Heinrich Harrer - The White Spider

But there was no body … nothing but a couple of pitons in the rock.

It was 7 p.m. They had reached a height of 11,000 feet, and it was starting to hail. They had come to climb the Face if they could, or at least to reconnoitre its upper precipices. A little lower down there on the left was the start of the great “Ramp”; Vörg and Rebitsch started to traverse across towards it on steep ice. Then, suddenly, hail and rain began to pour down in such absolute torrents that their curiosity about the rest of the route was completely quenched. Their only desire was to crawl under their tent-sack and find some shelter from the deluge.

Nowhere could they find a good spot for a bivouac; nor, for that matter, a bad one either. Finally, they were forced to hack a tiny place out of the ice, on which to pass the night. The cold became so intense that a film of ice formed inside the tent-sack owing to the condensation. For the first time the two men suffered intensely from the cold. All night long icy sleet drummed on the tent. Every now and then they heard the crashing of stones unpleasantly close at hand.

Towards dawn the sleet ceased. As daylight came, the mists parted, but not to reveal a fine morning. A great black bank of cloud was approaching, full of menace, from the west. There was only one possible decision: to retreat.

It was a painful thought, to have to retrace that long dangerous way; but it was the thought of self-preservation.

Bitter-cold as the night had been, it had failed to numb or weaken either of the climbers. Down they climbed, rope’s length on rope’s length. They reached the place where the cliff down to the Second Icefield has to be descended on the two 100-foot ropes joined together. They roped down; then they tried to pull the ropes down after them; they refused to come down. It was still the day of hemp ropes which, when wet, became as stiff as cables. They both tugged on one end of the rope; still it refused to budge. So Rebitsch just climbed, free and unbelayed, up to the top again and cleared the knot by which the ropes had jammed. Assuredly, the North Face had not robbed these two either of their strength or of their ability to make decisions. Both were as strong and courageous as on the first day.

The descent of the Second Ice-field seemed endless. All the time, little snow-slides were coming down it, forcing their bodies away from the steep slope, but they both stood firm. They climbed steadily downwards, safeguarding one another with ice-pitons. The surface of the ice had gone soft and slushy from so much water pouring down. It had become necessary to hack away quite a foot before a piton could be banged into the firm ice below. This all took a long time, but Rebitsch and Vörg continued to descend astonishingly quickly.

The next task was to climb and rope down the overhanging rock-cliff to the First Ice-field. At times they had to knock in four pitons before they could fix the sling for the abseil securely. In spite of the bad weather and the pressure of time, they did not risk a single hasty hand-hold. This was an orderly retreat, rigidly controlled; no flight from the mountain.

They descended the First Ice-field; then Rebitsch was already traversing to their first bivouac—that luxury bivouac, the “Swallow’s Nest”. Soon he reached it and Vörg, following him, was still on ice. At that moment a horrible clatter and whining set in; stones went whizzing past his head. Lumps landed close around him, cutting holes in his rucksack; but when the fall of stones was over, Ludwig’s skull was undamaged. At five o’clock he joined Rebitsch at the bivouac.

Both were soaked to the skin. Nothing could be more inviting than to use the three or four remaining hours of daylight to continue the descent. The traverse was no problem; it was ready roped. Nothing would have been more natural than for these two to have been mastered by their longing for the safety of the valley. But neither of them was exhausted, nor were their senses in any way dulled, so as to allow longings to get the better of them. So they stayed at the bivouac.

There they got out of every stitch of wet clothing, wrung it all out, got dry underwear out of their rucksacks, put it on, then their damp things over it, and crawled into the fleecy sleeping-bags they had cached there. And there they perched themselves, huddled together and went to sleep.

Their fourth morning on the Face dawned, and the weather was if anything still more miserable. A final descent was inevitable; but now it had to be done carrying all their gear, whose weight had been doubled by the wetting it had sustained. Both were in the habit of humping rucksacks of such vast proportions that even on ordinary expeditions to Huts their wearers groaned and sweated under them. A descent with such ballast seemed quite impossible.

All the same, Rebitsch and Vörg climbed down safely with all their luggage. First along the traverse, then down the overhanging pitches—a bitter struggle made far harder by the stiffness of the ropes—to the top of the Pillar, then down and down for hour upon hour.

It was late afternoon before they reached the foot of the Face.

There they met a solitary figure coming up the debris-slopes. Was he a member of the rescue-service? Were people searching for them already then, already talking of new Eiger-victims?

No, it was only their devoted friend Eidenschink coming up. It is a good thing to be welcomed home by a true and understanding friend when you come back to earth.

The Face had not claimed Rebitsch and Vörg. They were tired, but not exhausted; they were able to laugh and to tell their story. All the same their tent near Alpiglen seemed like a palace to them.

By their safe return and by the manner of it Matthias Rebitsch 1 and Ludwig Vörg brought about the change in the attitude of conservative climbers, of the guides, of the publicity media towards the problem of the North Face. The Face had given nothing away to them; yet they had been higher on it than anyone else and had still come back safely, relaxed and calm. This spiritual superiority, the fruit of bodies incomparably well trained, was the decisive factor. The two men had learned from the tragic errors of their predecessors and had themselves made no new mistakes. They had maintained their strength and their courage alike from start to finish of their venture. From now on, nobody talked of ridiculous, presumptous earth-worms. Instead, they spoke of Men.

1 See footnote p. 44.

1 In the following year Rebitsch was appointed Deputy Leader of the German Nanga Parbat Expedition, which prevented his taking part in the first successful climb of the Face. None the less his name stands high indeed in its history.

THE summer of 1938 began sadly enough, with the death of two young Italian climbers. Bartolo Sandri and Mario Menti, employees in a wool factory at Valdagno in the Province of Vicenza, were both respected members of the Italian Alpine Club though only twenty-three years old. Sandri, especially, was known to be an unusually fine rock-climber, who had done a number of super-severe climbs ranking as “Grade VI”, among them some first ascents. True they had hardly any experience of ice-climbing in the Western Alps. Like all true mountaineers, they came to Alpiglen and the Scheidegg quietly, without any fuss, indeed almost secretly. They studied the Face, tried themselves out by a reconnaissance of its lower structure and came down again. They decided that the direct route, followed three years before by Sedlmayer and Mehringer, was easier than that discovered by Hinterstoisser. But it wasn’t any easier. The fact is that the Face was not yet fit for climbing at all.

None the less Bartolo and Mario started up it early on June 21st. They reached a greater height than Sedlmayer and Mehringer had on their first day. Their courage and enthusiasm ran high, and they were driven on by a burning urge to succeed. They just couldn’t wait. Nature, however, followed her own laws, heedless of courage, enthusiasm or ambition. Late in the evening one of the Eiger’s notorious thunderstorms set in….