Heinrich Harrer - The White Spider

They wanted to make a diagonal ascent across to the Mittellegi Ridge, in the neighbourhood of the Hut; but they were halted by an overhanging belt of rock such as even a Rebitsch and a Vörg could not climb in such conditions. It forced them to make a traverse, the like of which had not been seen on this face.

It was a roped traverse to the left, underneath the rock-step. A rope-traverse on rock dowsed with running water, on ice-glazed rock, on ice itself. A rope-traverse, did I say? A dozen rope-traverses. The ice crackled and creaked under the pressure of their crampons, when they leaned outwards and hauled on the rope, pushing off with their feet from the rock, trusting to the pitons they had banged in. It was nearly the end of the day. The pair had reached a steep ice-slope about 1,000 feet below the Mittellegi Hut. They could even see its roof, high up above, but where they were, there was no sheltering roof.

The two men took to their axes and hacked seats out of the ice and steps for footrests. They hadn’t a dry stitch on them, when they perched themselves on their tiny places for the bivouac. A single piton and the rope attached to it were their only protection against falling off the mountain, if one or the other fell asleep.

To a layman, or even to the average climber, such a bivouac may sound appalling and it may seem incredible that anyone could survive such an ordeal. But Matthias Rebitsch, one of the best, most experienced and toughest climbers of his day, and Ludwig Vörg, the first to climb the 7,000-foot West Face of Ushba in the Caucasus, nicknamed “the Bivouac King” by his friends, spent that night resting with a stoical calm. Next morning they climbed the steep slope to the Mittellegi Hut.

Right glad they were to reach its shelter. They found wood there and soon a fire was crackling in the tiny hearth. They were able to dry their drenched things. They took a brief rest….

But early in the afternoon some guides came in from above, bringing the utterly exhausted Franz Primas with them. They also brought the bitter news that Gollackner lay dead up there, 500 feet below the summit.

Without hesitating an instant, Rebitsch and Vörg volunteered to bring the boy’s body down next day.

Early next day they raced towards the top. There they found Gollackner. The pathetic young face looked relaxed, at peace with the world, as so often happens when death comes by freezing, for the last dreams of those who die that way are magical ones of succour, warmth and life.

Vörg said afterwards: “It was just as if he were sleeping and one had only to awaken him.” With every care not to disturb the last sleep of their young climbing-companion, they carried him down. They said nothing of the tremendous labour involved in bringing a body down the endless razor-blade of the Mittellegi Ridge.

Down below, it was not yet known that Gollackner was dead. Nor had the news filtered through of the magnificent feat of Vörg and Rebitsch, or of the Grindelwald guides, in the service of rescue and recovery; nevertheless, the Eiger was, at the moment, a red-hot source of public interest and controversy.

The following is from the Zürich paper Sport on July 19th:

What measure of psychical greatness would not the Eiger register if it were personified and given a soul. Year after year, a few ludicrous earthworms camp at the foot of its North Face, planning to force a passage with ropes and pitons. It is only necessary for a tiny icicle on the giant’s hat-rim to sneeze in order to annihilate the intruders. When one is lying in complete peace among the pasturing cattle, the sky seems stretched very high overhead and beautifully blue above the world. The Eiger’s Face glitters under its shields of ice, the echo of the falling stones rattles from wall to wall and one can enjoy the rush and rustle of the snow-slides.

Is it either good or necessary that this realm of nature’s tremendous forces should be invaded by beings which were not created as carefree mountain eagles or climbing-plants, but as human beings? The urge to achieve things cannot be used as an excuse for self-annihilation. It is easy enough to push the sporting aspect into the foreground, but Sport does not necessarily mean the ultimate in achievement. To clear one’s mind it is only necessary to recall the mens sana in corpore sano of the Ancients. The ascent of the Eiger North Face is forbidden. It is not the Administration in Berne which has pronounced the veto. It is the Eiger itself speaking with a dumb-show language no one can fail to understand. If anyone fails to comprehend its message, he must be deaf and deserves to be hauled away from the danger area exactly as one would lead a blind man off the tram-lines on to the pavement….

This article might have been controversial, though still off the target, in earlier years. In 1937 it had a reactionary air and to find it then, especially in so respected and serious a newspaper as Sport, was in some ways quite astonishing. A passive observation of nature and the passionless bliss which can be won from it is known to mountaineers as well as others; but it does not constitute their whole nature. An idyllic poem might be born of inactive observation of nature’s forces and it might bring pleasure to the reader. Among mountaineers, too, there have been and still are many sensitive, artistic men, who are as familiar with the howling of the tempest, the hammer-tattoo of the stones, as they are with cold, with steep ice-slopes and with overhanging rocks. They absorbed their awe-inspiring experiences irrespective of whether they were going to clothe them later in literary form or not. But while they were on the mountains, in difficulty and in danger, they behaved simply like ordinary men. The men who discovered the Poles or ventured into unexplored deserts and jungles or mastered the air-space high above the clouds were certainly not of the type which observes nature passively. Yet, one might just as well have said to those pioneers: “Don’t go into the Arctic or Antarctic, for you are neither polar bears nor penguins. Don’t go into the jungle or the desert, for you are neither monkeys nor lions. Don’t venture up into the air, for you will be upsetting the rhythmic balance of the silvery clouds in their silent march!”

Admittedly, man is small and insignificant in nature’s scheme; but he is part of it. And are we to think less of the man who exposes himself to nature’s forces than of him who just delights in looking at her, safe from dangers and tempests? Even those ridiculous earthworms know that an icicle can “sneeze”; but they have learned by observation when and where it happens, and will do their best to avoid the danger with that clear-eyed alertness which they owe to their own daring. They are not deaf; they too hear the mighty voice of the mountains, but they understand and interpret it in a different way from those who enjoy it so passively and with such self-satisfaction.

Now let us go back and follow the steps of the two men who, on a brilliant day, had made that sad journey with the boy’s body. For the weather turned fine on the day of the recovery and remained so for days.

It was the 25th before they felt sufficiently recovered to go up again from Grindelwald to their tent at Alpiglen. They studied the Face quietly, drawing their own conclusions. They recalled how Hinterstoisser’s party had shown its greatest impetus on the first day, after which its strength faded badly. There was obviously something wrong about that. It was essential to preserve enough strength to push on just as quickly in the unexplored, but obviously very difficult, upper part of the Face, below the summit. That meant siting the first camp as high as possible and stocking it lavishly.

Liebl and Rieger proved to be real friends of the kind indispensable on attempts to climb high peaks. Although themselves fit and anxious to tackle the climb of the North Face, they offered to help Rebitsch and Vörg carry their loads up to the first camp and so to forego their own attempt. At about 6 a.m. on July 27th they started up the lower part of the Face with the two protagonists. Once again the weather was glorious.