‘It won’t budge,’ Ray muttered as he heaved down on the green rope holding the knot joining the two ropes.
‘Here, let me help.’ I reached over and added my weight to the rope. It stretched, slipped a few inches, then held fast.
‘Bugger.’ Ray eased the pressure on the rope. ‘That’s the last thing we need.’
‘I’ve put this cam on the rope,’ I said, indicating the small brass camming device gripping the rope tightly. ‘If I stand in this sling I can jump off the ledge and put my entire weight onto it.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘I’ll tie into the other bloody rope. I’m not a complete idiot.’ I tied off a length of the blue rope to the piton and clipped it to my waist. ‘The sudden impact might rip it free. I reckon it’s jammed in that thin crack at the top of the gully.’
‘You’ll go flying,’ Ray pointed out helpfully.
‘Thanks. I know,’ I said, glancing down into the darkness below. I checked the blue rope was secure. ‘OK. Let’s pull as much stretch down as we can.’
When we could gain no more rope I took a deep breath and jumped off the ledge with the sling wrapped around my boot, tensing for the sudden jerk and the fall. I bounced in the air a foot lower than the ledge, feeling rather stupid – and Ray burst out laughing.
‘Ah, well, bugger that for a game of soldiers. I’ll climb up the green. You belay me on the blue.’
‘It might pull free.’
‘I’ll clip the pegs in the crack as I go.’
‘It’s not worth it,’ Ray said firmly. ‘It’s just a rope.’
‘It’s brand new,’ I complained.
‘It’s still not worth your life,’ Ray said. ‘Leave it, youth.’ He let go of the green rope and it sprang up into the darkness out of reach. He untied the knot, releasing the blue rope.
‘If we go straight down we should be able to reach the stance where we made that long traverse to the left,’ Ray pointed out. ‘After that we won’t need a double rope.’
‘Well, we haven’t got one now, have we?’ I said, sharply. ‘Is it more than 30 metres?’ I added, peering down into the darkness.
‘You’ll find out,’ Ray said confidently as he threaded the single blue rope through the belay, knotted the ends and dropped the doubled coils down the wall below. They disappeared into the darkness. I peered anxiously into the depths, whipping the rope out with my hands, trying to spot the knot. I could see nothing.
Forty feet from the end of the ropes I caught sight of a snow-covered ledge. The knot swung disconcertingly high above the snow. As my feet touched it the rope was at full stretch and I struggled to release it from the belay plate. I glanced along the ledge which ran to the left. It was about 18 inches wide and covered with wet snow lying on top of loose scree. Gripping one end of the rope I searched for a piton or a crack into which I could place a wire. I was sure that there was a belay somewhere near me but in the darkness and the flickering light of my head torch I could find nothing. The rock was compact and featureless. Reluctantly, I let the rope go and it whipped out of reach. I shouted up for Ray to come down and then stood still, keenly aware of the gulf behind me. I knew that there was reasonably easy ground from where I stood leading to the door of the Stollenloch tunnel three or four hundred feet horizontally to my right. We were nearly there. I began to relax.
With heart-stopping abruptness a rock the size of a football thudded into the snow ledge 6 feet to my right. It hurtled off into the night. I listened as it cracked down the wall, dislodging a flurry of smaller rocks. Fright galvanised me into action and I frantically searched the rock wall again, spotted a hairline crack, and pounded a knife-blade piton into it until the eye was hard against the rock. It was impressive how fear could make previously invisible things suddenly apparent. I clipped myself securely to it just as a shower of stones rushed down from the wall above, striking me painfully on the arm.
Ray came swiftly down the ropes and landed beside me on the stretch.
‘That’s a piece of luck,’ he said, as he released the rope and pulled one end down to him. ‘I didn’t think it would reach.’
‘Thanks for telling me,’ I said and he laughed.
‘Did you hear that rock-fall?’ Ray said. ‘I was hit on the shoulder.’
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
‘I’m fine, just bruised.’ He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Let’s keep going.’
At ten o’clock I traversed across the broken, snowy ledge towards the yellow rock wall at the base of the Röte Fluh. My head-torch beam picked out the dark shadow of the Stollenloch door set into the rock. Clipping the bolts by the door I dropped my rucksack to the floor and shouted for Ray to come across. As he stepped up onto the ledge outside the door I reached an arm around him and gave him an uncharacteristic hug, feeling slightly self-conscious. I thought of Tat and knew he would have squeezed the life out of me in the same circumstances. Ray was grinning broadly and clapping me on the back.
‘Well done, kid. Well done,’ he said.
‘And you. I’ll ring Simon, let him know we’re safe.’
I had to extend two 8-foot slings from the bolt and hang far out over the face before I received any reception. Even then I kept getting cut off just as I heard Simon answer the phone. After five attempts I pulled myself back into the doorway.
‘Come on, kid, forget it. Let’s go,’ Ray said.
‘I can’t,’ I replied. ‘Simon heard me trying to get through. If we don’t tell him that we’re safe he might think we’re in trouble and call out a rescue.’
‘Damn.’
‘Hi, Simon? Is that you?’ I said, as the phone rang.
‘Joe? Are you guys OK?’ His voice sounded strained and concerned. He had endured a long, bad day.
‘Simon, we’re fine. We’re in the Stollenloch. We’re safe.’
‘That’s great news. We were getting worried. It’s been four hours …’
‘It wasn’t easy, mate. Rock-fall, lost ropes, darkness. You know the score. Listen, we’re heading down the tunnel now. Should be with you by eleven, I reckon.’
‘Good. Hanspeter says the door has been left open for you. We’ve got food here for you. We’ll be waiting.’
‘Hey, get some beers in for us before the bar closes will you?’
‘We got the lot, don’t worry.’
‘What about Heinz and Scott and the boys? Did they get off the wall?’
‘Yeah, they’re safe, bivouacking on the Mittellegi Ridge right now.’
‘That’s grand news. See you soon.’ I closed the phone and smiled at Ray. ‘Let’s go, Ray. It’s over.’
We hurriedly stuffed our harnesses and hardware into our sacks, coiled the rope and clipped our axes and crampons onto their holders. As Ray heaved at the wooden door, releasing a latch, it suddenly burst open with the force of the updraught, almost pushing him off balance. I chuckled as he stumbled and grabbed at the walls for support. Squeezing through the trap door, we emerged into a strange greenish light faintly illuminating the tunnel. We pulled the door shut and dropped the latch and the wind instantly stopped. It was silent, calm and warm. I stared at an incongruous green neon sign advertising beer, chocolate or something inane and then stared at the wooden door. One moment we were exposed to rock-fall on the north face of the Eiger, next minute we were reading adverts.
‘Bizarre,’ I muttered. ‘It’s almost as if today never happened.’
‘I know,’ Ray said, as he turned to walk down the narrow boardwalk running alongside the rack railway. ‘It would be funny but for those lads.’
The tunnel seemed to go on for ever as we tramped down at a toe-bashing angle, leaving the green neon glow behind. At one point Ray slipped on some grease stain on the wooden boardwalk and crashed onto the rails. His torch flickered out. He cursed and struggled to his feet. It was pitch black. It would have been a nightmare without our torches. Half an hour later we trudged out of the tunnel entrance and walked through the deserted Eiger Gletscher statio
n. The lights of the hotels at Kleine Scheidegg sparkled half an hour’s walk below us. Suddenly I felt weary. It hadn’t been a hard day, but knowing during our descent that two men lay broken and lifeless on the rocks beneath us had got to me. I let Ray stride ahead and followed slowly, thinking about the mountain. I wondered whether it was worth the risks. I knew in my heart that I still wanted to climb the face but some of my romantic idealism about the route had been destroyed.
They had known the risks, I told myself. We all do. Nothing’s changed – not for us anyway. When we came around the curved ridge leading down to Kleine Scheidegg I looked back at the vast black amphitheatre silhouetted against a star-lit night sky. In its centre the gallery windows’ light glowed gold from the black depths of the wall. I wished we were still up there, regretting our decision to retreat. It had been there for the taking. We might not get another chance. I wondered whether Ray still wanted to try again. Maybe not this year.
As we pushed open the glass doors of the hotel I saw Simon Wells standing in the foyer, smiling at us. He came forward and put his arm around my shoulders.
‘It’s good to see you, Joe, I thought I had just watched you die.’ He looked subdued. ‘Worst day of my life.’ He looked shattered and it suddenly dawned on me what he had gone through. It must have been an awful experience to have witnessed the death of a friend whom you had known for fifteen years and have to wait helplessly as the guides went to recover his body. We were in the middle of it. All we had to do was deal with our situation. It was what we knew. For Simon it must have been agonising.
Simon’s immediate reaction had been one of denial when Hanspeter had put down his binoculars and said, ‘Scheiss! They’ve gone. They’ve fallen.’
They had all stood in shocked silence for a moment. What had been a game had suddenly become a harsh reality. Everyone knew it was a dangerous climb but it is only climbers who fully understand the risk. Mark then remembered that the camera had been running and focused on the two climbers. They rewound the film and played it back and there it was – the shattering sight of two men falling to their deaths from the Second Ice Field.
I had never witnessed a man fall to his death as some of my friends have and I felt it might corrode whatever flimsy rationale I had erected to convince myself that taking risks was an acceptable thing to do.
‘Come on in,’ Simon said. ‘We’ve got food for you …’
‘Beer?’
‘Yes, plenty of beer.’ Simon led us through to a room with a table laden with sandwiches and cold meats. He opened two bottles of lager and Ray and I chinked bottles and drank deeply. I had no appetite for the food, even though we had eaten only a few snacks since the morning. Simon passed round a bottle of vodka and I drank hungrily and passed it on to Mark Stokes, the cameraman.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘And welcome back.’
‘Hey, did any of you lot see what happened to the solo climber?’ I asked and was met by blank faces.
‘What solo climber?’ Simon asked and I explained the man that we had seen on the Difficult Crack.
‘No, we never saw him.’
‘Well, he was on the face in the middle of all of that. In fact when we saw the helicopter we were both sure that it was he who had fallen. To hear that a two-man roped party had fallen was a real shock. We couldn’t understand how that could have happened.’
‘Actually, it’s strange,’ Mark Stokes said. ‘When Hanspeter said he had seen you fall there was a whole group of us standing around the camera and obviously it caused quite a stir. I remember this tourist standing near me. He was British. He just said something like, “Wow! That’s the second guy I’ve seen falling today.”’
‘You’re kidding?’ I stared at Mark.
‘No. I remember thinking what an odd thing to say and then we had so much on our minds with checking the film, knowing that you had fallen and sorting out the helicopter I sort of forgot about it. I just put it down to some dumb tourist who didn’t know what he was talking about – but maybe he did see something.’
‘We’d better talk to Hanspeter in the morning,’ Ray said. ‘If he didn’t fall he might be hurt or in some sort of trouble. It’s odd that no one saw him on the Second Ice Field, though.’
‘Yeah, and the only way he could retreat was to come past us and we saw no one,’ I added. ‘Here, pass me that vodka. I need another drink. This is a bad day.’
We talked long into the night, drank too much and then tottered off to bed. Ray and I had planned to bivouac on the patio outside the hotel but Simon insisted on putting us up in the Edwardian luxury of the Scheidegg Hotel. I fell into bed unwashed and unsettled.
17 Half silences
I awoke in the middle of the night feeling disorientated. What was I doing in a comfortable bed under a down duvet? Thinking I was bivouaced at the Swallow’s Nest, I thought I must be in some strange dream and I had to wake up. I saw moonlight through the windows and the humped shape of Ray snoring in the adjacent bed and remembered the storm and the two lads falling. I got up and drank water from the tap, drenched my face in the basin and went over to the window to stare at the Eiger. It was going to be with me for ever.
The following morning after breakfast Simon mentioned that a guide and a policeman were coming to the hotel to debrief everyone and take a statement about what had happened. I walked into the foyer and saw Mark fiddling with the camera.
‘What’s up?’ I said.
‘Oh, we’re making a digital copy of the fall for the authorities. The police and guides requested a copy to take with them after the debrief. It’s here now. I’ve just rewound it.’
‘Listen, Mark,’ I said. ‘I’d like to see it if I could. I know it sounds odd, but I’m not being morbid. I’ve been thinking about it all morning. I need to know what those lads did wrong. People don’t usually fall like that; not roped together anyway. It’s bugging the hell out of me. What on earth happened to them?’
‘That’s no problem, Joe,’ Mark replied. ‘Here – you can view it through the eyepiece. It’s colour film but you’ll only see it in black and white in this mode. I’ve seen it a number of times and it doesn’t make sense to me, but then I’m not a climber. Maybe you can work it out, see something I missed.’
I stepped up to the eyepiece of the camera feeling unsure about whether I wanted to see the fall. I glanced at Ray, who looked troubled. Then I took a deep breath and bent over the eyepiece as Mark ran the film. I knew that I had to see what had happened, not out of any macabre curiosity but because I needed to know, for my peace of mind. I had to find out why. If I didn’t see the fall I would always be plagued with doubt about exactly what had occurred above us that day.
The ice field flickered into view and I spotted a tiny figure crouched against the ice. Following the ropes above him led my eye to the leader who was traversing the edge of the upper ice field, walking sideways to his left, stepping one foot over the other on the rim between the rock and the ice. I glanced at where his partner perched on a blackened crest of ice protruding from the ice field 150 feet below him. The dark rocks bounding the top of the ice field were spattered with patches of wet snow.
As the leader traversed leftwards, stepping carefully on the swathe of soft wet snow that had accumulated on the upper rim, I saw his ropes draped down the ice field, swinging to the left as he moved away from the climbing line of his partner. Suddenly the soft snow slipped away beneath him.
The fall was slow, almost lazy. He stepped across his left foot with his right and planted his feet parallel to the ice field. Then he fell. He wasn’t hit by falling rocks and there was no indication of a hard impact, no sudden, violent loss of balance. His feet simply slithered away beneath him and he went down onto his right hip and then onto his flank.
It seemed to be the fall of a tired man – a typical slip that every climber has experienced at some point in his climbing career.
The figure twisted round swiftly onto his stomach, raised his ice axe and aimed a hard bl
ow at the ice field, to little effect. The band of soft snow absorbed the ice pick but gave no purchase. Immediately he swung with his other axe but it cut through just as easily as the first. He tried again with the axe. Nothing happened. He still seemed to be sliding down with deceptive, almost languid slowness. It seemed as if he could stop this whole irritating affair at any moment with ease. As he made a final swing with his axe – more hurried as if with the first hint of desperation – his body moved onto the snow-free hard ice and he accelerated away with brutal abruptness. There were no more blows from the axe. He hurtled down with frightening acceleration in a long, smooth slide. There was no tumbling, no indication that his crampons had caught and flipped him over; he simply fell away.
His partner appeared to be looking at him. He did nothing, since there was nothing to be done. The now loose ropes connecting the climbers whipped downwards. I waited to see the rope come tight against an ice screw. There were no sudden jerks, no angular tension in the line of the rope to indicate that a screw had temporarily halted the fall. The leader fell away to the second’s left side straight down the 750-foot ice field – a dark shape whipping past his colleague in a blur. Then, in a fluid motion, the second was ripped away and followed him down. I winced. There was no resistance. There had been no belay. They had been moving together without the protection of ice screws.
They fell directly in line with the Swallow’s Nest, positioned on the edge of the First Ice Field which was separated from the Second Ice Field by a rock band some 200 feet high. I knew that we were in the picture somewhere and shuddered. The pair flew off the ice and into the air and began the long fall down to the broken rocks at the foot of the face; a fall of nearly 3000 feet.
I stood up abruptly, feeling shaky. ‘No belay, no gear,’ I said incredulously.