The Beckoning Silence (29 page)

Seven years later Udet and Steuri were doing it for real but there was no question of a rescue. They were simply looking for bodies. Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer had last been seen on Sunday 25 August 1935 during a break in the weather on the fifth day of their climb. They had been seen moving slowly up the immense shield of the Second Ice Field towards the distinctive arête called the Flat Iron.

The gale had returned with a vengeance. The men disappeared from sight. The guides watching their movements knew why the two men were continuing up, despite four bitterly cold bivouacs exposed to avalanches, rock-fall and the full fury of the wind. The ground below the pitifully weakened men had been turned into a terrible trap, constantly swept by avalanches and stone-fall. The rock bands were either cascading waterfalls or plastered in snow and ice. Their only hope was to try and fight their way to the top or climb until they died.

A rescue attempt organised by Sedlmayr’s brother was abandoned two days later at the foot of the wall. Nothing could be heard of the climbers – no calls for help echoed down from the wall. They saw nothing from the summit and the ramparts of the west ridge. Heinrich Harrer wrote:

A gale whipping against the rocks, the thunder of avalanches, the splash of waterfalls, in which the staccato rattle of falling stones mingled shrilly – these were the melody of the Eiger’s Face, the funeral organ-voluntary for Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer – no human sound interrupted the grim voice of the mountain.

Three weeks later on 19 September 1935 Udet flew his plane to within 60 feet of the face in an bold display of flying skill. Acting as the spotter, Fritz Steuri saw one of the men still standing upright in the snow, frozen to death, near the top of the Flat Iron at a point ever since known as Death Bivouac.

It was always thought that the Death Bivouac was the highest point that the two men reached, but in 1952 the Viennese climber Karl Reiss and his companion Siegfried Jungmeir tried to force a direct line up to the Spider from Death Bivouac. It was thought that no one had tried this line before so they were baffled to find some ancient pitons on the extremely steep rock of the central pillar. They could only have been left by Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer. The traverse across the Third Ice Field to the Ramp would have been suicidal. To climb directly up towards the bottom lip of the Spider was hardly a better choice. They would have been virtually blinded, in constant danger of being swept away, and contending with some of the hardest technical climbing attempted on the Eiger during the following thirty years.

It is remarkable to think how expert these first suitors of the wall were, considering the unendurable conditions they must have experienced during their attempt to escape, trapped directly beneath the Spider, which at the time would have been swept by a constant stream of avalanches and rocks. The pitons testify to the incredible strength and tenacity of Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer. This direct line was only eventually climbed by the famous joint British and German team completing the winter ascent of the Harlin Direct route in 1966.

Max Sedlmayr’s body, swept from the face by avalanches, was found the following year during the search for the remains of the Hinterstoisser party. Karl Mehringer’s was not found until 1962 when his desiccated body emerged from the Second Ice Field twenty-seven years after his death. Fourteen years later, on 21 June 1976, a Czech team came across a cigarette tin. Inside was a last message from these incredibly brave climbers, probably written by Mehringer, since he had misspelled his companion’s name.

Bivouac place on 21/8/35. Max Sedelmajr, Karl Mehringer.

Munich H.T.G. (High Tour Group)

This weathered note, written in pencil on yellowed paper, must have been an eerie reminder from the past for the two young Czech climbers.

That date – 21 August – was the date of Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer’s first bivouac on the face. The next day they were observed slowly climbing the 300-foot rock band separating them from the lower edge of the First Ice Field. By late afternoon they had reached a cramped bivouac ledge at the upper rim of the ice field, having spent the day ducking and sheltering behind their rucksacks from heavy fusillades of stone-fall.

On 23 August they tackled the second rock band, a long and arduous climb, so technically difficult that it forced them to haul their rucksacks – a time-consuming process. The watchers below may not have realised it at the time, but Sedlmayr and Mehringer were putting on a virtuoso display of climbing skill, despite their slow progress. Having overcome the second band the two men headed towards the top left-hand end of the Second Ice Field. Again they were battered by stone-fall and ice fragments and forced to stop frequently and take shelter, hiding behind rocks and holding their rucksacks protectively above their heads.

Three days of climbing and they were less than halfway up the wall. A curtain of cloud descended on the face. That night the storm broke about them in a chaos of thunder cracks, hailstones, rain, snow and tremendous blasts of wind. The next day, Saturday the 24th, the storm continued unabated and there was no sight of the climbers. The night had been murderously cold down in the valley; what must it have been like enduring their fourth bivouac with such rudimentary equipment?

On Sunday the 25th they were spotted during a break in the weather, inching their way towards the Flat Iron, climbing towards a death they probably realised was inevitable.

Three years later, in the summer of 1938, just one month before the first ascent of the wall, two Italian climbers, Bartolo Sandri and Mario Menti, were swept to their deaths in a storm – probably from a point close to where Mehringer had left his pencilled bivouac note. Once again Fritz Steuri led a search party and found Sandri’s body at the foot of the face. Menti’s body was extracted from a deep crevasse a few days later.

Years later, when Claudio Corti was rescued from high on the face by a winch cable rescue system, Harrer mentions that Hermann Steuri, another Grindelwald guide, had been instrumental in developing the steel cable rescue technique. It was the first successful rescue by cable from the face, although in tragic circumstances. Claudio Corti and his companion Stefano Longhi had started up the wall in early August 1957. At some point, probably near the Hinterstoisser Traverse, they had joined forces with the German team of Gunter Northdurft and Franz Mayer. The Germans had dropped a rucksack of provisions and Northdurft was feeling sick so the strengthened party moved as a foursome until they made a fatal route-finding error high on the face.

Mistakenly climbing 300 feet higher than the Traverse of the Gods, they attempted a far more difficult traverse line across to the edge of the Spider. Stefano Longhi fell over 100 feet from the traverse to hang helplessly in space. Despite three hours’ labour the two Germans and Corti were unable to haul Longhi back up to the traverse.

He was roped down to a small ledge. Corti lowered his bivouac sack and some provisions and assured his friend that he and the Germans would race for the summit and alert the rescue services. High above the Spider near where the Exit Cracks angled up towards the summit ridge Corti was hit on the head by a rock and fell 100 feet. The Germans gave Corti their only bivouac sack since he was concussed and unable to continue. They secured him to a small ledge atop a pillar of rock. They climbed to the summit despite a thunderstorm but then died of exhaustion while descending the west flank that night. They were found four years later in 1961 still linked by their ropes, lying side by side, less than 30 minutes’ walk from the safety of the Eiger Gletscher station. Disorientated and tired from the stormy descent, they had sat down to wait for morning and fallen asleep for ever.

Three days later Corti was hauled to safety using the cable system that Hermann Steuri had been perfecting. The ledge he had waited on has since been dubbed the Corti Bivouac. Hanging on the cable, Riccardo Cassin heard Longhi’s mournful cries rising up from far down the precipice but he was too far down the face to be reached.

Longhi lasted from Thursday 8 July until the night of Monday the 12th when another viciously cold storm overwhelmed him. As the rescuers were lowering Corti down the west flank on the Sunday evening someone shouted across the face to Longhi, reassuring him that they would return the following day and attempt to reach him. Longhi shouted back two despairing but shatteringly clear words: ‘
Fame! Freddo!
’ ‘Hunger! Cold!’ I remember seeing the photograph taken from a passing plane of Longhi hanging from his rope waving forlornly at the pilot.

When they returned they saw Longhi hanging dead on the rope. His body hung there for two years, a grotesque and macabre tourist attraction for the Eiger watchers at the telescopes in Alpiglen and Kleine Scheidegg.

Clearly the Steuri name had a lot of connections with the Eigerwand. When I told Ray about its fame he was astounded by the sheer fluke of booking an apartment through the Internet and finding it owned by the same family. We had both wondered whether this piece of luck might provide us with some useful information about conditions on the mountain.

When Alice Steuri had asked us what we intended to climb and we had pointed towards the north face of the Eiger looming behind the chalet her reaction was fervent and unexpected.

‘Oh, no, not the wall. You must not try it. It is dangerous, very dangerous,’ Alice said earnestly.

We were quite taken aback by her reaction and did our best to assure her that we knew what we were doing. During the following days she took solicitous care of us, enquiring about our climbing plans, letting us use her warm, dry storage rooms, and proudly mentioning our intentions to her other guests. As we struggled with doubts about trying the climb she was telling all and sundry that we were soon to set out for the wall. It became a little embarrassing.

When we came back from the Hintisberg that day and found Alice Steuri waiting for us, we assumed she had a message from Simon Wells.

‘My mother, Anna Jossi, would like to show you something. Do you mind?’ Alice asked.

‘No, not at all,’ I said, wondering what it might be about. ‘Now?’

‘In a moment I shall bring her down to the garden,’ Frau Steuri replied.

An hour later Anna Jossi appeared in the front garden where we were sitting with cold drinks reading books and occasionally gazing reflectively at the Eiger.

‘Would you like to see this?’ she said holding out a large book. ‘I think it may interest you.’

As we gathered around the table she carefully opened the pages of the book which proved to be a hotel register. The date at the top of the first page was 1930. I glanced at Ray.

‘My father owned the Hôtel des Alpes at Alpiglen in those days,’ Anna Jossi explained. ‘And here, do you recognise these names?’

There, written in a bold italic script in the visitors’ book on a page headed August 1935 were the names of Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer. I was flabbergasted and reached out to touch the words with my fingers. Alongside the entry Mehringer had penned a personal comment in German which Ray translated.

‘We are deeply indebted to Frau Jossi for her hospitality. She was always there with a helping hand. From two poor climbers, with our warmest thanks.’ He read the words aloud and then looked up at me in amazement.

‘Frau Jossi?’ I asked and Anna Jossi beamed at me. ‘You knew Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer? You actually met them?’

‘Oh yes, indeed. They were wonderful men. So charming and friendly. Good men. Strong men.’

‘Did they stay with you?’ Ray asked.

‘Yes, yes, they stayed in the hotel and then for the last few days in an old shepherd’s hut near the face. They were always polite, always kind to me. They were always helping, cutting wood, doing chores. I was very young, of course, only sixteen. Here, look.’

She opened a second book, a scrapbook of photos and press cuttings, and pointed to a black and white photograph. Young, handsome and smiling, Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer stood on either side of a young woman with their arms around her shoulders. Her hair hung down in long dark plaits and she wore a short, dark traditional jacket over a white smock and calf-length black skirt.

‘That is me,’ Anna said proudly. ‘I liked them very much. They were kind to me.’ Ray and I stared at her in some wonder and then back at the photograph.

‘You knew Sedlmayr and Mehringer,’ I said in a disbelieving whisper. History had suddenly come to life. I leafed through the album of photographs and press cuttings. I glanced again at the portrait with Anna. They looked so cheerful and confident. They were only days from lingering, lonely deaths.

Another photograph showed Sedlmayr and Mehringer standing in a meadow with a small building in the background. They wore climbing boots and puttee-like gaiters wrapped around their baggy trousers. Mehringer’s rucksack was stylishly covered with his raincoat. Both men wore Trilby hats at jaunty rakish angles. Peering closely, I could just make out the words ‘Hôtel des Alpes’ printed on a white board on the building in the background.

‘I can’t believe this,’ I said to Ray. ‘What’s the probability of us accidentally booking in to this chalet?’

‘I know, weird, isn’t it?’

‘My father did not want them to attempt the climb,’ Anna said looking grave. ‘He told them many times that it was a dangerous place. He had heard the rock-fall. He knew what happened to the face in bad weather but they would not listen.’

‘Did you watch them climb?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Anna seemed torn between pride and sadness. ‘At first they climbed very fast, so strong, and then they went slowly, very slowly. My father had arranged with them to shine their torches at us each night. My father built a fire every night for them to see so they knew we were looking for them and then the storm came in and they did not reply to our fire. It was terrible, terrible.’ She shook her head, saddened at the memory.

‘After two days of the storm we knew they were gone,’ she said and paused. ‘And we cried and we cried and we cried,’ she added simply and tried to smile. I felt a chill run through me.