We returned to the Hintisberg over the following days of fine, sunny weather, keeping an eye on the face and watching with astonishment at the speed with which the fresh snow melted away. Unfortunately Ray’s run of bad form on the rock was showing no real signs of improvement. Privately I was beginning to get worried. I was climbing strongly and decided that if conditions were good and the weather remained fair I would be happy to do all the leading. Yet in the back of my mind was the nagging worry that we both had to be climbing at full strength. If we ended up in a major Eiger storm we would have to rely on our combined skills to get us through.
As we sat in the late afternoon sunshine at the foot of the crag, sorting out our climbing equipment and stashing it in our rucksacks I broached the subject with Ray. It was an awkward moment for both of us but I felt that we had to be honest with each other. We had been friends and climbing companions for so long that we could afford to be frank.
‘I’m a bit worried about you, kid,’ I said. ‘You’re climbing like a spanner. What’s the problem, mate?’
‘I’ve never liked this sort of climbing,’ Ray said defensively. ‘Steep and overhanging never was my cup of tea.’
‘Yeah, I know, but you’ve climbed much better in the past. Something’s wrong …’
‘It’s a scary crag,’ Ray interrupted. ‘It’s very exposed, especially with that steep hillside below it and the drop into the valley …’
‘It’ll be a lot worse on the Traverse of the Gods,’ I stated baldly.
‘Well, that doesn’t help, I must admit …’
I guessed what he was thinking. The psychological baggage of the Eiger had begun to eat into his confidence. I wondered whether he had thought it all through properly. By the time I had left England I had thought long and hard about the climb, read as much as I could, and made my decision before leaving. I suspected that in the hectic months of business leading up to our departure Ray had not had the time to consider properly what we had proposed to do. Now, faced with the menacing sight of the Eiger at every turn, he had begun to have second thoughts; doubts and corrosive fears had insidiously begun to unnerve him. He had a wife and two young daughters to think of, a business with many people dependent upon him. He had a lot to lose, far more than I had.
‘We can do this, you know,’ I said and he looked at me searchingly. ‘We know what we can climb. We’ve seen what the face has to offer on your video. That was what made us come here. Nothing’s changed. If we don’t like it we back off; no recriminations, no worries.’
‘Yeah, I know. You’re right,’ Ray sighed. ‘I’ll bet once we’re on that face I’ll feel fine. I want to do it, I really do, it’s just … well, I keep getting the jitters …’
‘So? We just deal with it. We choose the risk – not the mountain.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’
‘Look, I reckon we should go up tomorrow and take a look at it. We can put the tent up at the foot of the face and then climb as high as the Hinterstoisser or even the Swallow’s Nest and then come down again. It will give us a feel for the mountain, give us an idea of the scale and conditions. What do you think?’
‘Tomorrow?’ He looked a little startled.
‘We’ve got to do it some time,’ I said.
‘Tomorrow, well yes, why not? Yeah, it’s a good idea. I reckon it’ll put all these worries about the risks I’m taking into some sort of perspective.’
‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘If either of us don’t like it then that’s it. We go and do something else. I’ve got no problem with that.’
‘You’d be sick if we didn’t do it.’
‘No, I said right from the start that it was our choice, both of us. Sure I might be upset but if that’s what happens at least I’ll know we tried. That will be good enough for me. So let’s go up tomorrow.’
‘Right, you’re on,’ Ray said, his expression brightening as he looked at the Eiger.
‘It’s funny how we deal with it, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘I mean, the risks; the way we cope with them.’
‘And it seems to change every time, doesn’t it?’
‘I never used to worry like this when I was younger. It’s daft. We know so much more now, we’re better climbers with superior gear and we were so inexperienced back then. Yet I’m more scared with every passing year.’
‘Ah,’ Ray said holding up a finger. ‘That’s because experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it – that’s the problem.’
‘The problem is suddenly realising you’re not immortal any more,’ I said. ‘I got that kicked out of me on Siula Grande. Never could think the same after that. It stays with you back deep in your mind. It’s hard to deal with …’
‘And I haven’t even hurt myself,’ Ray agreed. ‘Sometimes this really does seem a stupid thing to do.’
‘It’s just probability. Some days you’re the bug, some days you’re the windshield.’
‘Like playing the Lottery,’ Ray laughed.
‘Well, yes. And you know, if you buy a Lottery ticket on Monday you have a greater probability of being dead by the time the numbers are drawn on Saturday than you ever have of winning the damn thing.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Not at all. It puts it into some sort of perspective doesn’t it? Winning the Lottery is the equivalent of approaching a complete stranger on the street and telling him his phone number.’
‘Luckily I don’t bother buying tickets,’ Ray said.
‘This Eiger fear is really no more than a phobia, like being scared of flying or scared of heights.’
‘I am scared of bloody heights,’ Ray said sharply.
‘Aren’t we all? It’s essential. Climbing is irrational, just like phobias. If there is an easy way why choose the hardest? If it scares you why force yourself to do it?’
‘I’m still scared,’ Ray said stubbornly.
‘It’s just a phobia …’
‘Oh, shut up will you!’
‘… that’s why we have to confront our nightmares, our phobias, your Eiger block, otherwise they’ll rob us of control.’
‘Oh, bloody great, that is,’ Ray muttered and stood up, shouldering his rucksack.
‘They use aversion therapy to get people over phobias. So, if you’re scared of flying they make you fly and sort of force you out of the phobia. If you’re scared of heights they put you in front of big drops.’
‘Does it work?’
‘I don’t know but I’m hoping I can get my fear of sleeping with supermodels treated.’
‘Idiot!’ Ray said and began walking down the path.
‘So, shall we make a recce on the lower face, just as far as the Hinterstoisser?’ I said hurrying after him.
‘What? Now that you’ve laid my fears to rest, you mean?’
‘Yes, sort of,’ I said, as I drew level with him. ‘Seriously though, I think it will make all the difference.’
‘Do you reckon?’
‘Certain,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow, okay?’
‘If you say so,’ Ray said in a resigned voice.
12 Touching history
The face was silent, gripped by the icy shadows of early morning. I stepped slowly across a band of shattered rocks a few feet wide. I held the ropes in my left hand, trailing them behind me as Ray followed. I was aware of the undercut rock wall that lurked on my left side. Glancing up every now and then I searched for the inverted rock triangle that the guide-book had mentioned. On its left side I would see the entry chimney, a short corner with a brutish hand-jamming crack at its back. The huge expanse of the Röte Fluh dominated the view. I knew some French climbers were up there somewhere but I had quickly lost them in the vastness of the lower wall. I had heard their voices chattering excitedly as they strode rapidly past our tent a few hours earlier.
As I had tended the glowing blue ring of the gas stove and prepared a brew of tea I had watched as the two yellow pin-pricks of their head torches had dipped and bobbed on the dark wall.
They had moved well left of the entry chimney and at first light I had watched through binoculars as they rapidly solo climbed up the right side of the First Pillar. I knew it was possible to choose countless variations on routes up the complicated structure of ledges, rock walls and snow fields that made up the lower 2500 feet of the wall. I had been tempted to follow the Frenchmen and then dismissed the idea. It would simply put us in the line of any rocks they inadvertently knocked down. I noticed as the light strengthened that the central line we were going to take was a strange brownish colour, unlike the milk-white rock of the First Pillar. I thought no more about it.
At a point where a triangle of dirty névé poked down towards the band of scree that I was following I spotted the entry chimney. Immediately I began to kick steps up the névé, steadying myself with my axe. The snow gave way to a tumbled river of scattered rocks. There on the edge of the snow lay a tattered red shape. It looked like a jacket, red canvas of some sort, crumpled into the shape of a torso. I stopped, feeling momentarily shaken. I looked back and saw Ray carefully picking his way up the névé slope.
I reached forward and tentatively poked at the object with my axe. I saw a strap and then a buckle and I sighed with relief as the shape suddenly became familiar. It was a rucksack, torn and battered, partially extruded from the ice. I grabbed a strap and tugged it free. It jerked stiffly as I pulled it clear. The lid was almost torn from the body of the rucksack and one strap had been snapped. There was a jagged hole in the back section. I prised open the flattened canvas tube and peered inside, wondering what I might find. It was empty. I had thought there might be some personal items inside and was relieved to find it bare. I didn’t want a connection to this object’s past. I suspected it would be a melancholy one.
‘I wonder whether it was dropped?’ I murmured.
‘I hope so,’ Ray said as he climbed up to my side, coiling the ropes as he moved.
There was a pedestal block behind which we could wedge ourselves and sort out the rack of hardware and slings. I kept glancing down at the red splash of colour lying on the rocks, a forlorn reminder of some other person’s misfortune.
‘I know you said you wanted some memorabilia for the shop but that wasn’t quite what you had in mind was it?’
‘No, not really,’ Ray said, as he clipped some pegs to my bandolier. ‘I was thinking of a collection of old ring pitons, wooden wedges, maybe some tattered old rope, that sort of thing. It would look good hanging on a wall around a photo of the Eiger.’
I examined the chimney with a jaundiced eye. There was a wet gleam of ice in the back of the crack and the walls ran with water. Although only short it would be a strenuous start to the climb. My eye was caught by a white plaque bolted high up on the left side of the corner. I read the words of memorial to two climbers who had died years before. There was no indication of what had happened to them. I glanced down at the rucksack.
‘Hey, look at this,’ Ray called. He was looking over the side of the pedestal at the foot of the chimney. I climbed down and round the block of rock and saw another black-bordered brass plaque lying at an angle against the rock. I picked it up, noticing the empty holes that had held the bolts in place before the expansion and contraction of constant frosts had finally burst them free from wherever the plaque had been fixed. There were two names, the dates of birth and death and some words in German.
‘Poor buggers,’ I said, propping it against the rock wall and going back to join Ray. We had been warned about the depressing detritus of shattered and torn equipment littering the lower face but seeing it at first hand was a sobering experience. He looked at me with a set expression.
‘Well, that’s a cheerful start,’ I said. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here. Have you got the ropes?’
‘Yeah, I’m ready.’
‘It looks nasty, so I’ll take my time. No point falling off the bottom ten feet, eh?’
‘Will you belay at the top?’
‘I’ll see but it would probably be best. We should be able to move together after that. Those French guys were soloing.’ I moved carefully up onto the top of the block and reached over towards the crack. I placed a Friend, an expanding camming device, in the crack and clipped it to the blue rope. I was reaching across the empty space of the chimney. The plaque leaned against the wall 30 feet below me. I felt tense, all too aware of where we had chosen to be.
‘Be safe, kid,’ Ray said as I stepped across the gap and forced my left hand into the crack. As I clenched it into a fist jam I felt it slide then grip against the ice-lined rock.
‘Watch me! It’s slippery as hell,’ I said as I took a deep breath and swung my body into the corner. I was immediately forced off balance, dragged backwards by the weight of my rucksack which also prevented me twisting into a more favourable position. My big mountain boots felt clumsy after the neat ballet-like foot work of my rock slippers on the Hintisberg crag. It was a brief and unpleasant struggle executed with brawn rather than style before I arrived panting at the top of the corner. I moved along a narrow ledge until I came to a rusty piton hammered into a downward-facing crack. I fixed a small wire in the crack near the piton and clipped both to my ropes. Soon Ray had joined me and we stood examining the way ahead.
For a moment I felt exultation. We’re on the Eiger. On the north face at last. We had climbed all of 40 feet but it was a momentous occasion for me. I knew that even if we had turned back immediately I could say I had been on the face. I looked at Ray and saw that he was smiling. We had left the dank corner behind with its sobering plaques and sad debris and the wall lay in front of us.
‘Feeling good?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, very,’ Ray said and I knew he felt the same way as I did. Just being there was important to us. I felt a whole weight of worries dropping away from my mind as I looked up the confusing series of walls and ledges to where the Difficult Crack led up towards the Hinterstoisser Traverse. All those names in the book were suddenly real. Excitement coursed through me. It seemed so familiar – the movements, the racking of gear, the sound of the face, a silence broken by the rat-a-tat of an occasional falling stone. I realised how much I had missed the Alps.
Four hours later we had reached a point just below the top of the Shattered Pillar. Although a third of the way up the wall, I had been disappointed at our painfully slow progress. The brownish streaks I had noticed from the tent proved to be a frustrating flow of verglas right down the line of our climb. I kept glancing enviously over to the left where the French climbers had astutely chosen a dry line. We were constantly being balked by the gleam of verglas. What would have been a few easy moves became a nerve-racking, teetering balancing act. Protection points were few and far between. We moved together clipping the odd battered peg or placing a wire in the cracked, blocky terrain. Progress was further slowed by the complicated route-finding that kept leading us into dead ends which we then had painstakingly to reverse.
However, as the hours had passed I had begun to feel increasingly comfortable. The higher we climbed the easier it was to get the scale of the face into some perspective, even though we were still hemmed in by the vast wall of the Röte Fluh. At one point I glanced up to see a flurry of powder snow drifting down from the edge of a water-blackened rock wall. A tiny figure emerged on a fringe of snow at the top of the wall and began traversing slowly to the left. It was the French climbers approaching the Hinterstoisser Traverse. A stone whirled out into space with a humming, whistling sound and thudded into the top of the Shattered Pillar. I ducked instinctively. Glancing down I saw that Ray was standing on a small ledge protected by an overhanging wall. I waved and began to descend carefully towards him.
‘Shall we call it a day?’ I asked when I dropped my rucksack from my shoulders and placed it on the ledge.
‘I thought you wanted to reach the Hinterstoisser?’
‘I did but we’re moving far too slowly. It’s this bloody verglas.’
‘I know,’ Ray said with feeling. ‘Scary, isn?
??t it?’
‘I nearly fell off up there,’ I said. ‘I was doing a mantelshelf move on downward-sloping verglassed holds and trying to get my foot up onto a pile of rubble. It was stupid. There was no gear between you and me.’
‘Did you see the French guys?’ Ray asked.
‘Yeah, briefly. It made the whole face suddenly drop into perspective. I could work out where everything was. I saw the Difficult Crack and I think I saw the door of the Stollenloch, the tunnel window on the right.’
‘I’m bloody glad we did this,’ Ray said, offering me a piece of chocolate. ‘All that angst I was going through has gone. It’s just baggage, isn’t it? I mean, you don’t think about it when you’re climbing do you?’
‘No, but you might do when you get down. It could all come back in a rush. Just remember how you feel now, keep it in your head.’
‘I reckon we’ve done about 2000 feet.’
‘Yeah, but it doesn’t mean much. We’re still below all the major difficulties.’
‘Well I’m happy just to have got this far. It was a good idea. It’s special, isn’t it?’ Ray replied. I looked at the unsightly jumble of loose rock and scree stretching beneath us.
‘It’s more like a slag heap if you ask me,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s head down.’
We roped down the face, careful to avoid pulling rocks down onto us as we retrieved our abseil ropes. At the foot of a short wall on the side of the First Pillar I spotted some clothing and climbed across to where it lay half buried in scree and ice. It looked like a pair of twisted legs. The shredded black waterproof overtrousers creaked as I ripped them free and examined them. I looked around to see if there was any other impact debris. Ray came over and gazed at the overtrousers.
‘No one in them?’ he asked cheerily and I was pleased to see how much happier he was. I handed them over to him.
‘Might have been,’ I said, ‘judging by the way they’ve been ripped apart. As you said, this wouldn’t happen if they had been in a sack or falling on their own.’ I had heard enough stories of how long high-impact falls can literally strip the climber of his possessions.