The Beckoning Silence (36 page)

As they settled down in the cave to camp at the foot of the Difficult Crack where I was now belaying Ray they were surprised by the appearance of two climbers – Tom Carruthers, a well known Glaswegian climber, and Anton Moderegger, an Austrian climber. Bonington and Clough were baffled to learn that not only were they complete strangers but neither could speak a word of each other’s language. While Bonington and Clough went on to climb the face with one more bivouac on the Traverse of the Gods, Anton Moderegger and Tom Carruthers were last seen moving very slowly halfway up the Second Ice Field.

I saw the grainy photograph of the pair that Ian Clough had snapped from the top of the Flat Iron. The tiny figures had been crudely circled to mark them out on the immense expanse of grey rock-pitted ice. They were moving so slowly that there was no chance that they would reach the Flat Iron, one of the most dangerous places on the face, before the heat of the afternoon released the daily barrage of rocks. The rock slabs of the Flat Iron are scarred and pitted by the incessant impacts of falling stones that turn the place into a death trap in the afternoon. As Bonington and Clough anxiously watched their snail-like progress they could sense the uncertainty in their movements, two tiny spots becoming overwhelmed with fear.

Confident, rational decision-making would have been impossible given that they didn’t speak each other’s language – only mixed messages. In the centre of the ice field they were sitting ducks, vulnerable to the random bombardment of stone-fall. Clough and Bonington tried to shout a warning but they were too far away to hear.

The photograph, despite its poor quality, had a powerful effect on me. It seemed to sum up everything that was bleak and lonely about the north face of the Eiger. It was a last glimpse of short lives caught by chance on film which filled me with a sense of pity and pathos. I wondered what might have gone so terribly wrong. Were they swept from the face by rock-fall? Did one fall and pull his companion to his death? We would never know. They simply disappeared unseen from an eerie world of dirty rock-pitted ice and plunging rock.

I glanced around the cave as Ray came into view at the end of the traverse. For a moment I had begun to feel uneasy about what we were doing. Perhaps I had read too many books and knew too many horror stories.

‘Hey, this is good,’ Ray said with an infectious grin.

‘Well, you’ve cheered up,’ I said, noting Ray’s surge of confidence.

‘Oh, yes, I’ve got over that,’ he said dismissively. ‘Just morning sickness. Hey, I recognise this place,’ he added, looking around the cave.

‘It’s a good bivi site. Better than the Swallow’s Nest, apparently.’

‘Did you meet those guys?’ Ray asked, as I sorted out my gear in preparation for leading the Difficult Crack. ‘I thought they might have fixed a rope for us.’

‘No, I just wished them luck. Anyway I quite fancy leading this,’ I said and started to move to the right where a crack cut through a bulge of rock dripping with icy water. I clipped the ropes through an old twisted piton.

‘Rather you than me,’ Ray said, as he fed the ropes out.

‘Look, I’m leaving my sack here,’ I said, as I clipped it to the piton. ‘When I get up I’ll tie the blue rope off and you can use it as a fixed rope while I belay you on the green.’

‘What about your sack?’

‘I’ll pull the green rope through the runners, drop it down to you and I’ll haul the sack up.’

‘Yeah, okay, sounds good.’

At the first touch of the crack, which was streaming with water, I marvelled at the nerve of the solo climber who only hours earlier had tackled the pitch without the security of a back rope. The water trickled down my sleeves and along my arms, sending icy rivulets into my armpits. I shivered and tried to get a better grip of the rock. I pulled up to the overhang and stretched to clip a tattered loop of rope protruding from the crack. I had no idea how strong it was or even what it was threaded through. Above it I could see another contorted, rusted piton. My fingers were quickly numbed. I knew I couldn’t waste time. Reaching as high as possible I managed to get a tenuous finger-jam in the slimy crack and, pressing my boots as high up under the roof as I could manage, I pulled nervously upwards, praying that my hand wouldn’t suddenly shoot out of the crack. I struggled to clip a karabiner through the bent peg and breathed a sigh of relief when the green rope was then safely clipped in. I noticed with some apprehension as I pulled through the roof that the tattered rope loop I had clipped to was only loosely jammed in the crack.

Above the roof the climbing eased and I began to enjoy myself as I followed the crack rightwards to a stance at the top of a short corner. To my surprise I could find no pitons or places for wires. Looking up I saw the way lead back left, traversing into a rocky corner directly above where Ray was standing. As I moved across to it I was dismayed to note a series of blocky roofs jutting from the corner beneath me. It would make hauling my rucksack a time-consuming task. After 100 feet of climbing I came to a secure stance at the top of the corner with two good pitons and a bolt to belay on.

‘OK, Joe,’ Ray yelled and I began to haul on the green rope that I had dropped down to him. I watched as the rucksack swung into sight from beneath the first roof and hauled hard to get it clear of the obstruction. It flipped upside down as it bounced over the lip of the roof and I watched my crampons swing from the attachment points on the top of the rucksack. After 30 feet the rucksack jammed hard under another roof. I couldn’t free it. I shouted to Ray to tell him to start climbing the blue rope using a sharp toothed camming device to grip the rope. I couldn’t belay him until he freed the rucksack and I could throw down the green rope.

Ray had found the prototype lightweight camming jumar in his shop and had thrown it into his sack as an afterthought. Now he was using it for the very first time and finding it almost useless. The grip relied too heavily on the sharp teeth in the metal cam. I could see an alarming amount of white core appearing on his rope. It was shredding the sheath. Ray was grunting and swearing as he pulled over the roof, fighting with the recalcitrant device which was steadily eating its way through his life-line with alarming efficiency.

When he could reach across to free my rucksack I hauled hard, with the result that it promptly jammed 15 feet higher under yet another roof. I started swearing angrily. On Ray’s third attempt to free the rucksack I noticed that the straps holding my crampons in place had almost worked loose. A solitary strap remained in a loose loop and the only thing preventing the crampons from disappearing into space was that one of the points had punctured the nylon tape. I yelled a warning and Ray managed to grab the crampons before they became Eiger junk.

When Ray arrived at the stance he was breathing heavily and swearing about the useless lightweight jumaring device.

‘Bugger, that,’ he said, throwing the piece of aluminium into the depths. ‘It nearly killed me.’

‘Look, sorry I got angry with you, mate,’ I said. ‘I thought you were making a pig’s ear of it.’

‘I was.’

‘Yeah, but it was my fault for not thinking about the haul line.’

‘No worries,’ Ray said and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Oh, and well led. It looked hard.’

‘More like wet and cold,’ I said. ‘Anyway, let’s have a drink and sort these ropes out. They’re a mess.’

As we chewed on some tough Swiss sausage and dried fruit I noticed the clouds had built up in the west. There was no longer a thin grey line on the horizon but a whole series of cumulo-nimbus clouds piling steadily into the sky. I glanced at my watch. One-thirty in the afternoon.

‘Hell, we’ve wasted an hour and a half at least,’ I said angrily. ‘Have you seen those clouds?’ I nodded to the west.

‘They said it was going to be overcast in the afternoon.’

I didn’t reply. There was something I didn’t like about the way the clouds were forming. I checked my watch again. The pressure was plummeting.

15 The fatal storm

We hurried up a rocky gully leading towards the base of the Röte Fluh. We moved together in an ascending 500-foot traverse over easy ground that led us leftwards over a series of snow-covered walls to a shield of rock. As I approached the wall I recognised the distinctive shape of the Hinterstoisser Traverse and felt a gathering excitement that we were about to pass another historic landmark. I found a tattered fixed rope clipped to some ancient but strong-looking pitons and quickly brought Ray up to the stance. Looking directly above the belay I saw an overhanging rock wall about 150 feet high. A thin trickle of water fell into space from its edge and I felt the spray cool my face.

‘That’s where Don Whillans abseiled when they rescued Nally,’ I said to Ray.

‘Must be,’ he said.

I didn’t answer because I had looked at the sky again and was now deeply troubled at what I saw.

‘Bloody hell, kid,’ I said and Ray turned to see what I was looking at. The western sky was now filled with dark thunderheads. The boiling white summits were building massively and even as we watched great plumes of coiling clouds were climbing thousands of feet into the air with every minute that passed.

‘We’re in deep shit. That lot is going to go off any moment. It’s big. This is no overcast afternoon,’ I said curtly.

‘That happened quickly.’

‘They can build very fast. I noticed the wind rising earlier. It’s the gust front pushed ahead by those cumulo-nimbus clouds. They’re all joining together. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. It might be short-lived but it’s really going to dump on us.’

I reached up and grabbed the fixed rope that was draped across the traverse. In three or four places the sheath on the fixed rope had been torn away and thin strands of white core was all that was left. I was filled with a nervous urgency, made worse by the oppressive and electric atmosphere of the onrushing storm front. There was no time for delicacy so I simply heaved myself across on the fragile rope, hoping it wouldn’t snap, clipping my own ropes through every battered piton I came to.

I glanced back and was astounded to see how dark it had become. Ray seemed to be standing on a cloud and behind him the ramparts of the Röte Fluh had disappeared. There was an ominous rumble of thunder from the surrounding clouds and water began to splash down across the slabby rocks of the traverse. The overhanging wall protected me from the worst of the deluge as I hurried across the rock, grabbing and clipping and hauling as fast as I could. I winced as another heavy explosion of thunder rumbled behind me. Glancing up to my left I saw a mass of fist-sized rocks spinning out into space from the top of the wall. I watched, transfixed, as they whistled past and spat down with sharp staccato reports into the rocky terrain several hundred feet beneath my feet.

An insistent rushing, sluicing sound began to increase in volume. I looked directly above me and was alarmed to see a curtain of water, hail and stones spewing over the wall at the top of the Hinterstoisser Traverse. Fortunately, the heavier debris sprayed far out into space, although the water and hail began to flow in torrents across the slabs I was traversing. I glanced back at Ray who was hunched at his belay stance, his hood over his helmet, in the direct line of a now heavy waterfall. Since I was preoccupied with climbing the traverse safely I simply registered these facts but didn’t feel unduly troubled. If anything I felt a mounting anticipation at the turn of events. The storm was dramatic and spectacular and, in a peculiar sort of way, enjoyable. For the moment we were safe and the security of the Swallow’s Nest beckoned.

After 130 feet of traversing I came to a vertical crack running straight up, bounded on its right side by a jutting roof. I knew that I should stop and bring Ray across, but with ropes nearly 200 feet long I gambled that I might just reach the shelter of the Swallow’s Nest. I climbed the crack as fast as possible, tugging hard on the fixed rope as the sky around me began to explode with heavy cracks of thunder. Lightning flickered within the clouds and water and hail began to rush down onto me. As I emerged at the top of the crack I saw a small snow ledge at the base of an angled rock wall. A flat roof projected protectively out over the ledge. There were bolts and an old fixed rope on the wall which I hurriedly clipped myself to and shouted down to Ray to come up. There was no response. I doubted that he had heard me above the tumult of the storm. I pulled on the ropes until they came taut and then gave three sharp tugs, which was our signal to climb if we were out of earshot.

I clipped the ropes through my belay plate, dropped my rucksack onto the ledge, clipped it to a sling, then lay back against the sloping rock wall, which was completely dry. A fine curtain of water was spraying over the lip of the roof. I lit a cigarette, keeping the ropes taut in case Ray started moving, and stared across the First Ice Field. It was at that point that I fully appreciated how powerful the thunderstorm had been. The ice field was a continuously moving sheet of hail and water. Individual rocks bounced down the ice and sprang into space from the lower edge of the ice field. I leaned forwards and craned my neck to look up at the rest of the wall which had now opened up as I had escaped the confines of the Röte Fluh. I gasped in shock at what I saw.

Far out to my left, in line with the Spider, a great water spout was spewing from the lower edge of the Second Ice Field and cascading in a free-falling torrent hundreds of feet high. Higher up the wall there was a ceiling of grey cloud level with the Traverse of the Gods, but I could make out the Ramp ice field and the dark diagonal gash of the Ramp. Another waterfall was spraying out from the top of the Ramp ice field in a triple-headed torrent. The main mass of the water was falling the entire length of the Ramp in a 300-foot arc, pounding into the rocks at the start of the Third Ice Field. A continuous barrage of rocks was flying off the Second Ice Field, some impacting the First Ice Field in front of me with sharp, cracking sounds and whirring out to fall 3000 feet to the meadows below.