The Mammoth Book of Mountain Disasters Page 7

  What happened on that Tuesday? What the misfortune was which cost the lives of those four young hopeful climbers we shall never know for certain. We have the sketchy details that Toni Kurz told the guides; climbers can only surmise the rest. The last one knows for certain of the party is that after the railway worker’s call they decided to abseil down the eighty-metre overhang. This was because a retreat over the traverse was not possible. Hinterstoisser must have been injured by stone fall or avalanche and fallen either attempting this traverse or preparing a stance for the abseil. He took the rope and pegs for the abseil with him when he fell. Angerer, too, came off, either in the same stone fall or attempting to help his fallen comrade, but he remained hanging on the rope to which Kurz also was secured, held by a peg. Rainer was above them, at the beginning of the traverse, and must have frozen to death when, after Angerer’s fall, he was yanked up like a puppet and left hanging jammed against the piton. Kurz was the only one not pulled off when all this happened, perhaps he was well belayed. The Swiss guides did all they could, we can corroborate that. There was nothing more that I could have done myself, taking into account the conditions at the time and the rescue methods in existence then. I was to learn a lot from these experiences and they helped us to develop new rescue techniques.

  The police had raised the alarm and summoned our Bergwacht as soon as cries for help were heard on the Eigerwand and we had in fact arrived at the gallery window and were preparing to climb out, as the Swiss guides returned from their attempted rescue. Deeply shocked, they told us the story. We couldn’t believe it. We could only inadequately thank them for their effort in trying to assist our friends, despite the terrible weather. It now remained for us to recover our dead.

  The next morning we arrived at the gallery exit early. We took the same route as the guides had done the previous day. Again there was masses of new snow, and we had therefore to be very cautious. We fixed up a hand-rail, as we wished to take Kurz’s body down to the gallery window. It was terrible seeing Toni hanging free on the rope some four metres out from the face and about three metres above our stance. We considered how we might get the body off the rope and down to us without it falling off into space. From its long exposure, Toni’s rope was encased in ice making it as thick in diameter as a beer mug. We were amazed that the rope could withstand this weight of ice (it was forty-five metres long) as well as the weight of the body. There was therefore no way of getting up to the body by prusiking up the rope. We had with us a four-metre long pole and with a sling attached to the end of it we tried to get hold of a foot, arm or head and thereby belay him before he fell off into the depths when we cut the rope. We tried for three hours without success; when one of us got tired, another would take over, but it was all in vain. We were secured on a double rope; even so it was extremely difficult to move freely on our stance. We therefore decided to cut the rope without belaying the body and duly fixed a knife on to our pole for this purpose. He fell, as we had predicted, on to the smooth slabs a few metres below us. The ice broke off him and, separated from the rope, he shot down over the rock and snow runnels until he disappeared from our view. We would not be able to reach him until the following day in any case, but we wanted next to attempt to recover Rainer who was still hanging frozen above the great overhang. We crossed under the overhang a little further to the right and were then able to see him.

  We knew the whole business was being watched through the telescopes at Kleine Scheidegg. On that lonely stance we discussed all possible aspects of recovering Rainer’s body, but had to retrace our steps to the gallery entrance as we were under constant threat from falling stones. We knew it would not be feasible to effect the recovery in these conditions. Added to which, the dead man was completely frozen into the ice; once it thawed perhaps he would fall down unaided. So, wait a bit, we thought. There were now three bodies at the foot of the face; they would need to be recovered from Alpiglen.

  In the evening we sat with the Swiss guides and Fritz von Almen, the owner of Scheidegg Hotel. It could be seen with all of them, in word or gesture, these tragic events had left their mark. Fritz von Almen told us a bit more about the route, with the aid of his big telescope, which was invaluable. Early on Friday we climbed up to the lower section of the North Face. This consisted of a whole series of steep snowfields with rocky buttresses in between and avalanche-scoured gullies. Everything had to be searched. But our diligence was rewarded – we found one of the fallen men, whom we later established to be Angerer, hanging in a steep gully. We wrapped him in a casualty bag and carried him down. The rest of the men not required for the transport continued searching. They found various bits of camera equipment and a watch. This was in the main gully into which everything from above is channelled. It was therefore where Toni Kurz must have shot down when we cut him free. Checking the fall-line, we saw a huge marginal crevasse at the bottom which in places was completely filled with newly avalanched snow. The parts of the crevasse that were still open were under constant bombardment from falling stones. So we had to abandon this to await better weather conditions before we could search it.

  We did, however, find a second body that day. It turned out to be Sedlmayr from the previous year’s attempt. So the mystery was solved; the two men must have been swept from their bivouac site by avalanches and carried down. But of his companion we found nothing.

  Several days’ searching went by and it was decided we could have another attempt at bringing down Rainer who was still frozen up in the crack. Our party was six strong; we climbed out of the gallery on to the face with enough rope to cross the Hinterstoisser Traverse at the end of which Rainer was suspended. We had to do the climb the same way as the climbers had done it. Steep sections of the face with broken rock led to the so-called Difficult Crack, which is very overhanging. The stone fall danger in this part of the face is considerable, for the stones come down in free flight from 400–500 metres above, over the Rote Fluh.

  When we were standing on the band from which the Hinterstoisser Traverse drops down leftwards, we saw Rainer very clearly forty metres below. The ice had completely cleared. It took a while before we had four men up there and were all ready for the abseil – suddenly there was a strange noise and we couldn’t believe our eyes – Rainer and the ice beneath him fell into the depths.

  Shattered by this sight, we took a while to recover our senses. Actually we were relieved because who knows whether the recovery would have been completed safely? We now abseiled, and were very pleased to get back to the safety of the gallery window without incident, except for the loss of some ropes. We left them in place because they had been exposed to stone fall, so would be no more use for rescues, and they were used by later parties retreating from the Traverse.

  During the following days we were again at the foot of the face and recovered Rainer from one of the marginal crevasses. We were unable to find Toni Kurz. There was still too much avalanche debris in the crevasses. We decided to postpone that search for a later date. In fact the conditions were such that his body wasn’t recovered until the following year.

  In a sense we left Grindelwald without success – we were not able to help our friends, but at least we were able to recover their bodies from the face and that was some comfort to their relatives. But what was as important was that none of our team suffered any mishap. We had been lucky, considering the conditions. In my mind it was as if our good intentions were rewarded with good luck.

  When we got back home we kept ourselves prepared and equipped to rescue other climbers from the Eiger. For we knew that this face would feature more and more in the sights of good climbers; we were proved right.

  The Eigerwand, 1957–62

  Hamish MacInnes and Brian Nally

  The first British ascent of the North Face of the Eiger was a prize plum in our mountaineering orchard. I was well aware of this and during the spring of 1957 I contacted Chris Bonington who was then serving in a tank regiment in Germany to see if he was interested in att
empting the climb. We were old friends and though I was aware that he hadn’t climbed in the Alps before, I said in my letter to him, “Where better could you get such a fitting introduction to these Alps?” He wasn’t totally convinced, but his spirit of adventure outweighed his common sense and we met in Grindelwald in July, 1957. Meantime, he had done a bit of Eiger research and was somewhat perturbed when he discovered that the wall then had only twelve ascents and had claimed fourteen lives. Anyhow, I managed to allay his fears, saying the climb was in the bag and, clutching a postcard with the route marked on it – our only guide – we set off. He didn’t have much equipment and I gave him the plastic cover off my motorcycle to serve as a bivouac sack.

  Our first acquaintance with the Eigerwand was of a passing nature, for after setting up a bivouac on the lower wall, threatening cloud caused us to scurry like squirrels for the valley and spend the remainder of our climbing holiday on the Aiguilles of Chamonix.

  A short time after that abortive pioneering attempt, where we barely tickled the soles of the Eiger, a rescue swung into operation on the North Face which was a further instalment on this wide screen where Death invariably plays a principal part. It is a production where a “hit” is a collision with a falling stone. The rescue of Claudio Corti from the Exit Cracks of the Spider confirmed Ludwig Gramminger’s faith in the use of steel cables for big wall rescues.

  Ludwig’s Bergwacht joined forces with Erich Friedli, a Swiss rescue team leader who shared a similar outlook to rescue work and techniques to Gramminger. Erich had assembled a formidable band of internationally known climbers on the summit when the Bergwacht arrived and the winch equipment was set in position for the very long operation down the face. Alfred Hellepart was lowered 320 metres on a thin steel wire to the trapped climbers. He reached Corti and discovered that Corti’s companion, Stefano Longhi, was also alive 100 metres away. Hellepart succeeded in getting Corti up on his back, hauled from the top by the winch wire. But when Lionel Terray took over Hellepart’s role and went down for Longhi, the radio failed and the attempt had to be abandoned. Longhi died, as did the other two men that had joined forces with them on the climb, two young Wurttemberg climbers, Gunther Nothdufft and Franz Mayer. After Longhi got injured, they had pressed on for help, leaving their vital bivouac sack with Corti who had exhausted himself trying to help his companion. After completing the climb, the two German climbers had died on the descent on the West Face of the mountain. Their bodies were not found until four years later.

  I have avoided writing, or rather using a full account of this rescue as it has been well documented elsewhere, often with more than its fair share of hypothetical speculation on the actions and motives of the participants. The last words should perhaps be from Alfred Hellepart, for this quiet-spoken member of the Bergwacht was surely the hero of the operation. After a hellish night out on the descent with Corti, where a bivouac tent was torn to shreds by the wind, they continued down the following morning.

  Alfred later wrote:

  Our small group of German friends stumbled down that last rock buttress to where the others were already waiting. Amongst those there were some who were more interested in making capital out of the whole business than in helping. We didn’t want to have anything to do with these people. Up above we had become aware of something quite different, sacred to us, no one could rob us of these memories. We could understand each other without lengthy dialogue. This was apparent as we pressed hands and looked each other in the eye as we bade goodbye. May it always be so in the mountains.

  Though I returned to the Eiger hopeful of the first British ascent, it was not to be. Like so many before me, heavy snow and bad weather made any attempt out of the question. However, Chris persevered and on one occasion with Don Whillans rescued Brian Nally from the Second Icefield. Nally’s story as narrated in an interview for the BBC documentary, “The Climb Up To Hell”, is one of the most moving in the annals of mountaineering. Brian had teamed up with a student, Barry Brewster, a highly proficient rock climber, though he didn’t have a great deal of snow and ice experience. The previous year Brian had made the first British ascent of the Matterhorn North Face with a Scotsman, Tom Carruthers. Tom was later killed on the Eiger. I knew Tom well, he used to sleep under a bridge close to my house when climbing in Glencoe. There was so little room under this bridge that its occupants had to crawl about. He and his friends who frequented this doss were known as the “Bendie-Bendie Boys”. Brian Nally was a painter and like Barry Brewster came from southern England. Brian describes the climb:

  We approached the Hinterstoisser; it’s not a very difficult move, but it’s got quite a strange psychological effect. The Hinterstoisser is the Rubicon of this mountain. In theory, if you leave a rope on it to traverse, you can come back across, but in actual fact only a handful of men have crossed it and come back. No British party had been across. It was a setback and it happened to be my turn to lead. I was a little wary about it. I looked at the weather, almost hoping for it to be bad enough for an excuse to turn back. But it was clear. I looked down at Barry and he simply said “Best of luck, Brian,” and that was it. That was the decision made and, once it was, everything settled into place. We went across, through this torrential waterfall, up a chimney and into the Swallow’s Nest. We reached there just before nightfall and everything so far was going to plan. We were happy that night because the decision had been made, everything now was just to get to the summit. It didn’t freeze that night, but we didn’t worry too much about that.

  After that bivouac they continued up on to the Second Icefield the next day.

  We got to the Second Icefield; we knew it was a long one, but the distance was enormous from where we were to the first rocks. It was late now and the Second Icefield was water, ice and slush. It was in very bad condition. We resolved to plough straight across rather than go for the rim. We decided to cut steps, firstly because the condition of the icefield wasn’t good and, secondly, in case we had to retreat. So we ploughed across and the stones started coming down; we’d been through stone fall many times before, but we hadn’t seen anything like this. The icefield was raked in every quarter and then suddenly all Hell would break loose. We turned in to face the ice and tried to dodge the big ones and hope the little ones wouldn’t catch us, though we got hit several times. But we just pressed on and on. The icefield is incredible, it’s endless . . . We were glad that the Second Icefield was over.

  Barry said, “There’s a pitch of Grade Five up above.” (This is one grade below the highest standard.) Now I belayed to a ring peg and watched him as he set off up his pitch, the start of the Flatiron. Higher up Barry put in two other pitons then he went out of sight . . .

  Everything went quiet for a bit. The rope stopped, then paid out again. Suddenly, from high above I heard him yell “Stones!” Instinctively, I dodged and kept close to the rock and at the same time I heard my name sharp and clear and I looked up and Barry was falling backwards through the air. He went hurtling past me, the two top pitons pulled out. He crashed on to the ice about a hundred feet below. For a moment I just stood there staring at the ring piton, not believing that it could have held and then I looked down at him. He was upside down on the ice. He wasn’t moving. I stayed there for a minute and then I put a piton in and tied the rope to it and unroped, climbed up to the ring piton and hit it back in. Then I climbed down to Barry; he was very badly injured and unconscious. From the position of his body I came to the conclusion that his back was broken.

  I formed a harness in the rope, took all the weight off his chest and hung him in the sling. Normally, it would have been quite a comfortable position. The stones were still coming so I started to hack out a platform and this took a long time. It had to be long and wide enough for his full length. I was grateful that he was unconscious, hadn’t got any pain. When this platform was completed, I pulled him back into it, secured him and put him in the sleeping bag. Then I took my crash helmet off and put it on him and . . . and then tried
to form a barrier between him and the upward slope. It was late in the afternoon by then and everything looked . . . everything was lost. It wasn’t a question of just one of us being injured. This was the Eiger and it was both of us, you see. Once or twice I went up to the rock where I’d left some gear, brought it back and settled down for the night. I sort of placed myself between him and the upward slope and just waited for the morning. Stones were relentless. We were immediately in a path of one of the shutes that has a direct line to the summit where all the stones funnel down. We couldn’t have moved to the right or to the left. We just had to stay where we were.