At last the cloud thinned for an instant, and a few feet above us I could see the vapour being blown by a strong south wind. The summit ridge must be just beyond this last overhang – another eighty or ninety feet and we should be there. All at once my nerves, too long stretched to breaking-point, seemed to go slack: I became aware of all the clangers that surrounded me and was almost paralysed with fear and fatigue. That last pitch seemed to me the hardest of the whole lot, though in fact it was relatively easy, and I only got up it thanks to a ridiculous number of pitons. Pulling out through strong gusts of wind on to the snowy ridge I felt no well-defined emotions, only the impression of having done with a repeating dream. Months of preparing and dedication thus found their consummation on this perfectly unremarkable patch of snow. Who can say that happiness lies not in desire but in possession? The adventure was finished, a page of my life had turned over, and already, staggering slightly, I was swallowed up by the mist.
Up to the time of our ascent of the Walker, Lachenal and I had always been rather modest in our mountain ambitions. The mightiest alpine walls attracted us by their grandiose wildness and the adventurous character of their ascents, but they still seemed a fearful world, hostile to the presence of man. Face to face with the last great problems of the Alps we were far from possessing the quiet confidence of a Rébuffat or the exuberant cocksureness of certain very gifted young climbers. On the contrary, we were timid and uncertain of ourselves. It certainly never occurred to us that we might be good enough to triumph over obstacles so far above the human scale. Our success on the Grandes Jorasses gave us a better idea of our possibilities. In spite of bad weather and of losing the way we had done the climb in a considerably shorter time than anybody else before us, and it is interesting to note that even today, with all the improvements in training-methods and equipment, only five or six out of some twenty-five ascents of the Walker have been completed in a shorter time than ours.
From this time on we knew that, even if our lack of opportunity to practise prevented us from becoming virtuoso ‘XS men’, the frequency and intensiveness of our high mountain climbing had given us an almost unrivalled rapidity on only slightly easier rock, as well as on ice or on mixed ground.[9] Further, we climbed very much better together than either of us did apart. Our differing characters and physical aptitudes complemented each other, each of us making up for the other’s weaknesses.
Lachenal was by far the fastest and most brilliant climber I have ever known on delicate or loose terrain. His dexterity was phenomenal, his vitality like that of a wild beast, and his bravery amounted almost to unawareness of danger. On his day he was capable of something very like genius, but strenuous pitches gave him trouble, and above all he was unpredictable. Perhaps because of his very impulsiveness and incredible optimism he lacked patience, perseverance and forethought. He also suffered from a bad sense of direction.
For myself, I was the less gifted partner on any kind of ground; but I had more stamina and was stronger, more obstinate and more reflective. I suppose I was the moderating element in the team, but it also seems to me that I gave it the stability and solidity necessary for the really major undertakings.
After the Walker we felt that our rope, united by a close bond of friendship, was ready to try anything the western Alps had to offer.
My feet had been mildly frostbitten on the Jorasses, and up to the end of September I had all I could do to carry on with my job. Gradually the swelling and the pain diminished, and by early October I was practically cured. Courses were over for the time being at both the E.N.S.A. and the Collège des Praz, and the weather was set fair. We were in no way satiated by our long months of intensive activity – rather the peaks seemed more wonderful to us than ever through the limpid air of those autumn days. Why suffocate among the fogs and clatter of the valley when a world of incorruptible purity was waiting for us up there? Having seen rather a lot of the Mont Blanc range in recent months we decided to make the most of this Indian summer by trying some of the great Swiss climbs.
After a visit to Lachenal’s in-laws at Lausanne we set out for the Argentine to get a bit of practice at limestone climbing. While Louis took his father-in-law up one of the classic routes, the excellent Genevan climber Tomy Girard and I made the second ascent of the hardest climb on the crag, the Grand Dièdre. Next, we went up the Rhone valley to the south-east ridge of the Bietschhorn, a beautiful ascent of grade V standard that we had heard much about.
By this time we were so fit and acclimatised, both mentally and physically, to living in high mountains, that we had virtually overcome the normal human lack of adaptation to such surroundings. Our ease and rapidity of movement had become in a sense unnatural, and we had practically evolved into a new kind of alpine animal, half way between the monkey and the mountain goat. We could run uphill for hours, climb faces as though they were step-ladders, and rush down gullies in apparent defiance of the laws of gravity. The majority of climbs seemed child’s play, which we could do without any particular effort in half or a third of the time taken by a good ordinary party. The Bietschhorn ridge gave a spectacular example of this ‘over-mastery’. We set out shortly before dawn and reached the top in five hours of unhurried climbing. The sky was of that perfect blue which only comes in autumn, and all around us the mighty shapes of the Oberland and Valais peaks rose dazzlingly above the dreary plains. On our remote summit, life seemed so far away that it might never have existed. Nothing betrayed the presence of man; no barking, no tinkling of cowbells rose to us through the still air. The silence was so absolute that we might have been transported to another planet. We lay there for a long time despite the biting wind, letting the infinite peace sink into us, our muscles still tingling from our recent efforts.
The way down is via the north ridge. After a few minutes we found ourselves going along the top of a steep snow slope on the east face. Lachenal said:
‘Let’s go down there. I noticed it from the hut. It’s good all the way, and there’s hardly any rimaye.’
‘Well, the snow’s in perfect condition. If you’re sure it runs out at the bottom, why not? It’ll be something a bit more out of the ordinary than freezing solid on this confounded ridge,’ I replied without hesitation.
And so we turned at once down the fifty-degree slope. The snow was perfect, with the top four or five inches unfrozen but firm, and we went down together without taking any belays. After a few moments Lachenal called out:
‘Why don’t we glissade with our crampons on? It works very well on snow like this with a slope of about this angle. Armand Charlet told me he’d done it on the Whymper.’
But, more cautious by nature, I replied: ‘Yes, and what happens if we come to a patch of ice? We’d go head over heels, and goodbye to the pair of us.’
‘Sez you. I tell you I had a good look at it from the hut. There’s not a patch of ice on it anywhere.’
And without waiting for my reply, Lachenal let himself go like a skier. I was completely taken by surprise. It was impossible to pull him up without running the risk of being jerked on to my back, in which case I would still have gone down, but not in such good control. There was nothing for it but to take off after him in his daring glissade. One minute later we had made a controlled swoop of a thousand feet. At 11.30 a.m. we were back in the charming Baltschieder hut, deserted as though it had been specially built for us, feeling as fresh as daisies.
I was later told that the famous Zermatt guide Alexander Graven had been up to the hut to do the Bietschhorn a few days later. Seeing the times we had entered in the hut book, he exclaimed:
‘That’s impossible. Those young men must be liars.’
But next day he saw our tracks down the east face as he descended the ridge, and declared:
‘Obviously, if they can do that, they can do anything.’
After the Bietschhorn we went up to Zermatt to try the Furggen ridge of the Matterhorn, together with o
ur Genevese friends Tomy Girard and René Dittert. I had long desired to climb this elegant pyramid, the ideal of mountain form, perhaps the most beautiful and certainly the most famous peak in the Alps. How many evenings had I not spent as a small boy, dreaming over the books of Whymper and Mummery? And suddenly there it was, in the radiant October morning, as we rounded a comer, standing over the tawny pastures in all its sublime loneliness. I was slightly shocked at first: in that soft romantic landscape of autumn colours there was something brutal in the effect of its immense black horn reared against the sky. Never before had any mountain seemed so striking. I was captivated in a moment by the spell it has cast over men since mountaineering began.
I devoured the crags with my eyes, looking for the routes I had so often read about. In particular I sought the ‘Furggen Nose’ whose vast overhangs, profiled against the sky, had so long withstood even the boldest climbers until Louis Carrel, the famous Valtoumanche guide, had triumphed at last. Since then it had only been repeated once, by De Rham and Tissières, the ‘climbing scientists’. I could hardly believe that tomorrow we would be suspended up there between earth and sky, such a tumult did fear and desire make in me.
In the end, however, the ascent turned out to be another parade for the mountain goats. Beautiful from a distance as a woman of classically unfading loveliness, the Matterhorn begins to lose its charm as one gets nearer, and from close up it turns out to be no more than an immense heap of schist wrinkled with innumerable gullies. Nothing remains of the stone flame that seemed to defy the laws of gravity. The dark, fractured rock constantly breaks off in dusty avalanches, and anyone who has known the sheer granite breastplates of the Aiguilles of Mont Blanc, rising hundreds of feet without a fault or weakness, will find little charm in this ruined fortress.
We reached Carrel’s overhangs in under two hours without even bothering to put on the rope. At this point the mountain recovers some power and dignity, but the rock is unbelievably fissile. I have never climbed anything at once so steep and so loose, and found it quite paralysing. But Lachenal, the acrobat of the abysses, was not in the least bit worried. Uttering cries of joy he clambered upwards with scarcely a piton, raining stones behind him. With a nice strong rope above us it did not take the Swiss and myself long to follow up this two hundred and fifty feet of dangerous rather than really difficult rock.
Our autumn campaign ended with this ascent, and we went back to Chamonix full of boyish high spirits. Yet in spite of all our enthusiasm, something seemed to be missing. We had expected more from these climbs than they had been able to give us, for all their qualities. They didn’t seem to be serious enough. We had never once felt (though of course we were mistaken) that anything could go wrong, or stop us reaching the summit. In a confused sort of way it seemed that we had had fine scenery and fine sport, but not ‘grand alpinisme’.
The fact was that perfect training and modern equipment had turned us into overdeveloped instruments for the job in hand. Since technique had thus blown away the scent of adventure we should have to seek it elsewhere. After the Walker, only one climb in the Alps could give us the same sort of emotions: the face of faces, the north face of the Eiger.
1. Translator’s note. In this context espadrilles, kletterscüher, or scarpetti, are light suede boots with moulded rubber soles, designed for rock climbing only. They are usually called ‘klets’ by English climbers, ‘espas’ by the French.[back]
2. Translator’s note. In fact the conditions were not good, and the party arrived on the summit in a storm. The north-east face of the Piz Badile, another Cassin climb, is today considered a good deal easier than the Walker. The second ascent of this was also done by Gaston Rébuffat, with Bernard Pierre.[back]
3. Translator’s note. There is now a third, climbed by Couzy and Desmaison, which leads to the Pointe Marguerite.[back]
4. Translator’s note. This ‘golden age’ is generally taken to be the fifties and sixties of the last century, when most of the great Alpine first ascents were made.[back]
5. Translator’s note. A tension traverse (also called a Tyrolean traverse or horizontal rappel) is used to cross a blank wall between two lines of possibility. By leaning out on the tension of the rope paid out through a piton, the climber is able to pull himself across on holds which would be inadequate if he had to support his whole weight on them. Dülfer was a famous German climber who developed the technique before 1914. Gaps can also be crossed by swinging across on a rope fixed above and to one side. This is what is meant by ‘a pendulum’ in climbing.[back]
6. Translator’s note. A ‘jughandle’, or just a ‘jug’, is a climbing term for the sort of ideal hold that the hand will go round completely. They are also called ‘Thank God’ holds if they come at the end of a difficult bit.[back]
7. Translator’s note. A ‘pied d’éléphant’ is a wind and waterproof bag of light material used for pulling up over the legs on bivouacs. Sometimes a waist-length quilted bag is worn underneath.[back]
8. Translator’s note. Verglas is hard, glassy ice formed by melting and freezing. It is different from névé, or ice formed by pressure.[back]
9. Translator’s note. Specialist rock gymnasts are called ‘sestogradisti’ on the continent, from their system of grading difficulty from I to VI. The nearest British equivalent, used here, comes from out adjectival grading system, of which the hardest is ‘Exceptionally Severe’, or ‘XS’.[back]
– Chapter Five –
The North Face of the Eiger
The immense north wall of the Eiger, better known as the Eigerwand, is the highest, most famous, and most deadly mountain face in the whole of the Alps. Its black and slippery crags rise five thousand feet sheer out of the fertile pastures above Grindelwald, in the heart of the Bernese Oberland. Today it has been climbed some twenty or more times, at the cost of as many lives, but in 1946 it had still only been scaled once. Repeated attempts resulted in the deaths of eight men before an Austro-German party succeeded in climbing it in 1938, after a desperate three-day struggle. Their victory was probably the greatest feat in the history of the Alps.
Even the Eigerwand has now been to some extent surpassed in the continuing development of mountaineering. It has been climbed in one day by Waschak and Forstenlechner, and quite recently an Austro-German party of four performed the almost incredible feat of doing it in winter. Only on the highest summits in the world can modern tigers find adversaries worthy of their prowess. But nevertheless this wall will always occupy so important a place in the annals of man’s conquest of the mountains that it seems to me impossible to put the second ascent in its context without telling the epic story of the first.
The face is composed of a dark limestone, hardly relieved by its few bands of ice. It begins at around seven and a half thousand feet in the pastures above Alpiglen and rises with scarcely a break in its appalling savagery to the summit of the Eiger, at 13,039 feet. The lower third consists of ledges and short walls of no especial difficulty, and near the top part of this zone are the two windows of the Jungfraujoch railway which spirals up inside the mountain. The more easterly of the windows is called the Eigerwand Station: the other, called the Stollenloch, is simply a chute for rubbish from the tunnel.
The first major obstacle is a very high cliff of smooth limestone, highest at the right-hand end where it is called the Rote Fluh. Immediately to the left of its lowest part is an ice slope of medium steepness, separated from a much larger and steeper ice slope above by a vertical wall. Running down the wall between the two is a narrow, icy gulley. Above the ice fields stands an enormous vertical cliff called the Gelbewand, and above this again, where the face becomes markedly concave, is another ice slope called the Spider. This is linked to the summit by a system of steep couloirs, the most noticeable of which comes up slightly to the left of the highest point.
It will be seen that the face presents uninterrupted difficulties, and that the Rote Fluh and the Gel
bewand in particular are major obstacles. Yet, although these two sections are made severe by the quality of the rock, at once so loose and so compact that it is difficult to put in pitons, the Eigerwand would never have merited its reputation on these factors alone. First among several other hazards are the objective dangers, variable from day to day. Stones of all sizes fall from the moldering summit slopes down the great central hollow of the face, bounce over the Gelbewand and sweep the ice fields and the lower crags. They are impossible to predict or avoid.
Less spectacular but also very important is the succession of cliffs and ice slopes the whole way up the face. These latter melt during the warm part of the day and gush over the rocks, turning the chimneys and gullies below into veritable waterfalls. This of itself would be no more than a minor inconvenience, but, as the wall is high and north-facing, the hours of warmth are short, and the rest of the time the water freezes into a real armour-plating of ice all over the rock. In such conditions even easy pitches can become extremely severe or even impossible, and only the finest climbers, accustomed to climbing in crampons, stand a chance of getting up them safely.
Finally, the fact that the difficulties are sustained over more than three thousand feet of rock and ice means that candidates have to load themselves down with bivouac and other equipment, thus tiring themselves out and slowing down their progress. This was another great obstacle to the original ascent. Allowing for the sake of argument that the climb was technically possible, it would still require several days, and to remain so long on such an inhuman wall involved immense risks. A rope caught by bad weather would have its work cut out to get off alive, because at the first fall of snow the avalanches sweep down across the entire face.
Conquistadors of the Useless Page 17
