The Beckoning Silence (28 page)

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.

‘I’d rather not think about it,’ Ray said and stopped smiling.

‘Any blood?’ I asked. Ray hastily dropped the trousers with a fastidious gesture. I laughed.

‘You shouldn’t joke about it,’ he said shaking his head.

‘It’s the only thing we can do,’ I said seriously. I threw the coiled abseil ropes into space and watched them knot themselves into a tangled mass on the first ledge they hit. I cursed silently under my breath.

As I tried to untangle the ropes my eye caught sight of a chillingly familiar shape and colour half-buried in the rubble. I swung forward and reached towards the ivory white bone, feeling squeamish. Then I was laughing loudly; too loudly.

‘What is it?’ Ray called and I held the bone up towards him. His expression changed immediately.

‘A chicken drumstick,’ I said. ‘I thought …’

‘I can guess,’ Ray said.

As we packed the tent in the meadow nestling at the foot of the Eiger we monitored the progress of the French climbers. They were moving with incredible speed. They climbed the entire route in twelve hours, reaching the summit at seven o’clock in the evening. We were flabbergasted and felt a little aggrieved at our own snail-like progress on the verglas-covered rubble of the lower face – the easiest part of the route. Apparently the climbers reported that one of the trickiest sections was a heavily iced section near the Hinterstoisser Traverse. It was encouraging to learn that the rest of the climb seemed to have dried out far better than we could have hoped for. There was no mention of heavy icing in the Exit Cracks, which we took as a good sign. The weather now seemed to be settled and warm. Luck seemed to be on our side.

‘They must be good to climb that fast,’ I said to Ray as we climbed up the grassy slopes leading to the railway station at Kleine Scheidegg.

‘There are a lot of them about.’

‘Makes me feel a bit silly, thinking this is such a big deal.’

‘It is a big deal – for us. And that’s all that matters. Hell, I’m not even sure I would want to climb it in a day, even if I could.’

‘No, me neither,’ I agreed. ‘It would be a waste of the whole experience, wouldn’t it?’

‘Exactly,’ Ray said. ‘I want to enjoy it all. I’m looking forward to bivouacking at the Death Bivi or on the Traverse of the Gods. I don’t want to just charge past it.’

‘Yeah, I know. It reminds me of the time I was in the Louvre looking at the Mona Lisa,’ I said. Ray looked confused. ‘There were few people around and I kept staring at it, trying to like it,’ I continued.

‘Did you?’

‘Not much, no. I didn’t get the enigmatic smile at all. She just seemed slightly disapproving, even bored. I wondered how long she had sat there while Leonardo did his stuff. I knew she had a name. She was real. Mona Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine nobleman …’

‘Gherardini?’ Ray said. ‘Same as the climber?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so, but I doubt they were related,’ I said. ‘Apparently her husband didn’t like it and refused to pay for it.’

‘So he had taste then, did he?’

‘Yeah, maybe. Anyway as I stood there gawping at it I imagined Leonardo having tantrums and starting all over and throwing his paints around and minions in his studio scurrying about keeping their heads down, and her worrying about whether her bum was too big …’

‘You’re a philistine,’ Ray chuckled.

‘Not at all, I was just staring at it, thinking of its significance today and how she would never have known she would be immortalised in such a way for so many centuries. She was probably bored out of her brains and dying for a pee, hence the lopsided smile.’ Ray raised his eyebrows as we approached the station.

‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘while I was having these deep thoughts about a hundred Japanese tourists rushed up to the Mona Lisa brandishing their cameras and camcorders paparazzi-style. Hundreds of flash lights went off and three minutes later they wheeled away and zoomed off like a flock of sheep to photograph something else. I was stunned. I mean, I might have not been getting much out of it, but at least I was trying.’

‘And that’s why you don’t want to do the Eiger in a day, is it?’

‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘I want time to absorb it all. I want to remember the stories, and the people, and what they went through. I want to touch history – if only for a moment.’

‘Yeah, but there’s a fine line between doing that and spending so damn long on it that it absorbs us,’ Ray said as we were suddenly surrounded by a horde of Japanese tourists chattering busily as they streamed off the train from Grindelwald, snapping photographs as they were marshalled by their tour guide straight into a restaurant for lunch. I don’t think they noticed the Eiger.

As we stepped from the train in early afternoon sunshine I saw a figure on the platform.

‘Simon?’ I said cautiously and the man turned round.

‘Joe! How are you? Good to see you. I heard you were here,’ Simon Wells said in his familiarly enthusiastic way.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, we’re making a film about climbing the Eiger.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘It’s for Channel 4. Chameleon Films are doing it for them.’

‘What’s your role then?’

‘I’m the producer. You two look as if you’ve been climbing.’

‘Yes, we just had a look at the lower face. It’s coming into condition nicely. We’re going to check the meteo at the guides office now and see if we’ll have a weather window.’

‘Oh well, good luck, and here – take my mobile number and stay in touch. We must have a beer some time. Look us up at Kleine Scheidegg.’

‘So when are you boys thinking of going up?’

‘Oh, we’ll talk to Hanspeter first. He’s one of three guides we’ve employed. He climbed the Eiger when they made that Eiger live video last year. He’s done it several times so he’ll know what conditions are like and we’ll go on his say-so.’

‘Right, well we’ll stay in touch then. We could do with some inside knowledge.’

‘That’s a bit of luck,’ I said to Ray as we wandered up to the guides office and I explained that I had known Simon for nearly fifteen years. He lived near me in Sheffield, working as a researcher and film producer for Chameleon Films in Leeds. I’d always had a soft spot for Simon. He was a genuine, sensitive, caring person which seemed oddly out of fashion nowadays. He also had an enquiring and creative mind and was wonderfully argumentative.

‘But they might get in the way; five people, and helicopter re-supply and all the shenanigans that go with filming a climb.’

‘Well, we’ll just liaise with them and slot in before or after they set off. But the info we’ll get from the guides will be invaluable. They’ll know where belay stations are, which is the best line, and they’ll have intimate knowledge of the face. Brilliant.’

There was also good news posted in the window of the guides office – a stable weather forecast. The synoptic charts showed steadily improving weather, offering the prospect of five clear sunny days. I felt enthusiastic about attempting the face as soon as possible. We no longer felt alone.

The following morning we returned to the Hintisberg and, to my delight, I noticed that Ray’s climbing had improved immeasurably. The recce had obviously cleared out a lot of skeletons from his cupboard. We sat in the warm sunshine at the foot of the crag gazing at the Eiger through our binoculars.

‘You know, kid, I think we should go for it.’

‘What?’ Ray said, looking startled. ‘I thought we were going to do the Mittellegi Ridge first?’

‘The guides said it was out of condition. There’s too much powder up there. We can’t just spend this good weather rock climbing.’

‘I don’t know,’ Ray said hesitantly.

‘If we go up on the first train tomorrow we’ll have all day to reach the Swallow’s Nest bivi. We can stop there for the night and keep an eye on the weather. If it’s good and we’re happy about it we’ll head up the next day. We’ve got to do it some day. Anyway I’m sick of staring at the bloody thing all the time like some Sword of Damocles hanging there waiting to fall.’

‘I suppose you’re right, although I don’t like the simile,’ Ray agreed. ‘How much further was it from your high point to the Swallow’s Nest?’

‘A couple of hours, three at the most, depending on the verglas.’

‘Remember there’s no fixed rope on the Difficult Crack,’ Ray pointed out. ‘In wet, cold conditions it can sometimes be the hardest bit of climbing on the face, especially first thing in the morning.’

‘We’ll just take it one day at a time, eh? We can back off whenever we like.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Ray smiled at me. ‘It’s a bit sudden, that was all. You caught me off guard.’

‘You do want to do it?’ I asked and stared hard at him.

‘Yeah, I do. Come on, let’s go down, buy some food and sort our kit out.’

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I just want to ring Pat and tell her our plans. I told her that I would keep in touch.’

‘Won’t it worry her unnecessarily?’ Ray asked.

‘No, she’s pretty understanding about this sort of thing,’ I said. Pat was encouraging when I told her our plans but I could hear the well-disguised concern in her voice. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll look after each other. I’ll ring when we get down.’

When we returned to the chalet laden down with hill food supplies Frau Alice Steuri was waiting for us in the hallway. She was a kindly lady who had looked disturbed when we had unloaded the mass of climbing gear from the car on our arrival ten days earlier. Ray had booked the room through the Internet knowing nothing about Frau Steuri, although I had mentioned to him that it was a famous name in Grindelwald mentioned frequently in
The White Spider.

There was a Fritz Steuri senior, an outstanding Grindelwald guide and ski racer, who, in the company of two other guides, Samuel Brawand and Fritz Amatter, had guided a young Japanese climber, Yuko Maki, on the first ascent of the Mittellegi Ridge in 1921. Years later in 1936 when Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer had been swallowed by the prolonged storm that was to trap and eventually kill them during the first attempt on the Eigerwand, Fritz Steuri had accompanied Ernst Udet, one of Germany’s ace pilots of the First World War, on an aerial search of the face.

In a strange twist of fate Udet had first been introduced to mountain flying in 1928 by Dr Arnold Fanck during the filming of
The White Hell of Piz Palu
. In the film script Udet had to fly close to an icy mountain face to try to locate a stranded party of climbers and so effect a successful rescue.