Heinrich Harrer - The White Spider

I remember a saying of Schopenhauer’s: “Just as the wayfarer only surveys and recognises the road he has come when he reaches some high place and can look back over it in its entirety, so we ourselves are only able to recognise and value a stage in our life when it is over.” The North Face of the Eiger and the crossing of the “White Spider” were for me an expedition and a stage in my life at one and the same time; though I only realised it a good deal later. Today I have no doubt whatever about the invaluable contribution a difficult and, in the eyes of many, an incredibly dangerous climb on a mountain can make to a man’s later life. I do not believe in a blind Fate which dominates us; nor can I unreservedly agree with Schopenhauer’s statement—” Fate shuffles the cards, we play them.” I am quite certain that we have a hand in the shuffling.

There is nothing new to be said about the behaviour of man in exceptional circumstances of danger or crisis. It has all been thought and said already. But if I had to write an entry in the autograph-album of the worshippers of blind Chance and inevitable Fate I could not find better words than those used by the Athenian, Menander, more than two thousand years ago. “A man’s nature and way of life are his fate, and that which he calls his fate is but his disposition.” This truth was brought home to me clearly for the first time on the slope of the “White Spider”. Perhaps all four of us were the fortunate owners of a disposition which was the basic factor in our successful climb; training, scientific preparations and equipment being only very necessary adjuncts.

The North Face of the Eiger was described for the first time in Alpine literature by A. W. Moore, whose splendid book The Alps in 1864 1 does full justice to its savage grandeur. Moore, with his guides and companions—among whom there was a lady, Miss Walker—made the third ascent of the Eiger on July 25th, 1864; then they climbed a little way further, along the North-West Ridge, from which they could look straight down the precipitous North Face.

“Of the thousands,” Moore writes, “who annually pass under the shadow of this magnificent wall, which in height and steepness alike excels the corresponding face of the Wetterhorn, few can have failed to be impressed with its rugged and precipitous character. But grand and striking as is the view of the cliffs from below, no one who has not looked down them as we now did can appreciate them properly. Except in the Dauphiné, I have never seen so sheer and smooth a precipice. A stone dropped from the edge would have fallen hundreds of feet before encountering any obstacle to its progress. It is rather remarkable (and fortunate) that while the northern face of this great mass of rock is cut away abruptly, in such an inaccessible manner, its western face should be so comparatively easy and practicable….”

“Inaccessible”—it never occurred to Moore that there could be even the possibility of making a way up this wall, in which the eye can detect no holds at all. E. H. Stevens, who produced the new edition of Moore’s book in 1939, added a footnote to the above description of that terrific Face. It reads: “This is the terrible ‘Eigerwand’ (the western section of the North Face) which in the last two or three years has been the scene of such shocking disasters to several parties attempting, with reckless and ill-considered daring, 1 to solve this last and greatest of Alpine problems. The ascent was finally achieved in 1938.”

As one who belonged to the party which succeeded in the first ascent of the Face in 1938, I should like to observe—with due respect for our critic’s judgment—that I neither felt mentally deranged twenty years ago nor consider myself mad now.

It has been widely deplored that the very creed of mountaineering should have been debased by the climbs and attempts on this particular Face, in that it has become an arena, a natural stage, on which every movement of the actors can be followed. And the applause accorded to successful climbers on their return is argued as another outward sign of their inward decay….

Nobody regrets it more than the men themselves who climb on the Eiger’s North Face. They desire nothing more than peace and quiet; they do not want to be looked at. They long for the days of their grandfathers when nobody took any notice of climbers or bothered to watch them. Full of nostalgia for those good old days, I read the end of Moore’s account of his first climb of the mountain, the return to Wengern Alp. Alas, my yearnings for peace and quiet and a tranquil ending to that fine performance were not to be granted, even then. This is what I read: “Hence, running over the easy rocks and smooth snow, we got to the gazon at 2.40, and after a rapid walk over the pastures, amidst the firing of guns at the hotel, which was commenced as soon as we appeared in sight, at 3.10 p.m. once more arrived at the Wengern Alp, where we were received with an amount of enthusiasm and hand-shaking that was quite overpowering….”

That happened on July 25th 1864, at the height of the “golden age” of Alpine climbing. Am I really supposed to be disappointed because the climbers of the day were just human beings, with all the human weaknesses and follies? All I can do is to record, with a smile of amusement, that when we got back nobody fired off any guns to greet us. They certainly had more feeling for style and dramatic effects a hundred years ago!

When was the Eiger first climbed, then?

We know now that it was on August 11th 1858. But when I looked for a report about this still considerable achievement of a first ascent in the contemporary issues of the Alpine Journal, I had no luck at all. It was said that a Mr. Harrington or Harington had reached the summit with some guides. This was the only mention of the name Harrington, and small wonder; for the name of the first man to climb the Eiger was not Harrington at all, but Barrington. Mr. Charles Barrington.

It was not till 1883, twenty-five years after his first ascent, that Barrington wrote his long-overdue report in the shape of a letter to the editor of the Alpine Journal. From this article-in-form-of-a-letter we learn that Barrington—himself not even a member of the Alpine Club, which was just one year old at the time of his climb—arrived at Grindelwald early in August 1858 and engaged two celebrated guides, Christian Aimer and Peter Bohren, the latter being characterised by his nickname of the “Wolf of the Glaciers”. On August 6th they climbed to the Strahlegg and on the 9th ascended the Jungfrau from the cave in the Faulberg, returning to Grindelwald the same evening. Glacier-burn must have played havoc with Barrington’s face, for he describes, in his humorous way, how he spent the night, “sleeping with a beefsteak on my face….” 1

But young Mr. Charles was by no means satisfied with his Alpine performances. With all the liberality of a man who hasn’t a farthing in his pocket, but still enquires the price of the World, he asked what else there was to do. Good advice costs little, its implementation is expensive. “You could do the Matterhorn—or the Eiger. Neither has been climbed as yet,” came the answer.

The Matterhorn was way over there in the Valais and would doubtless cost much more. At Grindelwald the Eiger was right in front of one’s nose and there was enough money for it. So the Eiger be it! About midnight on August 10th Charles and his guides arrived at Wengern Alp. Barrington lay down on a sofa and slept for three hours. At 3 a.m. on the 11th, Barrington, Aimer and Bohren left the inn and started off for the Eiger. As soon as they reached the rocks, Barrington, according to his own account, took over the lead. Thanks to young Charles’s delight in rock-climbing, they went up, not by the normal route in use today, but almost straight up the crest of the North-West Ridge, and reached the summit well before noon. On the descent, they followed the Couloir and went on down the slope over which the usual ascent route runs today. They still had a few adventures to contend with. Twice they were almost swept away by avalanches; fortunately it was only “almost”, and four hours after leaving the summit the three men were all safely back at Wengern Alp. Barrington ends his account thus: “Thus ended my first and only visit to Switzerland. Not having money enough to try the Matterhorn, I went home…. Had I not been as fit as my old horse ‘Sir Robert Peel’ when I won the ‘Irish Grand National’ with him, I would not have seen half the course….”