The White Spider

Now let us go back and follow the steps of the two men who, on a brilliant day, had made that sad journey with the boy’s body. For the weather turned fine on the day of the recovery and remained so for days.

It was the 25th before they felt sufficiently recovered to go up again from Grindelwald to their tent at Alpiglen. They studied the Face quietly, drawing their own conclusions. They recalled how Hinterstoisser’s party had shown its greatest impetus on the first day, after which its strength faded badly. There was obviously something wrong about that. It was essential to preserve enough strength to push on just as quickly in the unexplored, but obviously very difficult, upper part of the Face, below the summit. That meant siting the first camp as high as possible and stocking it lavishly.

Liebl and Rieger proved to be real friends of the kind indispensable on attempts to climb high peaks. Although themselves fit and anxious to tackle the climb of the North Face, they offered to help Rebitsch and Vörg carry their loads up to the first camp and so to forego their own attempt. At about 6 a.m. on July 27th they started up the lower part of the Face with the two protagonists. Once again the weather was glorious.

About 1,000 feet above the Bergschrund, Liebl saw a body lying about 150 feet diagonally below him at the edge of a patch of snow. He attracted the attention of the others.

“That can only be Hinterstoisser,” he said. “Anderl is still missing….”

Liebl had taken part in the previous year’s recovery attempts. He knew that Hinterstoisser and Mehringer had not yet been found. “Still missing.” Tragic words, embodying all the sadness which can be felt for a lost comrade, even when matter-of-factly uttered, without a touch of sentimentality. The weather was fine and would almost certainly remain so for the next few days. But Rebitsch, who always kept a silent tongue when most moved, knew that there would be no attempt on the Face for him and Vörg in the morning. The body of Andreas Hinterstoisser had been lying down there ever since last year….

So they spent that day, the 27th, in carrying up bivouac equipment and provisions to a knob of rock at the top of the so-called “Second Pillar”, and then came down again. On the 28th it was as fine as ever, just as on the day when they brought Gollackner down. Once again the four men spent it in bringing down a body. And once again the brilliance of the sun seemed a ghastly mockery of their tragic work.

No doubt many will say: “What cold, unfeeling young men Rebitsch and Vörg must have been! How could they bring themselves to recover two dead bodies, in the space of a week, on the eve of their own attempt on that dread Face? Couldn’t even that fearful omen shake them? And isn’t it a sign of sheer brutal insensitivity?”

Nobody knows what Rebitsch and his companions thought during those recovery operations. They didn’t advertise their feelings. The fact remains that they put off their supreme effort, which might quite probably have ended in success, because they found Hinterstoisser’s body on the way up. They brought it down in spite of the stones whistling about their ears. They carried out what to them was an essential, final act of piety. In so doing they proved themselves true pupils of the mountain school, in which they had learned to do what was right and necessary. Did that mean that they ought to abandon their plans? They had already made up their minds to attempt the climb. They followed their own law.

They started up the Face again on July 30th. Dawn was a many-coloured splendour—a sure sign of bad weather. They met the first storm at the Bergschrund below the cliffs.

So it was decided only to carry more supplies and equipment up to the top of the Pillar. They reached it at about noon. The weather had moderated by then. Curiosity lured them on; they would reconnoitre a part of the route. The rock became difficult, very difficult indeed. This was no place for nailed boots or crampons. Rope-soled slippers were the thing … but they were down below there. This wasn’t meant to be the start of the attempt on the Face; they were only exploring the way and carrying gear up. So both men took to “Nature’s climbing-boots”—bare feet.

In order to save time and speed things up Rebitsch, that master of rock-climbing, climbed the super-severe “Difficult Crack” without threading a rope through the pitons he found in position there. Vörg followed him equally quickly. And so they reached the vital traverse and, marvelling at the razor-keen solution of the problem how best to reach the First Ice-field, christened it the Hinterstoisser Traverse.

They immediately furnished it with two rope handrails, to ensure a safe retreat in all circumstances. After the traverse, they climbed another difficult crack and there found a small stance, protected from falling stones by an overhang, on which one could even sit in an emergency—in terms of this particular Face, an ideal bivouac. There they dumped everything they could spare and started down again. The second thunderstorm of the day caught them on the far side of the traverse. Dripping wet, and climbing down through vertical waterfalls, they disposed of the 2,700 feet of the lower part of the Face and got back to their tent at Alpiglen before dark.

The rain led to a fresh period of bad weather. Days lengthened into weeks. On August 6th, during a temporary improvement, Vörg and Rebitsch teaming-up with their friends Eidenschink and Möller climbed the North Face of the Great Fiescherhorn. This magnificent wall of snow and ice, first climbed by Willo Welzenbach in 1930, had also been chosen for a final climb, before they turned their backs on the Bernese Oberland for this year, by Fraissl and Brankowsky. Many others too had grown tired of waiting.

Rebitsch and Vörg, however, stayed on. It was now the start of the fourth week since they had withdrawn from the Eiger’s Face. Still they never lost patience, made no careless, irresponsible move. The Press had also quitened down a good deal about the Eiger. There was one article in the Frankfurter Zeitung which caused great amusement in well-informed circles. In it a Mr. M. gave all and sundry what was intended for well-meaning advice. For instance, he suggested that the traversing ropes ought to be fixed at the Hinterstoisser Traverse during a period of Fòhn, that is to say during warm weather, when the ice had melted, the following period of bad weather should be spent waiting in the valley and a fresh start made on the Face as soon as the barometer began to rise again. The Zurich paper Sport expressed its opposition to such “cookery book recipes” in witty, ironical terms.

The traversing ropes were already there. They had been fixed, not during a spell of Föhn, but during a spell of thundery bad weather. But it looked as if they were going to remain unused till the following summer.

On August 9th Berne at last forecast fine weather. On the 10th the hot sun cleared masses of fresh snow from the Face. And early on the 11th Rebitsch and Vörg started out on their second attempt.

It was only 10.30 when they reached their depot on top of the Pillar. They moved on across the roped-traverse to their bivouac-place very heavily laden. They were in such splendid form that they were back at the top of the Pillar by one in the afternoon to fetch up the rest of their gear. And by 5 p.m., everything was safely lodged at the bivouac-place. They had even managed to drag fleece-lined sleeping bags and air mattresses up to it. They improved their sleeping quarters by building a low wall of stones, then they stretched their tent-sack from a projection overhead, to keep the heavier drips off them, and enjoyed a precious night’s sleep in the “Swallow’s Nest” they had built for themselves high up on the precipice.

Next day they climbed on, over ice-covered rock and ice, and achieved the difficult ascent of the overhanging cliff between the First and Second Ice-fields. Then came five hours of upward traversing—twenty rope’s-lengths diagonally upwards—across the Second Ice-field. Then the ice-plastered rocky step leading from the Second to the Third Ice-field. Then the Ice-field itself….

The watchers at the telescopes down in Grindelwald, up at the Kleine Scheidegg, were amazed. They had already seen much wonderful climbing on the Eiger’s Face. All the men who had come and had died on it had climbed wonderfully. But nobody had yet seen anything like the assurance and care of this pair, Rebitsch from the Tirol and Vörg the Munich man. Would these two succeed, at last; or would bad weather come, once again, to rob them?

It wasn’t a question of coming; it was already there. Above the arête of the “Flatiron”, the men were swallowed up by the mists. Up above that, there still loomed more than 2,000 feet of the summit wall, a precipice about which nobody knew anything, for no living being had yet reported on it.

The pair climbed on up the steep ice, penetrated by rock ledges, to where Sedlmayer and Mehringer had spent their last bivouac. There they were half expecting to find Mehringer’s body, which Udet had seen from his plane the previous September, frozen rigid in its steps. They seemed fated always to be meeting dead men.

But there was no body … nothing but a couple of pitons in the rock.

It was 7 p.m. They had reached a height of 11,000 feet, and it was starting to hail. They had come to climb the Face if they could, or at least to reconnoitre its upper precipices. A little lower down there on the left was the start of the great “Ramp”; Vörg and Rebitsch started to traverse across towards it on steep ice. Then, suddenly, hail and rain began to pour down in such absolute torrents that their curiosity about the rest of the route was completely quenched. Their only desire was to crawl under their tent-sack and find some shelter from the deluge.

Nowhere could they find a good spot for a bivouac; nor, for that matter, a bad one either. Finally, they were forced to hack a tiny place out of the ice, on which to pass the night. The cold became so intense that a film of ice formed inside the tent-sack owing to the condensation. For the first time the two men suffered intensely from the cold. All night long icy sleet drummed on the tent. Every now and then they heard the crashing of stones unpleasantly close at hand.

Towards dawn the sleet ceased. As daylight came, the mists parted, but not to reveal a fine morning. A great black bank of cloud was approaching, full of menace, from the west. There was only one possible decision: to retreat.

It was a painful thought, to have to retrace that long dangerous way; but it was the thought of self-preservation.

Bitter-cold as the night had been, it had failed to numb or weaken either of the climbers. Down they climbed, rope’s length on rope’s length. They reached the place where the cliff down to the Second Icefield has to be descended on the two 100-foot ropes joined together. They roped down; then they tried to pull the ropes down after them; they refused to come down. It was still the day of hemp ropes which, when wet, became as stiff as cables. They both tugged on one end of the rope; still it refused to budge. So Rebitsch just climbed, free and unbelayed, up to the top again and cleared the knot by which the ropes had jammed. Assuredly, the North Face had not robbed these two either of their strength or of their ability to make decisions. Both were as strong and courageous as on the first day.

The descent of the Second Ice-field seemed endless. All the time, little snow-slides were coming down it, forcing their bodies away from the steep slope, but they both stood firm. They climbed steadily downwards, safeguarding one another with ice-pitons. The surface of the ice had gone soft and slushy from so much water pouring down. It had become necessary to hack away quite a foot before a piton could be banged into the firm ice below. This all took a long time, but Rebitsch and Vörg continued to descend astonishingly quickly.

The next task was to climb and rope down the overhanging rock-cliff to the First Ice-field. At times they had to knock in four pitons before they could fix the sling for the abseil securely. In spite of the bad weather and the pressure of time, they did not risk a single hasty hand-hold. This was an orderly retreat, rigidly controlled; no flight from the mountain.

They descended the First Ice-field; then Rebitsch was already traversing to their first bivouac—that luxury bivouac, the “Swallow’s Nest”. Soon he reached it and Vörg, following him, was still on ice. At that moment a horrible clatter and whining set in; stones went whizzing past his head. Lumps landed close around him, cutting holes in his rucksack; but when the fall of stones was over, Ludwig’s skull was undamaged. At five o’clock he joined Rebitsch at the bivouac.

Both were soaked to the skin. Nothing could be more inviting than to use the three or four remaining hours of daylight to continue the descent. The traverse was no problem; it was ready roped. Nothing would have been more natural than for these two to have been mastered by their longing for the safety of the valley. But neither of them was exhausted, nor were their senses in any way dulled, so as to allow longings to get the better of them. So they stayed at the bivouac.

There they got out of every stitch of wet clothing, wrung it all out, got dry underwear out of their rucksacks, put it on, then their damp things over it, and crawled into the fleecy sleeping-bags they had cached there. And there they perched themselves, huddled together and went to sleep.

Their fourth morning on the Face dawned, and the weather was if anything still more miserable. A final descent was inevitable; but now it had to be done carrying all their gear, whose weight had been doubled by the wetting it had sustained. Both were in the habit of humping rucksacks of such vast proportions that even on ordinary expeditions to Huts their wearers groaned and sweated under them. A descent with such ballast seemed quite impossible.

All the same, Rebitsch and Vörg climbed down safely with all their luggage. First along the traverse, then down the overhanging pitches—a bitter struggle made far harder by the stiffness of the ropes—to the top of the Pillar, then down and down for hour upon hour.

It was late afternoon before they reached the foot of the Face.

There they met a solitary figure coming up the debris-slopes. Was he a member of the rescue-service? Were people searching for them already then, already talking of new Eiger-victims?

No, it was only their devoted friend Eidenschink coming up. It is a good thing to be welcomed home by a true and understanding friend when you come back to earth.

The Face had not claimed Rebitsch and Vörg. They were tired, but not exhausted; they were able to laugh and to tell their story. All the same their tent near Alpiglen seemed like a palace to them.

By their safe return and by the manner of it Matthias Rebitsch1 and Ludwig Vörg brought about the change in the attitude of conservative climbers, of the guides, of the publicity media towards the problem of the North Face. The Face had given nothing away to them; yet they had been higher on it than anyone else and had still come back safely, relaxed and calm. This spiritual superiority, the fruit of bodies incomparably well trained, was the decisive factor. The two men had learned from the tragic errors of their predecessors and had themselves made no new mistakes. They had maintained their strength and their courage alike from start to finish of their venture. From now on, nobody talked of ridiculous, presumptous earth-worms. Instead, they spoke of Men.

1See footnote p. 44.

1In the following year Rebitsch was appointed Deputy Leader of the German Nanga Parbat Expedition, which prevented his taking part in the first successful climb of the Face. None the less his name stands high indeed in its history.

The First Ascent of the Face

THE summer of 1938 began sadly enough, with the death of two young Italian climbers. Bartolo Sandri and Mario Menti, employees in a wool factory at Valdagno in the Province of Vicenza, were both respected members of the Italian Alpine Club though only twenty-three years old. Sandri, especially, was known to be an unusually fine rock-climber, who had done a number of super-severe climbs ranking as “Grade VI”, among them some first ascents. True they had hardly any experience of ice-climbing in the Western Alps. Like all true mountaineers, they came to Alpiglen and the Scheidegg quietly, without any fuss, indeed almost secretly. They studied the Face, tried themselves out by a reconnaissance of its lower structure and came down again. They decided that the direct route, followed three years before by Sedlmayer and Mehringer, was easier than that discovered by Hinterstoisser. But it wasn’t any easier. The fact is that the Face was not yet fit for climbing at all.

None the less Bartolo and Mario started up it early on June 21st. They reached a greater height than Sedlmayer and Mehringer had on their first day. Their courage and enthusiasm ran high, and they were driven on by a burning urge to succeed. They just couldn’t wait. Nature, however, followed her own laws, heedless of courage, enthusiasm or ambition. Late in the evening one of the Eiger’s notorious thunderstorms set in….

The very next day a search-party of Grindelwald guides, led by Fritz Steuri Senior, found Sandri lying dead on a patch of snow at the foot of the Face. Menti’s body was only recovered with some difficulty a few days later from a deep crevasse.

That was a bad enough start to operations on the Eiger in the summer of 1938, but it could not hold up the developments which were due. The memory of the successful retreat of Rebitsch and Vörg, which had been the turning point in men’s minds, was still vivid. So was the lesson that it was impossible to capture the Face by surprise. Veni, vidi, vici wouldn’t work on the Eiger. Endless patience was required and long waiting … for days, even weeks.

Meanwhile, Fritz Kasparek was waiting impatiently for my arrival. That tremendous climber from Vienna, bursting with life, blessed with an optimism nothing could destroy, had already been in Grindelwald for some time, skiing around the Bernese Oberland, keeping a constant watch on the Eiger’s mighty Face. Though, so far, there hadn’t been much to watch except continual avalanches, sufficient in themselves to nip in the bud even the thought of an attempt. All the same, Fritz would have liked by now to have had with him his partner on the big climb they had planned to do together; for one never knows what may happen to interrupt one’s plans. Sepp Brunnhuber, too, with whom Fritz had done the first winter ascent of the North Face of the Grosse Zinne as long ago as February—to some extent as a training climb for the Eiger project—could still not get away. I had promised Fritz to arrive at Grindelwald by July 10; but at the bottom of his heart he had good grounds for mistrusting students’ promises.

Actually I was no longer a student by the time I got to Grindelwald. My tutors at the University of Graz were greatly astonished at the speed with which I suddenly attacked my Finals. I could hardly explain to them that I wanted my studies out of the way before I climbed the North Face of the Eiger. They would certainly have shaken their heads and—not without some justification—reminded me that it was quite in order to “come off” that climb without having graduated first. I told nobody of our plan, not a fellow-student, not a mountaineering or sporting acquaintance. The only person I let into the secret was that wise, practical and plucky woman, my future mother-in-law, Frau Else Wegener. In 1930 her husband Professor Alfred Wegener had given his life for his companions on Greenland’s inscrutable inland ice, when he perished in a blizzard; so she might well have had strong grounds for being fiercely opposed to ventures involving a risk to life. She, however, uttered no warning word; on the contrary, she encouraged me, though well acquainted with the reputation of the Eiger’s North Face.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.