicity of his uninformed upward urge, “bagged” the peak, merely because the Matterhorn was too expensive. Just a year later we find here one of the most gifted brains and sensitive spirits which has ever climbed in the Alps, a nature as far removed from “Sir Robert Peel” as it could possibly be. This was Leslie Stephen,1 who traversed the Eigerjoch in 1859 with George and William Matthews and three guides.

The South-West Ridge was climbed in 1874, the South Ridge in 1876. In 1885 some Grindelwald guides succeeded in descending the Mittellegi Ridge, always the shortest direct route between their village and the Eiger’s summit, had it not been so difficult. They roped down the great rock pitch in the upper part of the ridge.

1912 brought the triumph of Science, for in that year the Jungfrau Railway was completed. The line runs for miles in the very heart of the mountain, through the Eiger’s rocky core. Only two windows open out from the tunnel into the air of the North Face; and these were destined to play their part one day in the tragedies yet to be enacted on that grim precipice.

It was not till 1921 that the Mittellegi Ridge was at last ascended. Once again the success was scored by three Grindelwald guides, Fritz Amatter, Samuel Brawand and Fritz Steuri senior, accompanied by a tourist, a very youthful Japanese, Yuko Maki. Thirty-five years later he was destined to lead a successful Japanese attempt on the eighth-highest mountain in the world, 26,650-foot Manaslu. Yuko Maki was the first to forge a direct link, so to speak, between the Eiger and the Himalaya. Later on, it was of course perfectly natural for the names of many of those who have climbed the North Face of the Eiger to appear and reappear in the story of the world’s highest peaks.

1932 saw the last great first-ascent in the classical style on the Eiger, When Dr. Hans Lauper and Alfred Zürcher, those outstanding Swiss climbers, with two world-famous Valaisian guides, Josef Knubel and Alexander Graven, reached the summit of the Eiger by the North-East Face.

Every side of this mighty peak had now been climbed, except one only: the absolutely unclimbable, the “impossible” Eiger Wall, which receives and retains the bad weather as it comes raging in on the mountain from the north and north-west; the wall, high up on which the “White Spider”, with its slender arms, hundreds of feet long, all of snow and ice, seems to be waiting, clawing the rocks.

Waiting?

It was not the “Spider” which was waiting. It was men who were waiting—the young men. They were waiting and biding their time. For now there was no longer a Matterhorn to be climbed for the first time, there were no more virgin summits such as the pioneers of the “Golden Age” could select at will. The last of the great faces had gone, too. In 1931, the brothers Schmid had scaled the North Face of the Matterhorn and in 1935 the North Wall of the Grandes Jorasses had fallen to Peters and Maier.

But what about the great Face of the Eiger—the wall over which the “White Spider” brooded?

Was it really impossible, or was there perhaps, after all, a way to its top?

No one who had not tried could answer that question. Someone had to come and be the first to try it.

And in the summer of 1935 someone came.

1 The Alps in 1864, by A. W. Moore, edited by E. H. Stevens. Basil Blackwood, Oxford, 1939.

1 The author in his original has rendered these words as “resulting from a sick mind”.—Translator’s note.

1 A.J., February 1883.

1 Leslie Stephen, The Playground of Europe.

The First Attempt on the North Face

IT is not only the young who are “ready with words”. The broad mass of the public is ever ready to express a glib opinion about events and matters which it does not and cannot understand. It passes judgment and condemns, giving the descriptions of “folly” and “a gamble for life” to what are in truth “a love of adventure” and “the preservation of life”. Modern science and psychology have also provided a phraseology in support of its criticism and condemnation. “Inverted inferiority complexes”, “Self-justification of the maladjusted”, “Mock-heroism of failures in life”—one could produce a list, pages long, of the expressions which have been used to delineate at once the good sense and the nonsense of mountaineering and to damn it at the same time.

But, are we really supposed to believe, for example, that in 1888 Fridtjof Nansen set out to cross the inland ice of Greenland on skis because he was suffering from an inferiority complex? Or that the great Norwegian explorer and campaigner for peace undertook that remarkable journey simply to serve the cause of Science? What lured him on was, of course, the great adventure, the eternal longing of every truly creative man to push on into unexplored country, to discover something entirely new—if only about himself. In that lies the detonating spark, the secret source of strength, which enables men to achieve the extraordinary. Is it good sense or nonsense? Who can decide? Who dares to deliver judgment? Should the adventurer outlive and survive his adventure, and should it result in a tangible, easily comprehensible success, the Public is generous with its applause. It is only too ready to haul into the glare of publicity and set upon a hero’s pedestal—after he has succeeded—the very man it previously scorned, condemned to ridicule, accused of irresponsibility. Contempt and hero-worship are equally unhealthy and both can lead to mischief. But ever since men have existed, the enterprising and daring men have had to translate their “out-of-the-ordinary” ideas into deeds somewhere between the two extremes of scorn and rejection on the one hand and recognition and adulation on the other. And it will always be so.

Where mountaineering is concerned, there is an additional difficulty. With the best will in the world no one can inject a secret element of general usefulness to mankind into a climb of the Eiger’s North Face. Such a climb must remain a personal triumph for the climber himself. And however many considerations of material weight one may adduce, they do not bear comparison with the risk, the indescribable labours and difficulties, which demand the very uttermost ounce of physical, spiritual and mental resistance. To win fame at the expense of that horrific wall? Of course ambition plays a great part in such a venture. Yet, a mere fraction of the energy evoked, coupled with the cool judgment required, would lead to outstanding success, to fame and an assured livelihood in any calling, or any less dangerous form of sporting activity, you may name.