The Beckoning Silence (26 page)

Comici regarded climbing as a form of art and compared its harmonies with those of a piece of music. The rhythms and movements of the climber had to be elegantly adapted to the nature and texture of the rock he was climbing. He thought the aesthetic qualities of the chosen line to be as important as the climb itself. This was epitomised by his famous dictum:

I wish someday to make a route and from the summit let fall a drop of water and this is where my route will have gone.

The thought of attempting one of his routes terrified me. When we crept insect-like up that yellow wall I fervently hoped that I wasn’t about to become one of Comici’s falling drops of water.

Riccardo Cassin’s ascent of the north-east face of the Piz Badile in 1937 quickly became one of the classic north faces. During the stormy descent from the summit two of Cassin’s companions, Giuseppe Valsecchi and Mario Molteni, collapsed and died of hypothermia and exhaustion. Today it can be climbed in half a day with light-weight rock-climbing gear, but that in no way detracts from the boldness of its first ascent.

The Allain and Leininger route on the north face of the Drus climbed in 1935 also gained classic status with the boldness of its line and difficult climbing in ice-choked jamming cracks on the summit headwall. The Schmidt Route on the north face of the Matterhorn, the first of the great north faces climbed in 1931, was praised at the time as the hardest and most serious face ever climbed in the European Alps. It was eclipsed by the ascents of the Eiger and the Grandes Jorasses in 1938. Indeed, all these north faces were regarded as the hardest climbs of their day and all were put up in the 1930s – the true Golden Age, the birth of extreme alpine mountaineering.

Riccardo Cassin, Walter Bonatti and Hermann Buhl were my all-time heroes of the alpine world. Cassin, not content with being the first to climb two of the north faces, had actually turned up in Kleine Scheidegg with Gino Esposito and Ugo Tizzoni to attempt the Eigerwand in July 1938, only to find Heckmair, Vorg, Kasparek and Harrer already fighting for their lives during their epic first ascent of the face. The disconsolate Italians promptly took the train back to Italy and headed directly for the Grandes Jorasses. Despite having never climbed in the Mont Blanc range they immediately put up the wildly elegant
direttissima
on the Walker Spur.

It became an instant classic and the ascent of this magnificent bastion of ice-sheathed rock is one of the most beautiful lines ever climbed on a mountain. Bradford Washburn’s stunning photograph of the moon rising over the great north wall of the Jorasses hangs above my fireplace. Its detail is so fine that I can see the cracks we climbed and the bivouac ledge we slept on twenty years ago.

After Dave Page’s success on the Eiger in 1981 I decided it was best to err on the side of safety. I vowed to come back the following summer and head directly for Grindelwald. I never did and as each year passed it seemed increasingly unlikely that I would ever attempt the Eiger. After the accident in Peru in 1985 I went to hospital and Simon Yates went to the Alps and climbed the Eigerwand. I remembered hearing the news as I lay recuperating in a hospital bed after they had re-broken my knee for the third time. There was a pang of regret at the thought of what I had missed, quickly quashed by a private admonishment that I would now never be up to such a climb again.

Every doctor I talked to said as much. Lead a sedentary life, they said. What the hell did they know? But by then the damage had been done and I had convinced myself that the Eiger was beyond me.

‘So, if we climb the Eiger,’ Ray said, ‘you’ll only have to pop over to the Bregalia and climb the Piz Badile to get the six classics done.’

‘I hadn’t thought about that,’ I said. ‘But I thought we were giving up mountaineering after the Eiger?’

‘Well, yes, we are, but it would be a shame not to do the Cassin Route on the Badile wouldn’t it?’

‘Is it hard?’

‘No, not especially,’ Ray said. ‘We did it in rock shoes in four or five hours. Great climbing on superb granite and the Bregalia is beautiful. You’d love it.’

‘Come on, let’s get out of here before you come up with any other cunning plans.’ I threw the dregs of my tea out of the door and began to lace my boots, thinking about warm sunny days on the granite of the Bregalia.

‘We should be down in an hour if we get a move on,’ I said as we packed away the bivi tent and shouldered our rucksacks. ‘The north face will be plastered for days now.’

‘I know, and the Mittellegi Ridge,’ Ray agreed morosely. We had hoped to traverse the Mittellegi over the summit of the Eiger and down the west ridge as part of our training regime. The bad weather was throwing these careful plans into disarray and we were running out of time.

‘Better get some rock climbing done in the meantime, then,’ I suggested. ‘We should go up to the Hintisberg. It’s south-facing, overhanging and over 700 feet high in places.’

‘Great,’ Ray said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. ‘Overhanging rock, my favourite.’

‘Come on, we need to get some hard rock routes under our belts. It will do our confidence a load of good. We could even practise climbing with rucksacks and big boots on if you like.’

‘Get out of here.’ Ray gave me a playful shove and I struggled to maintain balance on icy rock. ‘It’s bad enough climbing overhanging rock without these bloody things on,’ he complained as he pulled the laces tight on his clumsy plastic double boots.

Ray seemed strangely nervous as he sorted out the karabiners and hardware on his harness. I leaned back on the sling I had clipped to a shiny new bolt at the foot of the route and peered up at the stepped roofs on the wall above us. It was warm in the afternoon sun and the white limestone wall reflected a glaringly harsh light into my eyes. As my gaze travelled up the wall I spotted two tiny figures perched on a great prow of rock hundreds of feet above me. Their ropes hung free in space, twirling in the breeze. Further to the right I saw another climber pulling over the lip of an enormous horizontal roof. He moved with controlled precision, exuding an effortless grace as he flowed upwards with the poise of a dancer and the power of a gymnast. There was no sense of the immense strength he was using to remain in such an exposed and airy position. A flurry of black shapes swung beneath him as a flock of birds wheeled around on the rising air.

I looked down at the meadows perched in the valley below. An ancient farm building with shingled roof and heavy beams stood picturesquely by a group of pine trees. I looked across at the Eiger dominating the head of the valley.

‘Are you right, then?’ I asked Ray as he tied the rope into his harness.

‘Yeah, suppose so,’ he said grudgingly and glanced up at the climber clinging to the roof far above him. ‘Bloody hell! Are we going up there?’

‘It’s a bit uphill, isn’t it?’ I said and laughed at his expression of dismay.

‘God, I hate this sort of limestone climbing,’ Ray said fervently. ‘It’s so in your face, so damned steep.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ I reassured him. ‘There’s loads of bolts. They’re all brand new. You could hang a truck off them.’

‘Maybe.’ Ray chalked his fingers and looked anxiously at the first pitch.

‘I’ll be right behind you.’ I patted his shoulder and he moved reluctantly up the initial easy moves towards where the rock began to overhang, pushing him off balance. The ropes dropped straight down into my hands and I watched as he carefully clipped the blue rope through the first bolt.

‘OK, I’ve got you, kid!’ I shouted. ‘Go for it.’

‘Go for what?’ Ray said irritably as he gazed at the impending wall and the small roof jutting from its upper end. His hands flitted around the rock, searching for a comfortingly large handhold.

What followed was a display of such staggeringly inept climbing that I was left lost for words. I had climbed with Ray all over the world from the Himalayas to the sea cliffs of Pembroke, on rock towers in Sardinia and the frozen waterfalls of Colorado. I had never seen him climb so badly and I couldn’t understand why.

He swarmed up until he was clinging tenuously to the leaning wall. Then he came to an abrupt halt. Occasionally a hand fluttered above his head, blindly searching for holds. One foot began to vibrate as if working a sewing machine. Then his other foot began shaking. I tried not to snigger.

‘You are now below all major difficulties,’ I shouted encouragingly. He grunted an irritated reply.

After what seemed an age he crept up to the roof and pawed at it frantically. The wild vibrations of his feet were beginning to set up a sympathetic motion in his upper legs, then his shoulders. He seemed to be getting a little blurred. Cocking one leg out to the side, he began waving his right arm above the roof like a drowning swimmer trying to attract attention. He was breathing hard, gasping with the effort of remaining attached to the rock. Gravity was creeping in, dragging him downwards. A few frantic arm movements suddenly became a bold and dynamic lunge upwards. He had spotted a ‘Thank God’ hold above the roof. I smiled in approval of his confident solution to the problem.

There was a squeal of alarm as his fingers closed around a smooth nipple of rounded rock and began to slip. Unable to retreat and now vibrating uncontrollably he slapped his hand desperately to the right and grabbed a thin sharp edge. The lactic acid coursing through his forearms had produced fingers with the strength of wet linguini. It was a slap too far.

Then, with a sigh, he fell off. I laughed fit to bust as I lowered him to the ground. He stood at the stance head lowered, breathing hard.

‘You’ve just displayed all the manual dexterity of an octopus on acid,’ I said helpfully.

‘Fuck off,’ he replied.

It was an inauspicious start but we eventually gathered our wits and climbed some fine routes. I felt strong and fit and enjoyed the expansive moves on the steep limestone wall. Ray seemed strangely subdued and struggled up the pitches, clearly unhappy with his form.

As we strolled down towards the car I asked him if he was okay but he waved me away saying it was nothing to worry about and that he was just a bit rusty. I knew how busy he had been with his climbing shop in Utrecht and that he had been under great pressure leading up to the holiday as plans to open a second shop came to fruition. Perhaps he hadn’t managed to get enough climbing done. It was certainly very unlike him to be climbing so poorly.

I took Ray’s binoculars and peered glumly at the Eiger.

‘It’ll never clear in time. Look at the Ramp, for God’s sake. It’s completely white,’ I said. ‘We’ve got less than two weeks left.’

‘I don’t know,’ Ray said. ‘When I was here before I was amazed at how much sun the face got in the afternoon. It’s really a north-east face, you know. This stuff might burn off faster than you think.’

‘Do you think so?’ I asked hopefully.

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ Ray swung his rucksack into the boot of the car. ‘Let’s go get a beer.’

I looked back at the Eiger standing proud at the head of the valley. It was a lonely and unrivalled peak, mesmerising just to gaze on. I felt subdued in its presence. The vast blinding whiteness of mountains forces itself into your mind. I stared at the distant walls of glistening grey rock rising to spectacular heights where ribbons of water and snow fell silently from overhangs and outcrops.

The ice fields flashed white light back from the concave immensity of the north face, beautiful and ominous. It emanated a serene menace: there was about it the beckoning silence of great height.

We drove down the switch-back road until level with the old farm that I had spotted from the crag. An elderly couple sat outside the front door at a rough-hewn trestle table. The man’s face was deeply lined, weathered by a hard life as a farmer on the high alpine pastures. He held a bottle of beer and waved it at us, indicating with his other hand that we should join them.

‘Is that a bar?’ I said.

‘I don’t think so,’ Ray said. ‘Looks like an old farm to me.’

‘Well, he seems to want us to join him.’

‘Might as well then,’ Ray said with admirable decisiveness and pulled the car into the verge.

The old farmer greeted us with an expansive open-armed gesture, a bottle of beer in one hand and a dangerous looking bottle of clear spirit in the other. He waved us to the bench seat and swiftly opened two bottles of beer. His wife smiled and raised a small schnapps glass in welcome. Soon the farmer was pouring the peach schnapps, filling our glasses to the brim. ‘Chus,’ he said and drained his glass with a flourish. ‘Cheers,’ Ray said and took a tentative swig and immediately started coughing. ‘Up yours,’ I said, drained the glass and then sat there stunned as tears welled in my eyes and my throat burned caustically.

What followed was an increasingly animated discussion in Swiss-German that Ray replied to in Dutch while I failed to understand a word. I noticed the triconi nails hammered into the soles of the farmer’s heavy boots. They were exactly the same as those used by climbers before the invention of crampons.

‘He says that he used to work on the Eiger railway. He was based at the gallery windows.’ Ray paused, listening to the old man. ‘Good God!’ he said, when the man stopped talking.

‘What is it?’

‘He just told me that he stopped working there after he saw two roped parties fall past the window.’

‘Bloody hell!’ I looked at the man who nodded gravely to me. I couldn’t understand his language but his expression told me everything. ‘I wonder who they were? You don’t think he is the man who saw the Kurz and Hinterstoisser party from the window in 1936?’

‘No,’ Ray said. ‘It was later than that; in the 1950s I think. Many people died, he said. He didn’t like to see them fall. It is a bad place. Now he is a farmer. It is safer,’ Ray translated.

‘Not drinking this bloody stuff, it isn’t,’ I said with feeling. I watched the old man as Ray pointed at the Eigerwand and then at me and spoke slowly. The man seemed suddenly very serious. His wife raised her hand to her mouth and shook her head.

‘He says we mustn’t go,’ Ray said. ‘It is a bad face, he says, very dangerous.’