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  The Germans were given dry warm clothing and after they had been fitted with safety harnesses the long descent began. Gary and François set off and did two 130-foot abseils down to the Jammed Block. Vincent then abseiled one rope length and waited at a stance. Rene sent down Hermann, abseiling with a safety rope on. It was an incredibly exposed situation, but he managed it. Vincent untied him once he had reached his minute ledge and prepared him for the next stage down to the base of the dièdre. Meanwhile Rene was busy sending Heinz down.

  Below they met up with the rest of Gary’s party and all decided to bivouac as it was 4.00 pm. There were now ten of them occupying the bivvy ledge. For a cushion they had snow, which melted underneath them. They were all saturated and shivering. But they were soon to forget that particular misery as an electrical storm of unusual violence lit the Aiguille in a blaze of light, racking them all with violent body-arching shocks. They were desperate to escape from this charged and sulphurous hell, but there was nowhere to go. They were effectively chained to the rock by their karabiners. To unclip would have been instant suicide. The fact that there were bunches of metal pitons about didn’t help matters. Gilles Bodin, who was sitting on a pile of these pegs, as a “damp course” in his personal pool of water, had a series of shocks through sensitive regions. Rene Desmaison was the worst affected: his face was swollen, and he had trouble breathing. Hermann and Heinz, who were beneath an overhang, had a reasonable night. It is interesting to note how these two young men withstood the strain of their prolonged stay on the face. The fact that they had always been confident that they would be rescued must have played a part in their ultimate survival. There is nothing worse than giving up hope of rescue. It seems that if you give up hope, hope gives up you. Another danger for the rescued is the tendency to relinquish the struggle once the rescuers arrive, when in many cases the casualty still has to display determination to win through and get off the mountain.

  At 5.00 am they were up to a fresh snow cover and at 6.00 am they were off. Over the walkie-talkie they heard that the weather was to improve. Mick and Gary started abseiling first. It was their intention to establish a continuous line of rope for almost a thousand feet. While the Germans were being safeguarded on their abseils, the ropes above were retrieved and passed down to Mick and Gary. Hermann and Heinz now made up for their slow ascent for they were expedited down that intimidating face at high speed to a heroes’ welcome.

  Gary was the man of the hour and the press latched on to him as if he were the principal character in the crucifixion. The two Germans were taken to hospital, but there was little wrong with them. Their friend, Wolfgang Egle, still hung from his rope at the top of the mountain and would be taken down to rest as soon as the weather improved.

  The inevitable rescue post mortem got under way in the press. It had been one of the biggest operations of its kind, with many alpine troops, guides and climbers risking their lives to help. In fact Hermann and Heinz could possibly have been reached and evacuated by any of the routes employed and the way they had been taken down had proved entirely viable.

  Gary continued his nomadic life in the high Alps, but now he was recognised everywhere he went. In 1966 he earned some money clearing the roofs of tall buildings in Chamonix after winter snow, and when spring came round he set off for Alaska, still outwardly his normal carefree self, taking the handout of life as it came. He returned to the United States and on 6 August 1969, just over three years after the Dru rescue, he was found shot dead in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. It was accepted that he had committed suicide. Why he returned to the stately Tetons to die no one will ever know.

  Mick Burke and I went on two later expeditions to Everest’s South-West Face. On the second of these, in 1975, Mick disappeared when close to the summit. It is very possible he had reached it first.

  Shibboleth

  Andrew Fraser

  I suppose if you take any given area of the earth’s crust, it will have its tale to tell. What secret does a square yard of battlefield hold or the floor of a prison cell? To mountaineers and rescuers certain climbs and peaks present obvious hazards and can be poignant with memories. The Eiger North Face, for example, is notorious for stone fall and storms, the Everest Icefall for tottering séracs and abysmal crevasses, and Mount Washington for high winds. Each rescue team has its local accident black spots into which team members would never dream of venturing in bad conditions of their own accord. A call-out removes the option.

  Buachaille Etive Mor in Glencoe is a peak which seems to stand as self-appointed guardian over the Moor of Rannoch. By international standards it is not a big mountain; but like many smaller peaks it reaps its macabre harvest as assiduously as its big brothers: probably more climbers have been killed on this conical lump of porphyry than on the Eiger itself.

  Great Gully of the Buachaille is a steep-sided wound which appears to have been gouged out by an almighty bulldozer and left unhealed for those wishing to inspect the innards of the mountain. In summer it spews forth rocks at irregular intervals and in the winter, avalanches. From its sombre depths we rescue unfortunate climbers every year. In summer the gully does not present a rock climb as such, though it possibly has a soggy attraction for athletic botanists. (Winter is another matter entirely.) But in summer the walls on either side of the gully present sport of a vertical and intimidating nature, especially the great sweep of rock on the left, known for obvious reasons as Slime Wall. To its right, with the symmetrical uniformity of a dank tenement close but superbly executed, is the slit of Raven’s Gully. To the right again, separated by a buttress, is Great Gully. Raven’s Gully and Slime Wall both present a challenge to mountaineers. The uncompromising steepness of Slime Wall provides a playground for those to whom movement on rock is an art form. In winter Raven’s Gully presents high-angled overhanging sport to climbers who dare enter between its claustrophobic walls.

  In winter too Great Gully is the climbing Ml of the Buachaille and appears to induce motorway madness in climbers attracted to it when it is obviously poised with unconsolidated snow and hopelessly out of condition.

  This tale takes place in 1958, before the formation of the Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team, the venue Slime Wall, the route Shibboleth. The climbers were Andrew Fraser (now a retired microbiologist) and Robin Smith. I knew Robin well. He was possibly the most promising climber of his generation, a man of apparently unlimited strength, with an analytical mind. In a few years he had created a new dimension in mountaineering, raising the standard in both winter and summer. Sadly, he was to fall to his death four years later on a descent in the Pamirs with Wilfrid Noyce. One slipped (an eye-witness is not sure which one) and pulled the other off. Though the first person to fall managed to stop he couldn’t then hold his companion on the rope and so both plunged to their deaths. I remember Robin awakening on my floor in Glencoe where he used to doss from time to time, covered in feathers which had moulted overnight from his ancient sleeping bag. The down clung to his hairy cardigan, a legacy from his grandmother, and there it remained until the west-coast winds plucked it off and he again took on a human aspect rather than a cross between an eider duck chick and an orang-outang. As Andrew Fraser, author of the following account recalls, Robin is the hero of Slime Wall.

  My account of the climb is taken from the Edinburgh University Mountaineering Club Journal of 1959. It is a period piece, written with student enthusiasm, but it may recapture something of the flavour of climbing with Robin Smith in those days when he was establishing himself as one of the finest climbers of the time.

  A few paragraphs will help to set the scene. Robin was a student at the University of Edinburgh, but his philosophy course left him plenty of time for climbing, the dominant obsession of his life. During these years the EUMC gave him a good supply of enthusiastic seconds; I had an easy term, a tent and the occasional use of a vehicle and was quickly drawn into the summer’s schemes. The forthcoming new edition of the Scottish Mountaineering Club Glencoe Rock-Climbi
ng Guide was a great incentive to polish off the best remaining lines on the Buachaille before the editor’s deadline, and most weekends found us in the cluster of scruffy little tents at Gunpowder Green at the base of the mountain. The rival camp usually arrived in Graham Tiso’s old Ford Popular – Big Ellie, Dougal Haston, Ronnie Marshall and the legendary Old Man Marshall himself, one of Scotland’s great climbers.

  Jimmy Marshall dominated our activities, subtly stirring up the competitive spirit amongst the young tigers, pitting Robin against the Currie Boys (where Dougal Haston came from), and hard men against soft students; Edinburgh youth against Creagh Dhu classics. Rivalry bred gamesmanship. Plans were kept secret. Robin would mutter vaguely about strolling up to have a look at one of the golden oldie routes, if he felt up to it; Dougal and Ellie would talk of maybe getting into training on a V. Diff or two; Jimmy would apparently prepare to sleep quietly in the sun at the camp site. But each nursed his own schemes. Despite a leisurely start, the casual walk up the hill would turn into a race for the cliffs, with Big Ellie’s ribald roars chasing us up Great Gully, and always the possibility that Jimmy Marshall would materialise by magic at the foot of the great new line before we reached it, even though we had left him still in his sleeping bag at the camp. Insults and taunts flew between the cliffs. Standards rose. The Buachaille was cleaned up, and the focus could move further down Glencoe for next season.

  Robin’s writing was as influential as his climbing, and his articles for the Edinburgh University Mountaineering Club Journal have become classics. His own tale of Shibboleth would have been very different. When I wrote this account of our climb we spent many hours in the little cafe in Forrest Road, Edinburgh, where so many of our plans were concocted, going over the details with my crutches propped against the wall.

  This is the story of Shibboleth – the true story behind the sensational headlines in the Daily Record of Monday 16 June 1958. “SEVEN INCHES FROM DEATH” shouted the inch-high block letters; “Hurt Youth Saved on Mountain” ran the subheading . . .

  But, to begin at the beginning. The principal characters in the tale are a certain Robin Smith and a cliff on the Buachaille Etive Mor, promisingly known as Slime Wall. Early in the summer Robin set his mind on forcing a Great New Route straight up the virgin verticality of this fearsome face, but up till June the weather kept him grounded. He passed his time thinking up a worthy name for his adversary, eventually, for reasons known only to himself and certain of the Gileadites, to fix on Shibboleth. He pondered long on the choice and was often to be seen in some small café of the town with a visionary gleam in his eye, muttering the word to himself, weighing it up, savouring its quality, testing its quantities, passing slowly from initial soft sibilant syllable to linger long on limpid labial and liquid “1”, endowing the word in a rapture of phonetic sensuality with almost oracular portent.

  When at last summer arrived and the slime had drawn sulkily back into streaky patches, Robin decided to renew the attack. He lacked only a sufficiently docile second to hold the other end of his rope, so, with glowing tales of a Great Natural Line, he lured me off to Glencoe. When he had tied me securely to the first belay and I had time to study the projected route, all I could make out of his Great Natural Line was a series of highly unnatural cracks and corners extending tenuously up the 500 feet of sheer rock above me, linked, or rather separated, by sections of steep smooth slab. This is one of those spots which drive home the meaning of “vertical, if not overhanging” – a phrase much used on the ascent.

  This is not the place for a detailed technical description, but a vague sketch may prove of use. The climb is 550 feet long and consists of six pitches, each of which is of very severe grading [then the highest standard]. The first pitch is shared with a climb called Guerdon Grooves and merely serves as mild preparatory exercise. Pitch 2 is the hardest and never falls below VS over all its 90 feet, while pitches 3 and 4 are nearly as hard. The last two pitches are more straightforward again and are even separated by a platform big enough to stand on without using the hands, though the exposure discourages this somewhat. At the hard bits a harsh croak emanates from Raven’s Gully, while at the desperate bits I had the distinct impression of vultures hovering behind me, though this may have been merely imagination.

  We spent two weekends on the climb. The first day we climbed the lower three pitches. Robin spent a considerable time clinging to the face below the crux, trying vainly to stem the oozing slime with a towel borrowed from an unwitting friend some months before. He abandoned this eventually in favour of simple levitation, and we made fine progress till he was turned back by approaching dusk and the severity of the resistance on pitch 4. We escaped from the face by following the magnificent flake of Revelation, the climb that runs up beside this pitch, but further to the left.

  Next day we returned by the start of Revelation to our turning point of the day before. Robin contemplated the fourth pitch anew. The sun was shining all around, accentuating the perpetual damp depressing gloom of Slime Wall. Shibboleth was exerting all her subtle insidious powers of dissuasion. No doubt malnutrition and camp life had left their mark on us too. Anyway, the more we contemplated the situation, the more obvious it became that the ideal way led up the flake pitch of Revelation to the left. From its top one could resume the original line with ease. Robin swore it would be more aesthetic to include such a unique pitch in such a fine climb, while I argued that it was in fact the more direct line. And so, up the flake we swarmed, revelling in its beauty and exposure, leaning out carefree on huge undercut holds over a sheer drop into Great Gully some 300 feet below. At the end of the day we emerged on to the hillside above, with the rest of our climb safely behind us.

  It was then that a chill breeze of doubt first struck us, and faint echoes of mocking laughter wafted up out of Raven’s Gully. Shibboleth obviously considered that by the inviolate middle pitch she retained her virtue. We could feel her exulting in her subtle triumph. Reluctantly, we climbed down by a fearful loose chimney on Cuneiform Buttress opposite to review the situation. There was no doubt about the direct line.

  And so we returned next weekend, vowing to prove for once and for all who was master. An alpine start from base camp saw us at the foot of the climb by midday. The second pitch provided some entertainment when it came to my turn to follow Robin’s graceful lead. At the crux he had fixed a piton. This was the only one used in the whole climb apart from belays and was essential for security, the nearest runner being thirty feet below and the next hold being fifteen feet above, up a smooth overhanging corner. Since the piton filled the vital handhold before the crux, I at least was very glad to use it quite unscrupulously. But being second, I had to remove it as I passed. The only position in which I could hold on with one hand and hammer with the other was so low as to be prohibitively exhausting. So I had to pull up to the piton and lean fully out from it with my left hand and hammer with my right while Robin took my weight on the rope from above. There was only a trace of a hold for my left foot while my right just pushed flat against the gently overhanging wall stretching massively on my right down to the last belay.

  I hammered till I was exhausted; the peg wiggled freely, but was firmly pinched about its middle. At last I got permission from Robin to leave it behind. Just before continuing up I gave it a couple of desultory blows as a final gesture – and found myself floating gracefully away out from the climb and in again to the impossible wall on my right, clutching the recalcitrant peg in my hand. Great gusts of drain-like laughter echoed down to me. All I could do was push off gently again and hope to arrive back where I had come from. Somehow I managed to wedge a fingertip in the empty piton crack and hold myself into the cliff, but once there the situation called for urgent action.

  I was exhausted. I could not rest from the piton now. I could not climb on, deprived of the piton. I could not face the thought of being lowered right down and starting again – without the piton. The only solution was an inelegant but quick and effective techn
ique specially devised for following Robin on such occasions. It involves liberal use of rope handholds, a jerky and positive “tight-rope” policy and unscrupulous use of such minimal rugosities as may appear on the actual rock. Any lack of co-ordination tends to leave the second upside down dangling helplessly at the end of the rope, but happily we had perfected the trick on other occasions and all went well.

  It is, however, a fairly energetic procedure. When I reached the belay I was utterly shattered and had to cling weakly to the rock for several minutes before I could find sufficient strength to weave myself into the network of loops that constituted the belay, and could let myself relax and recover.

  After this all went well for a while. The virgin fourth pitch was assaulted and duly succumbed to Robin’s persuasive tactics. It proved a very worthy pitch and we emerged from it with triumphant feelings – Shibboleth had at last fallen, nothing could take that away from us now. There only remained two pitches. We had agreed beforehand that I should lead the next pitch as a reward for my patience over the many hours we had spent on the climb.

  It was the easiest pitch we should encounter, or rather, the least difficult, and I had followed up it quite competently the week before. Robin was belayed to a piton in a reasonable stance, and as I set off he was chortling Shibboleth in a happy way to himself and working out suitably laconic descriptions for the guide book. But Shibboleth is a lady of strong character and she could not take this defeat lightly. She had to be avenged for her fall, and nothing short of human sacrifice could satisfy her outraged pride!