by Clint Willis
A party of would-be rescuers eventually reached the ledge, but they couldn’t get to Kurtz. The young man hung there throughout one horribly cold night; the next morning, he took five hours to rig a rappel with his half-frozen hands. His rappel came to a halt when a knot jammed in a carabiner. He dangled just out of reach of the rescue party and eventually spoke two words—I’m finished—and died.
It was a gruesome story. Chris and Don had it in mind as they gazed at the wall, now plastered with snow and ice. Someone had fixed a rope across the traverse; the rope was mostly buried in snow—there was no point going higher in such conditions. The two climbers turned and made their way back down to the grassy slopes that led to their campsite.
A Swiss journalist phoned the hotel in Alpiglen the next day, looking for the English climbers. He turned up at their campsite the following morning for an interview. The man’s rugged good looks and new climbing togs made Chris uncomfortable. Whillans despised the visitor—soft as shit, he called him. But the encounter gave Chris an idea; maybe a newspaper would sponsor their climb in exchange for exclusive rights to interview them if they got up the face. Don wasn’t enthusiastic, but it didn’t matter; more bad weather followed. The Eiger was out for now.
Chris and Don returned to Chamonix. One of the Poles—a bespectacled climbing instructor named Jan Dlugosz—went with them. The North Face of the Eiger would have to wait, but meanwhile the trio had their eye on another prize: Mont Blanc’s Central Pillar of Freney.
THE FRENEY PILLAR had a fearsome reputation of its own. It had killed fewer climbers than the Eiger, but far fewer climbers had attempted it—and none had climbed it. It stood on the south side of Mont Blanc at the head of one of the Alps’ most inaccessible glaciers; this remote position helped account for the fact that the Freney Pillar was one of the Alps’ last great virgin features.
Walter Bonatti had tried to climb it with Andrea Oggioni two years before, in 1959. They had tried again recently, not long before Whillans and Bonington had explored the lower reaches of the Eiger’s North Face. The Italians’ second attempt on the Pillar had led to a spectacular epic—one of the worst disasters in the history of alpine climbing. Bonatti, Oggioni and a third climber, Roberto Gallieni, had joined forces with four Frenchman making their own attempt. A storm had stranded the entire group near the top of the Central Pillar for four days. They had at last retreated, but four of Bonatti’s six companions had collapsed and died during the descent.
Chris and Don and their new Polish friend, Jan Dlugosz, arrived in Chamonix just weeks after Bonatti’s ordeal. They knew a disaster had occurred on the Freney Pillar, but didn’t know the details. Their only guide to the route was a photograph taken at a good distance from it.
They needed a fourth climber, and they soon found him. Ian Clough, a dark-haired Yorkshireman in his midtwenties, was in town. He was just back from climbing a spectacular route in the Dolomites; he had made his way up 700 feet of overhanging rock, spending two nights dangling in slings. Clough eked out a living as a climbing instructor back home, and had done a number of hard climbs in the Alps. Neither Don nor Chris knew him well, but they knew his reputation. He seemed an easygoing sort, quiet and self-deprecating, and he was eager to try the Freney Pillar.
The four men packed their gear and took the telepherique to the top of the Aiguille du Midi. They walked down to the Vallée Blanche, and spent the night in a crowded hut. The ground outside the hut offered a view of the long gully leading up to the Col de Peuterey at the base of their route. Chris eyed the gully with dismay. It looked like a major climb in itself. His eye was drawn to the huge Eckpfeiler Buttress, which stood in the foreground. He watched horrified as a silent torrent of rock and dust swept down it. He had never seen such rockfall. The avalanche roared across ground he and his friends meant to cross that very night.
The climbers retired early. Chris found it hard to get to sleep. Some time before midnight the door of the crowded hut swung open, and a big man wearing a climbing helmet walked in. The visitor shone a light on the hut book and read Don’s entry, which declared the party’s intentions to climb the Freney Pillar. He bent to make his own entry in the book and left. Chris was impressed by the man’s size and rugged good looks, and by his air of lordly self-confidence. Don got up to check the inscription—the climber was Walter Bonatti himself, out with a client. It was as if Chris and Don had seen a ghost, a revenant of the tragedy that had begun its unfolding in this very room not long before.
The alarm would go off in an hour or so. Bonington lay awake, brooding. The hut came alive as various parties collected their gear and brewed drinks. Chris and the others rose and dressed, sorted their gear and stepped outside. They put on crampons—the snow was frozen at this early hour—and set off into the darkness. Don took note of two lights on the Brenva Face: Bonatti with his client, at work on one of Mont Blanc’s less serious routes.
The sky was still ink-black, with no clouds or wind. The morning was on the warm side. Chris heard the trickle of melting snow. He worried that the high temperature might herald a front that would bring a storm. He wondered aloud whether the party should consider a less committing route. Don dismissed the suggestion. They’d come this far; they’d climb the Pillar or go home.
Chris by now knew not to waste his breath in argument. And Don’s determination was reassuring—the conditions didn’t trouble him. The party roped up to cross the glacier. They moved past the base of the Eckpfeiler Buttress, anxiously picking their way through debris from the rockslide Chris had witnessed the previous evening. They reached the bottom of the 2,000-foot snow gully that would take them to the Col de Peuterey and the Freney Pillar itself. They began to climb, kicking steps in frozen snow, finding their way by the light of headlamps—it was still only two o’clock in the morning.
Chris and Don took turns at the front. It grew much colder as they climbed, and their hands and feet lost feeling. Chris led the final pitch in the gully. The pitch was steeper than the rest. Snow gave way to rock. Chris somehow dislodged a boulder; it missed Don and the others and disappeared into the darkness that loomed below them.
Chris turned to watch, and his headlamp went out. The dark enveloped him; it occupied the void at his feet so that he felt at once frightened and oddly safe—as though he could float in this blackness. He was aware that his position was precarious, but he felt he could manage it; this was climbing he enjoyed. He finished the gully still in darkness, his hands and feet feeling for holds. He climbed up and over a mound of snow to arrive at the Col de Peuterey.
The rest of the party joined him there: Don arrived first, followed by Ian and Jan. The climbers had spent almost four hours in the gully; it was 5:30 in the morning. They melted water for tea and sat shivering on rocks. They stood and paced, waiting for the sun to rise and warm the rock on the Pillar.
Ian pointed down to a pair of climbers in the gully. Many of the best climbers in the Alps had their eye on the Freney Pillar; Bonatti’s recent disaster had given the route new status. The three British climbers and their Polish companion shouldered their rucksacks and crossed a snow slope to the gap at the base of the Pillar. One by one, they leaped across the gap, lurching under packs and landing clumsily on the far side, standing heavily to approach and examine the rock itself. Don took a moment to inspect the view and the ground they had crossed. Retreat would be difficult. Fortunately, the day had dawned fair; if they climbed well, they might get up the route before the weather changed.
He took the first rope with Chris. They set off up the warm, brown rock. They saw no signs of previous climbers. This freed them to make their own way up the climb—through awkward chimneys, up cracks, out onto wide, steep slabs. They could look across peaks to the Italian foothills or look down to the base of the Pillar. The two unidentified climbers had reached the top of the gully and two more had joined them; the four newcomers had pitched tents. Still another pair of climbers arrived late in the afternoon to make camp at the start of the Pillar.<
br />
Don and Chris by now were 1,500 feet up the route. Ian and Jan had fallen far behind. The Pole was moving too slowly. Chris volunteered to rope up with Jan and hurry him along. Don agreed and the two of them waited for the slower pair. The four men made the switch and climbed on. They came upon gear left behind by retreating parties: pitons, carabiners, even a pair of fixed ropes. Whillans left the ropes in place; they’d come in handy if the party had to descend in a hurry.
The climbers arrived at the route’s last major obstacle—a slender rock tower—at around four o’clock in the afternoon. They had been moving for fifteen hours. The tower was roughly 500 feet tall, split by cracks that petered out in smooth and sometimes overhanging rock. They climbed a 50-foot column at the base of this final tower; on top of the column, they came upon debris—a cooking pot, wooden wedges, a gas cylinder. This was the gear abandoned by Bonatti and his companions after their nightmarish four-day bivouac in the storm.
Don and Chris roped up again. Don set out to lead a crack festooned with pitons. He occasionally clipped his etriers to the pegs and stood in the slings to move higher. He soon lost any sense of the others; craning his neck to look up, he saw that the tower disappeared into mist. The mist soon sank to envelop him, so that he felt entirely alone. He was climbing into clouds. The climbing was precarious. He arrived at a constellation of pitons that led in no particular direction—certainly not up.
Don moved left to look for a crack, but didn’t find one. He moved back right across rock that was even steeper; past bent pitons some previous climber had hammered a bare quarter-inch into the cliff. Chris shouted up questions and received no reply. Don was cold and his prodigious strength was fading. There was still a chance that the route would appear around a corner to his right, but for the moment he was too tired to pursue the possibility. He found a place to bash in a piton, and rappelled from this tenuous anchor to rejoin his comrades for the night.
Ian had the stove going to melt water for tea and soup. The climbers carried no sleeping bags. They wrapped themselves in their down jackets and sat on the ledge. Their legs soon grew numb. Bonington shivered and his teeth chattered. He considered the isolation of their position, and thought of what would happen if they couldn’t get past this final tower. He thought of Bonatti and his party, stuck in their storm for four long days on this very spot—the seven men growing weaker as their food ran out; losing strength and hope as they grew colder; disappointed as the summit slipped from their grasp; and then frightened as they weighed their diminishing chances of survival. They had gathered their courage and their failing strength for the descent into the blizzard. They had struggled through the drifts on the glacier, four of them dying in their tracks, leaving three to tell the story and to try to live with it.
The morning came. Chris and the others moved stiffly about their perch. They were now very high on the south side of Mont Blanc; their view was spectacular, and the sun reached them early. Chris climbed Don’s last pitch from the evening before. Don came up and led past him. He traversed out of sight around a corner, but Chris at his horrifyingly exposed belay stance—they were now some 3,000 feet above the glacier—could hear his partner’s hoarse breathing and the singing of Don’s hammer on iron.
Don slowly edged right, toward a corner where the tower met a wall. He now believed that he could make out a route; it would take him up cracks and through overhanging rock, some of it rotten. He climbed 50 feet or so to the corner, and hammered in some decent pitons. He set up a hanging belay and clipped into it and dangled in slings as he brought Chris up.
Don had taken two hours on the pitch. He had climbed into shadow; it was cold. He envied Ian and Jan—he imagined them napping in the sun down at the bivouac site. He eyed the crack overhead; it looked as though it would take small wooden wedges, but he had none. Four of the anonymous climbers from below had reached Ian and Jan. The new arrivals were French. Two other climbers—Americans—had turned back. Don hollered down to Ian, asking him to borrow wedges from the French; after some confusion, the French refused. They argued that Don had taken a wrong turn. They believed the true route lay to the left, and they would need all of their wedges to follow it.
Don cursed and carried on to the top of his corner, then into a chimney that cut through the roof. He jammed his shoulders into the chimney but found nothing for his feet. There was a place for a piton, but he couldn’t work himself into position to place it—he suddenly realized that he was going to fall. He shouted to Chris to watch the rope, and resumed his struggle. Chris had a moment to wonder whether the pitons Whillans had placed for protection would hold; if not, Don would fall more than 100 feet. The impact would blow out the belay anchor.
Don spent a final moment suspended from a fist jam. He felt his fist ooze from the crack, and he went—limbs flailing, hardware jangling like a rack of huge keys. His piton held. He hung upside down, hatless and hammerless, while Chris, wide-eyed, stared up at him. Don was unhurt, and he managed to gain a stance on the rock. Chris—cold and sick of waiting—volunteered to try the pitch himself.
He couldn’t compete with Don on rock; almost no one could. But Chris felt surprisingly strong this morning, and in any case he planned on aiding the crack. He did so by taking pebbles from the back of the crack and wedging them into place, then threading slings around the pebbles. That done, he clipped his etriers—the loops of webbing that could serve as awkward steps—to the slings and then stood in the steps to gain height.
Chris reached the bottom of the chimney and moved into shadow, dangling over thousands of feet of empty air. At some point he leaned back and lifted a leg, and his wallet—it held all of Don’s money, as well as his own—fell from his pocket. It took a long time to waft and tumble its way to the glacier. The crack narrowed and filled with ice, forcing Chris out of the chimney onto tiny handholds that at last brought him to a ledge. A simmering joy that he carried at all times—he hadn’t known it until now—bubbled up in him as he rummaged through his rack of gear for pitons to build an anchor. He brought Don up; they had overcome the climb’s main difficulties.
They dropped a rope to the others, who used prusik knots to climb the rope itself. Ian went first. He spun in circles as he clung to the rope. He prayed briefly that the rope overhead didn’t lie across a sharp edge.
The French by now had given up on their alternate route. They asked Jan to trail one of their ropes and fix it in place for them to climb in the morning.
Don and Chris and Ian and Jan spent the night on a ledge. The next morning they climbed two easier pitches to the top of the Central Pillar. They made a short rappel to a snow slope, and followed the snow to a ridge that led to the summit of Mont Blanc. A French journalist met them there. He had come in a helicopter, bringing tinned fruit juice and red wine.
THE BRITISH AND their Polish friend had snatched the Freney Pillar from Bonatti and his crowd, further evidence that British climbers had arrived at the forefront of alpine mountaineering. They had done so in part because they were simply better all-around climbers. The past decade had shown that it was easier for the British to adopt artificial climbing techniques than it was for the Continentals to learn how to climb large stretches of difficult rock without such aids. The Continental climbers’ tendency to rely too heavily on artificial climbing was turning out to be a major disadvantage in a venue where speed often meant success.
Chris had five days to report to his new employers in London. He couldn’t imagine going in his current state, giddy with excitement, filled with a sense of possibility. He wanted to do one more stupendous climb before starting his life as a sales trainee. The weather had been good for two weeks; it occurred to him that the Eiger must at last be in condition.
He bumped into an Australian reporter down in Chamonix, and struck a deal with him. Chris and Don would try to climb the Eiger’s North Face. The reporter’s newspaper would finance the bid—and the paper would fly Chris home afterward, so that he could report to work on time.
Chris had struck up a romance with a girl named Anne. She gave the climbers a ride to Grindlewald. Chris and Don walked up to Alpiglen and then up through alpine pastures to the base of the North Face, a photographer panting in their wake. They were glad to leave him behind and get onto the face itself.
They climbed without a rope up long easy slabs with an occasional steeper section. The snow they’d encountered three weeks earlier was mostly gone. They moved quickly. They hoped to spend the night at the foot of the First Ice Field so they could cross it in the morning, before the heat of the afternoon exposed it to severe rockfall.
They were both happy to be here, on ground that was becoming familiar. They roped up at the foot of the Difficult Crack, and moved quickly up to and then across the Hinterstoisser Traverse, now largely free of snow. Another pitch brought them to their bivouac site—the Swallow’s Nest—some 1,500 feet up the 6,000-foot face.
Whillans at the Swallow’s Nest
CHRIS BONINGTON, CHRIS BONINGTON PICTURE LIBRARY
They were pleasantly tired. They kicked ice from a ledge, clearing just enough room to sit down. They brewed tea and dozed through the night. They were chilly, but this was nothing like the cold they had experienced on the Freney’s Central Pillar; they heard water running on the rock.
Don by midnight was convinced that the weather was too warm; that rockfall would continue through the night and grow worse as soon as the sun rose. He resolved to descend at first light. Chris objected—they could climb higher and then decide—but Don had made up his mind: he was getting off the mountain.
Their descent was uneventful. They spent the night at the Alpiglen hotel; in the morning they made preparations to leave. A German tourist arrived, shouting that he’d seen a climber fall from the North Face. Bonington and Whillans accompanied him to the foot of the face, and came upon the corpse with its twisted, bloody limbs. The long, tumbling fall had torn the climber’s clothing from his body. The tourist was excited; he was making a fool of himself. Chris and Don covered the corpse with a blanket, and left the arrangements to the local guides.
