Читать книгу The White Spider - Heinrich Harrer - Страница 10

As is often the case with mountain folk, whose features have been carved by wind and storm so that they look older in their youth, younger in their old age, Albert von Allmen’s face is ageless. He might be in his middle thirties or his middle fifties.

The mountains have been von Allmen’s strict teachers and loyal friends, even if his profession leads him more into than onto the peaks. For Albert is a Sector-Guard on the Jungfrau Railway. He is responsible for everything along the line inside the Eiger, and sees to it that nothing goes wrong in that long tunnelled section; but he is equally interested in everything that goes on outside. True, he doesn’t quite understand the young people who are trying to climb the terrific Eiger precipice, but, even if he thinks them a little deranged, he has a soft spot for them. Von Allmen’s eyes are kindly eyes. They are surrounded by many little creases which record not only cares and the hard life of the mountains, but also the joy of laughter.

At noon on July 21st 1936 Albert was standing outside the gallery entrance at Kilometre 3-8, after opening the heavy wooden door.

It was a Tuesday. Ever since Saturday the 18th there had been four climbers on the Face; two Austrians, Edi Rainer and Willy Angerer, and two Bavarians, Anderl Hinterstoisser and Toni Kurz. Everyone had fallen for the fresh-faced, clean-limbed Toni Kurz, not only because he was himself a professional guide, but because of his laugh. When Toni laughed, it was as if life itself were laughing. All young men, these; Angerer, the eldest, was twenty-seven, Kurz and Hinterstoisser just twenty-three. They had already climbed almost as high on the Face as Sedlmayer and Mehringer the year before, on their ill-fated attempt from which they did not return. But these four would come back safely; what had been seen of them during the last few days gave solid grounds for hope that this time there would be no disaster.

None of those present had seen such magnificent climbing. True, one of the climbers, apparently Angerer, seemed to have been struck by a stone. That was why the party had been moving so slowly for the last two days, and that was probably why they had decided to turn back. The descent over ice-fields and rock cliffs swept by falling stones and avalanches looked ghastly enough; but the four men were moving steadily, if very slowly, downwards towards the safety of the easier ground below, in obvious good heart and without a moment’s hesitation The three fit ones were continually attending to the one who had clearly been hurt. They couldn’t be bad, these lads who looked after each other so well. They must be fine fellows, even if a bit crack-pot.

Albert von Allmen thought of the Sunday tourists and excursionists, the blasé men and the ladies in high heels who went to the tunnel-window at Eigerwand Station and uttered their “ah’s” and “oh’s” as they gazed at what seemed to them the terrifying gulfs and immeasurable heights of the Eiger’s precipice. It was people like those, hungering for sensation, who were now crowding round the telescopes at Grindelwald and Kleine Scheidegg. And then too there were the pronunciamentos of the know-it-all’s, busy weighing up the chances of another catastrophe or of the safe return of four living men to the valley.

They must get back safely, thought Albert. His sympathy lay with Youth, youth generally, but particularly these four youngsters on the Face. It would be a good idea to take a look at them and hear for himself how they were getting on. Allmen pushed back the bolts of the heavy wooden doors and stepped out into the open, as he had done a hundred times before. He was used to the grim aspect of the Face; but that day, perhaps because there were people on it, it seemed particularly horrific. A layer of glassy ice overlaid the rock; here and there a stone came clattering down; many of those lethal bullets went humming menacingly down for thousands of feet quite clear of the Face. Then, too, there was the hissing of snow-avalanches as they slid down, whole cascades of snow and ice. The very thought that there were living men somewhere up in that vertical Hell was oppressive. Could they still be alive?

Von Allmen shouted, listened, shouted again.

Then the answer reached him. A cheery, gay answer. The voices of four young people shouting, yodelling. Albert couldn’t see them, but, judging by the sound, they couldn’t be more than three or four hundred feet above him. It seemed incredible to him that anyone could climb down those icy, perpendicular or even overhanging rocks, continually swept by falling stones; but these crazy kids had so often shown how possible it is to climb impossible things. And, above all, there was that cheery shout coming down from above:

“We’re climbing straight down. All’s well!”

All well with all of them. The Sector-Guard’s heart beat faster for joy.

“I’ll brew you some hot tea,” he shouted back.

Smiling with pleasure, Albert von Allmen went back through the gallery-door to his shelter inside the mountain and put a huge kettle on for tea. He could already see, in his mind’s eye, the arrival of the four lads, exhausted, injured perhaps by stones, maybe seriously frost-bitten, but alive and happy. He would meet them with his steaming tea. There was no better drink than hot tea for frost-bitten, exhausted men. He was slightly cross at the time it was taking the water to start bubbling; the lads would be here in a minute or two.

But the lads didn’t come in a minute or two.

Long after the tea was ready, they hadn’t come. Albert set the golden-brown drink on a low flame, just enough to keep it hot without getting stewed.

Still the lads didn’t come; and the Sector-Guard, this man whose age it was impossible to guess, had time for second thoughts….

In truth, one could not hold it against a public avid for sensation that it should be thronging inquisitively about the telescopes. These climbs on the Eiger’s Face had been worked up into a publicity feature. The Press and the Radio had taken charge of the “Eiger Drama”. Some of the reports were sound enough, informed by the heart and mind of true mountain folk behind them, others displayed a woeful lack of knowledge of the subject.

1936 had started badly. The first to arrive had been the Munich pair, Albert Herbst and Hans Teufel, who were already at Kleine Scheidegg before the end of May. Had they come to look for last year’s victims? The thought may have been there, but their secret aim was certainly the ascent of the Face. They were splendid climbers, to be sure, but perhaps lacking in that calm and relaxation which is the hall-mark of the accomplished master-climber.

They did not come to grief on the Eiger’s Face. They knew that to start up that gigantic wall so early in the year, in almost wintry conditions, would be nothing short of suicide; but the waiting about became unbearable. According to the calendar it was summer by now, but storms and snow didn’t seem to mind about that. So Teufel and Herbst decided as part of their training to climb the as yet unclimbed North Face of the Schneehorn. This was purely an ice- and snow-slope. Conditions were far from favourable. The heavy falls of new snow had as yet failed to cohere firmly with the old snow beneath. In spite of this, the pair tackled the ice-slope on July 1st and succeeded in reaching the summit cornice, beneath which they were forced to bivouac. They suffered no harm from their night in the open and, next morning, reached and traversed the summit. Everything seemed to be going well; but on the descent, while they were crossing a snow-slope, an avalanche broke away, carrying them with it for some six hundred feet. Teufel struck the lip of a crevasse, breaking his neck. Herbst got away with his life.

That was a bad enough beginning….

A few days later two Austrians, Angerer and Rainer, arrived and put up a tent near the Scheidegg, both proven climbers, especially good on rock. As such, they were particularly outstanding at route-finding on vertical cliffs. They remembered how difficult the great rock-step below the First Ice-field had proved, and how Sedlmayer and Mehringer had taken it out of themselves on it. They felt sure there must be a direct route over to the right—up what later came to be known as the “First Pillar” and the “Shattered Pillar”—towards the smooth, perpendicular, unclimbable wall of the Rote Fluh (the Red Crag, a long-established feature of the Eiger’s base). Below it, there must be some means of traversing across to the First Ice-field. Would such a traverse be possible?

On Monday, July 6th Angerer and Rainer started up the Face by their newly conceived route.

What did the wall look like at that particular moment?

The late Othmar Gurtner, the great Swiss climber and well-known writer on Alpine matters, wrote the following on July 8th in a Zurich paper, Sport.

An unusually changeable period of weather has hampered the progress of glaciation during the last few weeks. Heavy falls of snow and cold, raw days have preserved powder-snow down as far as 8,000 feet…. If one examines the North Face of the Eiger thoroughly for its conditions, one is led to the following possibly deceptive conclusion: on account of the heavy covering of snow the lower parts of the Face, and also the two great shields of ice above Eigerwand Station, invite climbing in the cold hours of early morning, when the snow ruined by the evening sunshine has become crusty again. It is possible to kick safe steps without use of the axe and to move forward very quickly in such snow; at the same time it lacks solid glaciation, i.e. firm consolidation with the old snow beneath. Because of the slight amount of sun on the Eiger’s North Face it behaves like typical winter snow. Higher up on the Face and especially on the almost vertical summit-structure itself, the powder-snow is plastered on the rocks like sweepings from a broom. And, in between, there is the glitter of water-ice … this ice has its origin in the melting water which runs down from the mighty snow-roof of the mountain. So long as there is water-ice hanging from the summit structure, the whole Face is seriously threatened by falls of ice. Then one can actually see whole torrents coming down and craters made by them very closely situated in the snow. The Face is at the moment in the terrifying conditions which persist between winter and summer….

As we write this report, the Rainer-Angerer rope is moving “according to plan” up the death-dealing wall on whose actual conditions we have reported above….

The warning expressed in that report was written by a very great expert.

But Angerer and Rainer were no suicide squad; they, too, were well aware of the great danger, transcending all human strength and courage. They succeeded in opening a new route up the lower part of the Face to just below the Rote Fluh, where they bivouacked; next morning, July 7th, they climbed down again, and reached their tent wet through and tired, but safe and sound. “We shall go up again,” they said, “as soon as conditions improve.”

The papers scented a coming sensation. Now that climbing attempts have been focused in the limelight of public interest, their readers had a right to be kept informed in detail about proceedings on the Face of the Eiger. The reports were almost like communiqués of the General Staff during a war, even down to the constantly repeated titles: “The battle with the Eiger Wall”, “The Acrobatic Contest on the Eiger’s Face”, “New Life on the Face”, “Lull in the Eiger Battle”, “The all-out Investment”, “First Assault Repulsed”. And sometimes they even went to the length of puns, such as Mordwand for Nordwand.¹

The ill-fortune of Herbst and Teufel appeared in many papers under the common headline of “Accidents and Crimes”. Many sarcastic comments appeared on the subject of “extreme” climbers and the public, avid for a show. But was it really surprising that people who knew nothing of mountains should make pilgrimages in their thousands to savour a shiver of horror while standing in perfect safety at the eyepiece of a telescope? The Eiger’s Face had become a magnificent natural stage.

The newspapers of July 7th and 8th certainly carried widespread expressions of delight at the safe return of Rainer and Angerer. All the same, every word and movement of the two men was recorded, and interpreted however it suited best (for gladiators must needs bow to the wishes of their public); yet the climbers themselves wanted only to be left in peace and, finding they were not, defended themselves after their own fashion. Many high-sounding phrases were uttered and accorded more weight than is normally given to the pronouncements of V.I.P.s. “We are having another go!” they said. What presumption, after the grim bivouac, which many papers had described as a life-and-death battle, while Angerer and Rainer laugh it off scornfully with: “Grim? No, only just a trifle wet!”

And since these were no men of worldly affairs, but just ordinary lads, who did not weigh every word in the balance, and certainly didn’t suspect that under the tension of the moment it would be given undue emphasis or be wrongly reported, they gave this answer to the barrage of questions as to why they came here bent on such a venture: “We have to climb your Wall for you, if you won’t do it yourselves!” Or, still more in keeping with their pathetic youthfulness and the age in which they lived: “We must have the Wall or it must have us!”

That sparked off a new storm.

In this context, an article in the Berner Bund, which read: “Everyone who has come to know these charming, good-natured lads heartily wishes them a successful outcome to their venture,” did much to pour balm on wounds.

Yet neither ridicule nor solemnity could influence events. On Saturday July 18th 1936, the two ropes Angerer-Rainer and Hinterstoisser-Kurz started up the Face. At first they moved independently; at the level of the bivouac previously occupied by the two Austrians they roped up as a foursome. The rope joining them was no longer a dead length of hemp for them but, as it were, a living artery, seeming to say: “for better or for worse, we belong together”. This was an uncommonly daring, but in no sense feather-brained undertaking.

They climbed the exceptionally severe crack below the Rote Fluh successfully. Above it, Andreas Hinterstoisser was the first to achieve the traverse to the First Ice-field, climbing in text-book fashion with the help of the rope. This technique of the “rope-traverse” had already been discovered and developed before the First World War by that master of rock-climbing, Hans Dülfer, during his first ascents of the East Face of the Fleischbank and the West Wall of the Totenkirchl in the Kaisergebirge. In this way Dülfer showed how to link climbable pitches by the use of a diagonal “lift” from the rope on unclimbable ones. The current joke about the Dülfer technique ran: “You go as long as it goes, and when it doesn’t go any more, you just do a traverse and go on.”

It was this kind of traverse which Hinterstoisser did on the Eiger Face. He had discovered the key to the climb. When they had all completed the traverse, he retrieved the traversing rope. In doing so he threw away the key. If it came to a retreat, the door to the way back was now locked behind them … but who was thinking of a retreat?

Many were watching the four men through field-glasses. And the spectators forgot their criticisms in admiration, even astonishment, at the speed and assurance with which the two ropes crossed the First Ice-field, climbed up beyond it and reached the barrier between it and the Second—the greater—Ice-slope. Since the Sedlmayer-Mehringer attempt, everyone knew how difficult those rocks must be.

But what had happened? Suddenly the second pair, Rainer and Angerer, were seen to be following the leaders slowly and hesitantly. Hinterstoisser and Kurz were already moving up to the rocks above the Rote Fluh. The other two remained motionless for a long time. Then it could be seen that one was supporting the other. Had there been an accident?

It will never be known exactly what happened, but it seems almost certain that Angerer was struck by a stone and Rainer was busy tending him. Presently Hinterstoisser and Kurz could be seen letting a rope down from their stance, which was plainly safe from bombardment by stones. Their joint efforts succeeded in bringing Angerer up to them. Then Rainer followed quickly, without making use of the emergency rope.

The tiny nest in the rocks above the Rote Fluh thus became the first bivouac-place for this party of four. They had reached an incredibly high level on their first day—more than half-way up the Face.

On the morning of Sunday the 19th there were more crowds around the telescopes. They saw the four men leave the bivouac at about seven o’clock. And how was the injured man? Obviously better, for instead of retreating, they were climbing on, across the huge slope of the Second Ice-field. All the same, they were moving more slowly than on the first day. Were they all tired, then, or was it all because of the injured man? Why didn’t they turn back?

One fact stands out for certain; the four men were a united, indissoluble party. Kurz and Hinterstoisser, climbing in the lead again, never thought of leaving Rainer behind with the injured man. The Austrians didn’t want to rob the other two of their chance of reaching the top. And so they all stayed together, though the leaders had frequently to wait for quite a time.

The weather was neither fine nor definitely bad. In the context of the Eiger, conditions were bearable. By the end of this Sunday the party had reached the Third Ice-field; a little below the bivouac which had proved fatal to Sedlmayer and Mehringer, the four men made ready to spend their second night in the open. It had been a good day’s work, but they had not gained enough height to make sure of a successful push forward to the top on the following day. What kind of a night would it be? In what condition is Angerer and how are the other three? The spectators down in the valley don’t know any of the answers. They withdraw for the night, rubbernecks, reporters, guides and mountaineers. Tomorrow will show….

The next day was Monday, July 20th. Once again no movement could be seen in the bivouac till seven o’clock. It was a tiny place, with hardly room to sit down. Once again Kurz and Hinterstoisser began to climb the steep ice-slope leading to the “Death Bivouac”. After about half an hour they stopped. The others were not following them. Nobody knows what the four men said to each other. Whatever it was, the decision taken was crucial and bitter for the leaders, a matter of life and death for the other two. It was clear that Angerer was no longer in a condition to climb any further.

All of a sudden the Hinterstoisser party could be seen climbing down to the bivouac, where they remained for some time; then they all began the descent together. A human being was more important than the mere ascent of a mountain-face. Perhaps the united strength of the whole party would succeed in bringing the injured man down?

They crossed the great slope of the Second Ice-field comparatively quickly; but the descent of the rock-step, on the doubled rope, to the First took several hours to accomplish. Once again the watchers were amazed at the care and assurance with which tie ropes were handled. But night fell just as the men reached the lower ice-field. Close to where Sedlmayer and Mehringer’s second bivouac had been, they camped for their third night on the Face. There could not be a stitch of dry clothing on their bodies and this third bivouac must needs sap their strength; yet three must now have enough strength for the fourth. They had only managed to come down about 1,000 feet during the whole day; fully another 3,000 of the Face still gaped below them. Still, once the Traverse and the Difficult Crack were behind them, the safety of the valley would not be so far away. They knew that part of the Wall from having climbed down it once already.

Yes, but that Traverse….

It would be the crux of this new day, Tuesday, July 21st. All four seemed to have stood the bivouac quite well, for they came down the ice-slope to the start of the Traverse at a good pace; but at that point those watching could suddenly only see three men at work. Had one of them fallen off?

Mists wreathed about the Face, the wind rose, the rattle of falling stones grew sharper, avalanches of powder-snow swept the track of yesterday’s descent. The worst danger from falling stones would be over as soon as the four men were safely across the Traverse. But where had the fourth got to?

When the cloud curtain parted again, the men at the telescopes could see all four climbers again, but Angerer, apparently hors de combat, was taking no part in the attempts to master the Traverse. One man seemed to be taking the lead in these efforts—surely it must be Hinterstoisser, the man who first dealt with this key point on the way up. But now there is no traversing-rope fixed to the rock. And the rock doesn’t seem to be climbable without artificial aids.

The weather was worsening; it had in fact already broken. The water which had all along been pouring down the rocks must have hardened into ice. All the experts with field-glasses could sense the fearsome tragedy to come. Retreat was cut off; nobody could move over the glassy film overlaying the rock, not even an Andreas Hinterstoisser. The precious hours of the entire morning were consumed by vain, frustrating, incredibly exhausting and dangerous attempts. And then came the last desperate decision: to climb straight down the vertical rock-face, some 600 or 700 feet high, which at some points bulges far out even beyond the vertical.

The only way led through the line of fire from stones and avalanches. Sedlmayer and Mehringer had taken a whole day to climb that pitch, and that in fine weather on dry rock. Now all Hell had broken loose on the mountain. But it was the only chance.

They began to get the ropes ready for the descent through thin air.

It was at this moment that they heard Albert von Allmen’s shouts coming up from below.

Someone shouting, so close at hand? Then things could not go wrong! A man’s voice, giving strength and courage and the certainty that the bridge back to the living world was still there. And in spite of the dangers and their awareness of the seriousness of their situation, they all joined in yodelling back: “All’s well!” Not a single cry for help, not even an admission of their terrifying peril.

All well….

Albert von Allmen was getting cross. How long was he expected to keep their tea warm? Presently his irritation changed to apprehension. Two whole hours had gone by since he spoke to the climbers, and still no movement at the entrance to the gallery. Could they have climbed down past it? Could they have missed the ledge, which runs across to the window?

The Sector-Guard went back to the door. The Face was looking grim and ghastly now; visibility was very restricted; mists were steaming up everywhere. Stones and avalanches were singing their pitiless song. Albert shouted.

And back came an answer.

This time no cheery yodel, but a shocking answer coming now from one man, the last lone survivor, crying for help…. Toni Kurz.

The voice of a brave, unbelievably tough young guide, cradled in Bavaria in the shadow of the Watzmann; a man who had rescued many in distress on the mountains, but who had never yet shouted for help. But now he was shouting, shouting desperately for his very life.

“Help! Help! The others are all dead. I am the only one alive. Help!”

The wind, the avalanches and the whistling stones forbade a more exact exchange of information. In any case, Albert von Allmen by himself could bring no aid. He shouted “We’ll be coming” and hurried back into the gallery to telephone.

Eigergletscher Station, down below, answered his call.

“Allmen speaking. There’s been a fearful disaster on the Face. There’s only one survivor. We must fetch him in. Have you any guides with you?”

Yes, there were guides down there—Hans Schlunegger, with Christian and Adolf Rubi, all from Wengen. Yes, they would come up, of their own accord, even in face of instructions. It was a case of humanity triumphing over the regulations.

For Bohren, the chief guide of Grindelwald, in his concern for the guides under him, had issued a communication to the Guides’ Commission in Berne, and to the Central Committee of the Swiss Alpine Club, which had also been repeated in the Grindelwald Echo.

One cannot help regarding the contemplated climbing attempts on the North Face of the Eiger with serious misgivings. They are a plain indication of the great change which has taken place in the conception of the sport of mountaineering. We must accept that the visitors who take part in such attempts are aware of the dangers they are themselves risking; but no one can expect the despatch of guides, in unfavourable conditions, on a rescue operation, in case of any further accidents on the Eiger’s North Face…. We should find it impossible to force our guides to take a compulsory part in the kind of acrobatics which others are undertaking voluntarily.

That was the Chief Guide’s stated position. Nobody could have held it against the guides at Eigergletscher Station if they had refused to take a single step on to the Face when they heard of the accident. But there was one man still alive. They were all determined to rescue him, to snatch him, if possible, from the clutches of that fatal wall.

The railway provided a train, which immediately took them to the gallery-window at Kilometre 3-8; through it they stepped on to the Face, glistening under its coat of ice. Clouds of snow-dust blew into their faces, as they quietly traversed diagonally upwards on the slippery, treacherous ledges, till they reached a point about 300 feet below where Toni Kurz was hanging from the rope in a sung.

There was mixed despair and relief in his voice—still astonishingly strong—as he heard his rescuers and answered them.

“I’m the only one alive. Hinterstoisser came off and fell the whole way down. The rope pulled Rainer up against a snap-link. He froze to death there. And Angerer’s dead too, hanging below me, strangled by the rope when he fell….”

“All right, pal. We’ve come to help you?”

“I know,” shouted Toni. “But you’ve got to come from above, to the right, up through the crack where we left some pitons on the way up. Then you could reach me by three descents on the doubled rope.”

“That’s impossible, pal. Nobody could climb it with this ice about.”

“You can’t rescue me from below,” Kurz shouted back.

Day was drawing to its close. The guides would have to hurry if they were to get back safely to the gallery window before dark. They shouted up the wall: “Can you stick it for one more night, pal?”

“No! No! No!”

The words cut the guides to the quick. They were never to forget them. But any aid was out of the question in the dark, on this Face, in this weather.

“Stick it, pal!” they shouted. “We’ll be back first thing in the morning!”

They could hear Toni’s shouts for a long time, as they climbed down.

The young Berchtesgaden guide must have despaired of seeing the night through. But life had a strong hold on him; in spite of the gale, the volleys of stones, the fearsome cold, he survived the night, swinging backwards and forwards in his rope sling. It was so cold that the water thawed by the warmth of his body froze again immediately. Icicles eight inches long formed on the points of the crampons strapped to his boots. Toni lost the mitten from his left hand; his fingers, his hand, then his arm, froze into shapeless immovable lumps. But when dawn came, life was still awake in his agonised body. His voice too was strong and clear, when the guides got in touch with him again.

Arnold Glatthard had by now joined Schlunegger and the Rubi brothers. The four guides together were ready to fight this merciless wall for the life of their young colleague from Bavaria. The rocks were covered with an appalling glaze of ice. It seemed almost impossible to climb at all. And there was Toni pleading again: “You can only rescue me from above. You must climb the crack….”

It was impossible. Even Kurz and Hinterstoisser in their full and unimpaired strength could not have climbed the crack in such conditions. It was a pitch which even in fine weather would have seriously tested these four men, first-class guides, brought up in a great tradition, master-climbers all, but little versed in the technique of modern, artificial climbing. It would have called for just that kind of “acrobatics” against which Chief Guide Bohren had taken such a strong stand.

However, the four guides succeeded in reaching a point only about 130 feet below where Toni Kurz was hanging on the rope. So far did the overhang beetle out over the abyss that they could no longer see him from there. If Kurz had another rope on which to rope himself down, he would be saved. But how to get one to him? Attempts with rockets failed. The rope went shooting past Kurz, far out from the Face. There was only one thing left.

“Can you let a line down,” they asked him, “so that we can attach a rope, rock-pitons and anything else you need?”

“I have no line,” came the reply.

“Climb down as far as you can, then, and cut away Angerer’s body. Then climb up again and cut the rope above you. Then untwist the strands of the piece of rope you have gained, join them and let the resulting line down.”

The answer was a groan: “I’ll try.”

A little while later they heard the strokes of an axe. It seemed incredible that Kurz could hold on with one frozen hand and swing the axe with the other. Yet he managed to cut the rope away; only, Angerer’s body didn’t fall, for it was frozen solid to the rock. Almost in a trance, answering the last dictates of the will to live, Kurz climbed up again, cut away the rope there. The manoeuvre had won him twenty-five feet of rope, frozen stiff. And then began the unbelievable work of untwisting the strands. Every climber knows how difficult that is, even on firm ground, with two sound hands. But Toni Kurz was suspended between heaven and earth, on an ice-glazed cliff, threatened by falling stones, sometimes swept by snow-slides. He worked with one hand and his teeth … for five hours….

A great avalanche fell, narrowly missing the guides. A huge block whizzed close by Schlunegger’s head. And then a body came hurtling past. Toni’s? No it wasn’t Toni’s, but Angerer’s, freed from the imprisoning ice. Those were hours of agony for Toni, fighting for his life, agonising too for the guides, who could do nothing to help, and could only wait for the moment when Kurz might still achieve the incredible.

Presently the fabricated line came swinging down to the rescue party. They fastened a rope to it, with pitons, snap-links, a hammer. Slowly those objects disappeared from the view of the guides. Toni Kurz’s strength was ebbing fast; he could hardly draw up the line, but somehow he managed it. Even now the rope wasn’t long enough. The guides attached a second to it. The knot where the two ropes were spliced swung visible but unreachable out there under the great overhang.

Another hour passed. Then, at last, Toni Kurz was able to start roping down, sitting in a sling attached to the rope by a snap-link. Inch by inch he worked his way downwards. Thirty, forty, fifty feet down … a hundred feet, a hundred and twenty. Now his legs could be seen dangling below the overhang.

At that moment the junction-knot jammed in the snap-link of the sling in which Toni was sitting as he roped down. The knot was too thick and Toni could not force it through the link. They could hear him groaning.

“Try, lad, try!” the frustrated rescuers cried to encourage the exhausted man. Toni, mumbling to himself, made one more effort with all his remaining strength, but he had little left; his incredible efforts had used it almost all up. His will to live had been keyed to the extreme so long as he was active; now, the downward journey in the safety of the rope-sling had eased the tension. He was nearing his rescuers now; now the battle was nearly over, now there were others close at hand to help….

And now this knot … just a single knot … but it won’t go through…. “Just one more try, pal. It’ll go!”

There was a note of desperation in the guides’ appeal. One last revolt against fate; one last call on the last reserves of strength against this last and only obstacle. Toni bent forwards, trying to use his teeth just once more. His frozen left arm with its useless hand stuck out stiff and helpless from his body. His last reserves were gone.

Toni mumbled unintelligibly, his handsome young face dyed purple with frost-bite and exhaustion, his lips just moving. Was he still trying to say something, or had his spirit already passed over to the beyond?

Then he spoke again, quite clearly. “I’m finished,” he said.

His body tipped forward. The sling, almost within reaching distance of the rescuing guides, hung swinging gently far out over the gulf. The man sitting in it was dead.

It will never be known exactly how the whole disaster built up or what precisely happened while Sector-Guard and humanitarian Albert von Allmen was getting his tea ready. The very fact that Andreas Hinterstoisser was off the rope at the moment of his fall leads to the conclusion that he—probably the best technician of the four—was trying to find a specially safe place for pitons to secure the descent on the rope. It was impossible to establish from Toni Kurz’s fragmentary and incoherent sentences whether Hinterstoisser was hit by a stone, or whether they all fell owing to a fall of stone, or whether the others were trying to catch Andreas as he fell and so were all pulled off their holds. The guide from Berchtesgaden needed all his strength for his own preservation, nor could he spare thoughts or words for reports. It is quite clear that all three were on the same rope, and that it ran through a snap-link attached to a piton. The fall jammed Rainer against the piton so that he could not move. Tatters of bandage found on Angerer’s skull, when his body was recovered much later, proved that he had been the injured member of the party, seen on the Face by those who watched.

It was one of the grimmest tricks of fate which left Toni Kurz uninjured at the outset, so that he was forced to endure his agony to its uttermost end. He was like some messenger from the beyond, finding his way back to earth simply because he loved life so well.

The tragedy of Sedlmayer and Mehringer had been enacted behind the curtains of the mountain mists. Men could only guess at it. But Toni Kurz ended his brave and vigorous life before the eyes of his rescuers. It was this that made the tragedy of 1936 so impressive and so shattering that it will never be forgotten.

Arnold Glatthard, that reserved and silent guide, said: “It was the saddest moment of my life.”

Unfortunately, not everybody showed that respect and reserve which death—and particularly death in such a manner—commands.

One newspaper wrote of Toni Kurz’s death: “Kurz spent his fourth night complaining. When the search for notoriety and obstinate willpower conspire to bring a man to grief, one cannot really register regret….”

Another, dated July 24th 1936, produced the following remarkable description of the men who climb the Eiger’s Face and the motives that impel them:

Perhaps these young men have nothing more to lose … what is to become of a generation to which Society offers no social existence and which has only one thing left to look to, a single day’s glory, the swiftly tarnishing highlight of a single hour? To be a bit of a hero, a bit of a soldier, sportsman or record-breaker, a gladiator, victorious one day, defeated the next…. The four recent victims of the Eiger’s North Face were poor creatures. When some kindly folk in Grindelwald invited them to dinner, they tucked in to the proffered meal like true warriors; afterwards, they said they hadn’t had such a good meal for three years. When asked what was the purpose of their risky venture, they replied that its main object was to improve their positions. They believed that such an exceptional feat would bring them honour and glory, and make people take notice of them….

Another article bearing the same date and headlined “Climbing under Orders” gives the matter a bizarre twist in the opposite direction.

Kleine Scheidegg, July 24th. A report is current here that the four climbers had been ordered to make the ascent. It has been said that they were very excited on Friday evening; that they would never have taken such a grave risk as free agents. Perhaps their records will reveal this or that secret which did not pass their lips, now numbed and frozen into silence.

This was, of course, the direct reverse of the truth. Kurz and Hinterstoisser were at this time on the strength of the Mountain-Ranger (Jäger)-Regiment No. 100 and on leave from Bad Reichenhall. When their commanding officer Col. R. Konrad, who had experience of climbing in the Bernese Oberland, learned of their plans he telephoned Grindelwald and, in the strictest terms, vetoed any attempt on the Eiger. That was on the Friday evening. The message reached the tents on the Kleine Scheidegg too late. Kurz and Hinterstoisser had started up the Face a few hours earlier….

In the context of previous tragedies on the Eiger’s North Face a great many things were invented and written-up at various desks, which served to poison the atmosphere and made mutual understanding more difficult. Genuine mountaineers in Germany, Austria or Switzerland wrote on common lines, irrespective of whether they were for or against “Operation Eigerwand”. They used the language of understanding, humanity and respect for the dead. While various papers were trying to drive a permanent wedge between German climbers and Swiss Guides, Gunther Lange was writing in Bergsteiger, the official organ of the German and Austrian Alpine Club: “I know the Swiss guides, who have shown typical mountaineering qualities in such an outstanding manner. I spent several weeks last year with Arnold Glatthard on difficult rock; a man carved from the best and hardest wood, with enough pluck for three. The Eigerwand guides deserve the recognition and gratitude of all climbers for what they did!” And as a postscript, Gunther Langes published a letter from Glatthard, which summarised the judgment of all the guides on the four men who died on the Face in 1936: “I watched them climbing and can only praise the lads. The North Face dealt harshly with our comrades….”

It is safe to say that guides, of whatever nationality, are fine men. It is nothing against them that they often exhibit a rugged exterior and don’t speak in the smooth phraseology of diplomats.

On the fly-leaf of his guide’s record-book Toni Kurz, when only nineteen, had written a little poem, the fruit of his fine, serious nature. It told of his love for the mountains, of the sober approach to every climb, and of the sacred obligation—

“never to give one’s life away to death.”

To round off my report on the tragedy of 1936 I propose to quote the words of Sir Arnold Lunn, an enemy of unhealthy pathos and all forms of false heroics. This is what he wrote about Toni Kurz’s death in his book A Century of Mountaineering.¹

His valiant heart had resisted the terrors of storm and solitude and misery such as mountaineers have seldom been called on to endure. He had hung in his rope-sling buffeted by the storm, but determined not to surrender. And he did not surrender He died. In the annals of mountaineering there is no record of a more heroic endurance.

¹“Murder-Face” for “North Face”—Translator’s note.

¹Arnold Lunn, A Century of Mountaineering, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1957.