I thought of their endless frictionless fall, numbed in their last moments of consciousness by the full enormity of what was happening. I knew exactly what it must have been like – the long gathering slide with such fearful acceleration that one’s mind cannot keep up and the violent speed of the fall becomes distant and the mind falls silent, resigned, save for that one unanswered plea. Will it hurt? Once I, too, had been there in that longing, headlong fall.
Almost as a blessing to salve the terror, there is no time for fear. Life was rushing by me so fast that I had no time to grasp it, only mutely register what was happening and be calmed by my helplessness. I had felt a faint anger trying to rise, a mild resentment at the unfairness of it all, and then instantly I was gone into blackness, pounded into painless unconsciousness by the impact. Only when I awoke, struggling to rise through a foggy, concussed consciousness did I begin to feel the pain.
With the resignation had come a sense of calm, a tranquillity held like a bubble, sheltered from the whirling, spinning violence of the fall. I had given in to that relaxing calm with ease, accepting without question that there was nothing I could do. It was over. The peace had been marred only by a dim, aching dread. And that was it, no terror, no frantic screaming all the way down; just numb acceptance.
No pain. That at least is a blessing, I thought, and stared down at the First Pillar, thinking of them lying there tangled in their ropes, side by side, quietened now into perpetual stillness, all hopes and dreams gone. We didn’t hear them go. They didn’t scream.
The dead make their anonymous presence felt, pervading everything with their torn-off senses, drawing on the tomorrow which they had expected and deserved. I was keenly aware of their presence lying far below us who now stood safe, untouched, alive and bemused on a small ledge on a mountain wall.
I was struck by the sudden silence and wondered whether it was real or the creation of a damaged mind. I scanned the mountain walls, sensing the eerie quiet and feeling much as if I was in a cathedral. There was the same stillness, the familiar sense of upwardness in the structures of the mountain buttresses and the same chilled awe in my soul. I had never known such calm, never felt the world suspended between breathing in and breathing out.
I looked down at where they lay and for a moment I held a clearness and an understanding going so sharp and deep, down into unimaginable depths, that it pulled on my soul. There was something secret and private inside being dragged out into the open where it had no wish to be. I felt overcome with a mixture of pity and shame and self-reproach.
I felt guilty at the feeling of relief that had hovered in the background of my mind when I had heard the news of their deaths. We wouldn’t have to go up there. There was no need for a rescue. I felt ashamed at my selfishness and surprised to realise how nervous I had been at the thought of trying to go up onto the ice fields. They would have done it for me. I knew they would. They were climbers. They were our own and I felt base and tried to push the thoughts away.
We didn’t know their names until we read the newspapers. We hadn’t seen their faces. I had spoken to one of them and received no answer. They were strangers and yet we were brothers bound together by the same dreams, following the same paths. We are such stuff as dreams are made of. The rest is silence. Our meeting of their lives like their passing had been so swift, so silent, it was as if they were sublimated away from us, that moment when a solid becomes a gas without melting, like snow in the sunshine, like mist in the wind, disappearing before your eyes as you watch.
The sound of stone-fall shook me from my thoughts and I looked wordlessly at Ray. I saw in his eyes what he was thinking. It could have been us. Each of us saw our own expression on the other’s face, sadness touched with our fear of death so close we could feel it in the air. We were scared. I always would be.
The silence and lucidity had been broken by the stark impacts of the rocks, gone for ever. I had felt sickened and weak and sat down slowly on the mats and put my head in my hands. I didn’t have the understanding to cry for them.
Perhaps other climbers are better equipped than I to deal with some of the experiences I have had in the mountains. I have found that over the years it has become harder and harder to drive away the memories. Maybe I am not pragmatic enough, not sufficiently detached to cope. Sometimes I feel completely unnerved, wary of the cupboard crammed with skeletons that sometimes seem to constitute the sum total of my climbing memories.
As the weeks passed I recalled the film less and less. The fears ebbed. I looked through The White Spider and felt myself smiling at the memories that the photographs evoked. I remembered the days sitting in sunshine under the towering crags of the Hintisberg, peering at the Eigerwand through the binoculars, watching thin veils of cloud dissipate in the sun as I scanned the mile-high ramparts of rock and ice. I was subdued in the presence of such an immense mountain. It emanated power, a lonely and unrivalled peak, silent, distant and unapproachable. It made me feel like a love-sick suitor hoping to be chosen and believing I would be rejected. It made me edgy. I thought of the ominous, incessant noise of falling rocks and the white sound of ice and water falling and flowing and knew I wanted to be there.
I watched as a warm wind rustled through the valley below, swaying through stands of pines and meadows patch-worked in a dappled coat of greens. I wanted to be up on those walls of glistening ice-streaked rock watching snow fall from over-hangs and outcrops beneath my feet. I wanted to be lost within the heart of a mountain, choosing our destiny, playing games with eternity.
The essence of beauty can only be properly appreciated in contrasts. The sound of a striking clock exists only because of the silence that came before. Music is wrought half from silence, half from sound. Mountains have always been my half-silences. The peace and beauty of the valley meant nothing to me without the sombre, foreboding presence of the mountain wall above.
Mallory wholeheartedly believed there was no dream that must not be dared; his life stretched to the very end. Perhaps, like him, we have no choice but to go back and dare our dreams. We had looked up at the vastness of the Eiger filled with a mixture of exultation and apprehension about what we were about to do in the morning. To me that is everything mountain climbing is about – the outcome uncertain, the spirit subdued, the challenge open – a free choice to take up or walk away from. More than anything it is about taking part – not success or failure, simply being there and making the choice.
There is about the mountain the beckoning silence of great height; a siren call that lures me back against my will. I knew then that Ray was right and that the images of the film would fade with time but not the memory of those two lads. We would return in the summer and try again and all the time be thinking of them. If we succeeded then we would walk away from the mountains at last – or we just might drive up to the Bregalia and have a look at the north face of the Piz Badile. Just a look, mind, nothing more.
Acknowledgements
This is all Ray Delaney’s fault. Thanks for being there, Ray.
It has been said that writers are all made up of patches and quotations of other forms, other stories, thoughts of generations gone before us. In this I am especially culpable. I cannot acknowledge all those authors from whom I have gleaned phrases, been offered inspired thoughts, and taken their philosophies and bent them to my ends, because I am, at the end, unaware of which book they have come from. To all those who might recognise their words in mine I offer my thanks and hope you will forgive my innocent plagiarism.
It has also been said that when a philosopher dies there is one less star in Heaven. Philosophers guard the spy-holes in the firmament. They are supposed to tell us of the Great Beyond. Well, clearly then, I am not a philosopher but I have tried in this book to make some sense of the life I have led and what the mountains have blessed me with. The essence of the work has been to try to come to terms with the fear and love, grief and death that mountains have induced in me and to come through it to a positive life-enhanc
ing state of mind. I do not know whether I succeeded; that is for you to judge. It is an entirely personal analysis but I hope it evokes a sense of familiarity in those that read it.
I have listed a bibliography of those books from which I researched heavily but there are some authors I would mark out for particular notice. Heinrich Harrer’s The White Spider was an enormously influential work that has informed my entire climbing career, and this book is as much a homage to those climbers that he wrote so vividly about.
Chris Bonington’s I Chose to Climb was the second mountaineering book I ever read and I put it down knowing that because of his example one day I too would climb the Eiger. Thanks for the inspiration.
Mark Helprin, author of A Soldier of the Great War, may not be a mountaineer but he thinks and writes as if he has spent his entire life in the hills. His ideas wonderfully mirrored my own thoughts. Thanks to Kimberly Unger who kindly gave me the book.
Peter and Leni Gillman’s biography of Mallory, The Wildest Dream, was inspirational and conversations with Peter about his own Eiger experiences were encouraging and invaluable.
Thanks also to all those who helped with the photographs: Ray Delaney, Alison Claxton and Brian Mucci, Thomas Ulrich, Jane Tattersall, Daniel Anker, Chris Bonington and Bradford Washburn.
I owe Val Randall an immense debt of gratitude for her unstinting and selfless help with making this book what it is. My admiration for her literary erudition, editorial eye, and her ability to see at once how to say a little thing edgily, is unbounded. Thank you, Val.
Thanks also to my brother David for the enlightening conversations, the patient task of line editing and schoolmasterly but perceptive corrections.
Tony Whittome, who so generously became my editor at the last moment following the death of Tony Colwell on 22 November 2000 had the unenviable task of working in the shadow of a man who had taught me everything that I knew. He has been patient, encouraging and unswervingly enthusiastic and we have forged a working relationship and a friendship that I hope will be long and fruitful.
Megan Hitchin, Caroline Michel and Dan Franklin of Random House were all hugely supportive.
I am indebted to Vivienne Schuster who convinced me that I could still write at a time when I had decided to give it all up.
Margaret and Catherine Colwell offered support and encouragement at a time when my worries were the least of their problems. And yes, Margaret, you were right; Tony was looking over my shoulder all the time – always will.
Joe Simpson
Sheffield, July 2001
The Filming of The Beckoning Silence
Joe and Cubby Cuthbertson preparing to be filmed below the Stollenloch window.
Cubby about to be winched down to the Swallows Nest.
Joe on the 1st Icefield.
Tough filming conditions.
Roger Schaeli in costume as Toni Kurz.
Hinterstoiseer checks his digital camera while Kurtz calls home.
Toni Kurz gets 'frostbite' sprayed onto his left hand.
Kurz death scene.
Keith Partridge descending gingerly towards the Hinterstoisser Traverse.
Keith Partridge, mountain cameraman extraordinaire with the 1,000 foot high Rote Fluh looming behind him.
The team preparing to film rockfall sequences on the summit slopes of north flank of the Monch.
Joe waiting for the rockfall scene.
Joe filming at the Swallows Nest.
Joe descending for a piece to camera on the Hinterstoisser Traverse
Selected Reading
Daniel Anker, Eiger: The Vertical Arena
Walter Bonatti, On the Heights
Walter Bonatti, The Great Days
Chris Bonington, I Chose to Climb
Chris Bonington, Mountaineer
Joe Brown, The Hard Years
Hermann Bühl, Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage
Riccardo Cassin, Fifty Years of Alpinism
Jim Curran, High Achiever: The Life and Climbs of Chris Bonington
René Desmaison, Total Alpinism
Leo Dickinson, Filming the Impossible
Kurt Diemberger, Summits and Secrets
Fergus Fleming, Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps
Mick Fowler, Vertical Pleasure
Peter and Leni Gillman, The Wildest Dream: Mallory
Peter Gillman and Dougal Haston, Eiger Direct
Alison Hargreaves, A Hard Day’s Summer: Six Classic North Faces Solo
Heinrich Harrer, The White Spider
Dougal Haston, In High Places
Dougal Haston, The Eiger
Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War
Jon Krakauer, Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains
Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
Hamish MacInnes, High Drama
Hamish MacInnes, Look behind the Ranges
Reinhold Messner, The Big Walls
Reinhold Messner and Horst Hofler, Hermann Bühl: Climbing without Compromise
Tom Patey, One Man’s Mountains
Gaston Rebuffat, Starlight and Storm
David Robertson, George Mallory
Arthur Roth, Eiger: Wall of Death
Joe Tasker, Savage Arena
Lionel Terray, Conquistadors of the Useless
Walt Unsworth, North Face
Don Whillans, Portrait of a Mountaineer
Joe Simpson, The Beckoning Silence
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