Heinrich Harrer - The White Spider

Nobody who had not tried it himself could give a definite answer.

Max Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer left their shelter in the herdsman’s hut at Alpiglen during the night of August 20th-21st, 1935. At 2 a.m. on the 21st—a Wednesday—they started to climb the Face. As soon as daylight came, queues gathered round the telescopes at Grindelwald and Kleine Scheidegg. All day long people watched the intrepid Munich pair; the criticism of the know-it-alls died away into silence, quenched by admiration and sheer wonder. The two men were climbing magnificently, in spite of the steepness of the Face, in spite of their heavy rucksacks. One could see clearly as they belayed each other, as they roped their rucksacks up difficult pitches after them. Not an ill-judged step or an unconsidered movement. Even the guides, watching everything that goes on in their own sector of the mountains with a suspicious and critical eye, had to admit that they were watching two master-climbers at work.

Following a perfect line of ascent, straight up towards the summit, hardly stopping to rest, Sedlmayer and Mehringer were gaining height steadily, like some perfectly-functioning machine, rope’s length by rope’s length, almost as if they were giving an exhibition at a climbing-school. By dusk, they had disposed of the whole lower section of the Face. At 9,500 feet, 2,600 feet above the point where they started to climb, they bivouacked, well above the windows of Eigerwand Station, whose lights shone down almost like stars.

Thursday dawned. Even the sceptics were now almost convinced that the bid was going to succeed. Indeed many were striking bets that the pair would reach the summit this very day, early in the afternoon. But the Face is terribly deceptive. It was still a long way to the top, and the route as difficult as it was unexplored. The spectators, avid for sensations, showed their disappointment. Their gladiators are a lazy lot. There is only that ridiculous little belt of rock; how high can it be? They turn down their thumbs, shaking their heads angrily. Why, it can’t be much more than sixty feet!

But no. It wasn’t sixty feet, it was more than three hundred. Three hundred feet of vertical rock, up which two heavy rucksacks as well as two men had to come. And these two men were climbers, not gladiators. They tackled the cliff, which was of such a degree of severity that it would have graced some tower in the Dolomites more fittingly than this ghastly Face of the Eiger, belaying and safeguarding one another, neither of them aware that they were being, nor in the least desiring to be, watched. Their thoughts were far from the rest of the world, not through any feeling of superiority, but simply because the mountain had taken complete possession of them and because they were constrained to fight with every fibre of their being, with all the awareness of men in mortal danger, to master the difficult pitch. Stones and fragments of ice began to fall from above; so steep is the cliff that they went whistling far out over their heads. After long hours of punishing work they reached the top of the step in the wall. But by then it was afternoon.

It took the whole afternoon to cross that first, steep ice-field—the one that looks so ludicrously short from below. Again and again they could be seen covering their heads with their rucksacks or using them to give some kind of cover as they moved on. The mountain artillery was at work.

At dusk they bivouacked at the upper rim of the First Ice-field. It was impossible to see from below whether they had room to sit; there could be no question of lying down. They looked as if they were glued to the Wall. It was a very long night, but the weather continued to hold.

All through Friday the spectators watched Sedlmayer and Mehringer, who hardly seemed to be gaining height any more. The traverse from the First to the Second Ice-field seemed to be very difficult, too. The huge size of this field could be gauged by the tiny size of the dots which were men, by the short distances which were none the less rope’s lengths of a hundred feet. Again and again the climbers were forced to halt, clearly to shelter against falling stones and ice fragments. The roping-up of the rucksacks took up much time. Slowly, terribly slowly, they gained height, as the hours raced by like minutes; but still they moved upwards towards the left-hand rim of the Second Ice-field. Everyone was asking: “Where will they bivouac”? No one was destined to see, for a curtain of mist sank slowly down the mountain-face, to sever one world from another.

During the night, the weather broke. A strong gale tore across the ridges, rain pattered down on the valleys and, up above, the wind chased the hail-stones along the mountainsides. At first it was just a thunderstorm; but the crashing of the thunder was shot through with the crackle and rattle of falling stones and ice. So great was the din up on the storm-bound Face that the peaceful sleep of tourists at Alpiglen and above on the Kleine Scheidegg was disturbed.

This appalling weather lasted the whole of Saturday. To the hammering of the falling stones was added the rushing roar of avalanches. The cold grew intense. The night temperature down at the Kleine Scheidegg fell to 8° below zero. What must it be up there, high on the North Face? Could the two men still be alive? Many continued to hope against hope; but no one could know anything of Sedlmayer and Mehringer’s desperate fight for life, for the curtain of cloud never parted for a single instant. Their fifth day on the Face was followed by another murderously cold night.

It was now Sunday, the 25th. Who would have dared to believe that the two men from Munich could still be alive? Then, towards noon, the covering of the mists lifted for a little while. A watcher with his eye glued to the telescope cannot believe his eyes. But suddenly there can be no more doubt and he shouts:

“I can see them! They are still alive! They are moving! Climbing!”

And so in fact they were. One could see the tiny dots, moving slowly upwards across the sheer, smooth shield of ice which leads to the “Flatiron”. So they were really still alive, after five days on this fearful Face, after four bivouacs in spite of the bitter cold, raging storms, avalanches, everything. They were alive and still moving upwards.

Hope flickered again; an unnatural optimism surged up. Surely the lads were going to pull it off in spite of everything. Otherwise, they would certainly have turned back!

But the guides and the climbers, who had spent a life in the mountains, remained silent. One doesn’t announce publicly that one has written men off as lost. The guides and the climbers knew well enough why they hadn’t turned back; it was because the avalanches and the falling stones had caught them in a terrible trap. In addition there were the fearful difficulties of rocks, now plastered with ice and snow, and at the very best swept by cascading waterfalls. The only hope now was to fight a way out to the top. That is what the guides and the climbers knew. They sensed, too, that Sedlmayer and Mehringer, the first two to attempt the North Face, also knew it all too well and were struggling forward simply because one mustn’t give in.

The two men climbed on, towards the arête of the “Flatiron “.

The curtain of the mists closed down again, to hide the last act of the first tragedy of the Eiger’s North Face from the eyes of men.

A gale, whipping the snow-flakes horizontally against the rocks, the thunder of avalanches, the plash 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 Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer.

On Tuesday the 27th, friends of the two men reached the mountain from Munich, among them Sedlmayer’s brother and that Gramminger who was later to achieve world renown in the field of mountain rescue. They tried everything to effect a rescue, but there was nothing left to save. There was nothing to be seen or heard from the summit, from the towers of the West Ridge, or from below. No human sound interrupted the grim voice of the mountain. It was impossible to climb up on to the Face from below. To bring aid from above was out of the question.