The White Spider

Self-examination? Compensation for an inferiority complex? A climber who dares to tackle the North Face of the Eiger must have examined and proved himself a hundred times in advance. And suppose he has at some time suffered from complexes—and where is the man who has not, unless he is satisfied with the dull existence of a mere vegetable?—he must have found the right adjustment long before he gets there. A climb of the North Face as a counterbalance to hysteria? A hysteric, an unstable character, would go to pieces at the very sight of the Wall, just as surely as every mask of the kind men wear before one another in the daily round of life falls away in face of this menacing bastion of rock and ice.

Let us grant courage and the love of pure adventure their own justification, even if we cannot produce any material support for them. Mankind has developed an ugly habit of only allowing true courage to the killers. Great credit accrues to the one who bests another; little is given to the man who recognises in his comrade on the rope a part of himself, who for long hours of extreme peril faces no opponent to be shot or struck down, but whose battle is solely against his own weakness and insufficiency. Is the man who, at moments when his own life is in the balance, has not only to safeguard it but, at the same time, his friend’s—even to the extent of mutual self-sacrifice—to receive less recognition than a boxer in the ring, simply because the nature of what he is doing is not properly understood? In his book about the Dachstein,1Kurt Maix writes: “Climbing is the most royal irrationality out of which Man, in his creative imagination, has been able to fashion the highest personal values.” Those personal values, which we gain from our approach to the mountains, are great enough to enrich our life. Is not the irrationality of its very lack of purpose the deepest argument for climbing? But we had better leave philosophical niceties and unsuitable psycho-analysis out of this.

First, let us take a glance at the two men who in mid-August 1935 took up their quarters in a cow-hut among the meadows of Alpiglen, which they proposed to use as their base—the first two ever to dare an attempt on that mighty Face, Max Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer. They were wiry, well-trained types, men with frank, wholesome faces. Not theirs the steely iron-hard features of legendary heroes, or of filmstars of a certain stamp. One would hardly have noticed them in the ordinary way, probably because they were just that little bit more reserved, quieter and likeable than the average young man. Their calm and relaxed demeanour marked them out as people who had a firm standing in every-day life, men who had no need either to justify themselves by an unusually perilous venture, which might cost them their lives, or to await the applause of the masses to tell them who they were.

The very way in which Sedlmayer and Mehringer went about the reconnaissance of the Face spoke volumes for their character. They approached their mountain calmly and without fuss. There was no challenging smile on their faces, no show of conceit. They knew well enough the measure of their undertaking and went about their preparations in all seriousness. Of course the real preparation, the spiritual mentality, the long years of hard training, the sober assessment of their own capabilities, all these already lay far behind them. They were not world-famous; only a narrow circle of friends knew them. These sternest of critics, all members of the climbing élite, knew that Sedlmayer and Mehringer were among the best, the most careful, the toughest and most penetrative of climbers, tested and tried a hundred times over on the severest of climbs.

But even if you choose a herdsman’s hut as your base, you cannot keep your most secret plans secret in a tourists’ centre. The rumour filtered through that there were two men intending to attempt the North Face of the Eiger. There were plenty of well-intentioned, warning voices. But what is the use of warnings and advice? Nobody knew anything about the Face, then; all that was known was its grim, ever-changing countenance—ice, rock, snow… avalanches… volleys of falling stones. An unfriendly, merciless countenance. All anybody could say was: “Don’t climb the Face, it is horrible.” But was its horror stronger than Man’s will-power, than his capacity? Who could answer that question? Nobody had yet been on the Face. Sedlmayer and Mehringer would be the first. And they were preparing themselves for this climb as for no other climb in their lives. They knew that this was no mere case of a difficult first-ascent, but of a positive irruption into the Vertical, which the two of them were making. How long would it last? Two or three days, or more? They took provisions along for six days. Their equipment, too, was the best yet seen at that time. The worst of it was that they didn’t yet know what was most essential for the Eiger’s North Face; was that Face of ice, was it of rock? Not even long study through a strong telescope could answer that question, for the Face continually altered its appearance from day to day, nay from hour to hour. The only unalterable features were its pitiless magnificence and its utter unapproachability. All experience won from other mountains seemed useless here. Experience of this gigantic wall could only be gained on the Face itself.

The weather would be the decisive factor. The two Munich men knew that only too well. But they also knew that the famous period of settled weather for which they ought, by the strictest of basic climbing rules, to wait, apparently didn’t exist where the North Face of the Eiger was concerned. It might be perfectly fine for miles around; the Eiger and the North Face have their own particular weather. Quite a small cloud, caught in the huge perpendicular upthrust of the Wall’s concave basin, can kindle a fearsome storm of hail, snow and raging winds, while the visitors in Grindelwald, just below down there, are comfortably sunbathing on their chaises-longues. Every shred of weather working up from the plains fights its savage opening engagement on that Face. Even the clouds which have already dumped their load of rain on their approach to the Hills, join up again on the Eiger’s Face with redoubled strength, to fight a last desperate rearguard action before drifting off to float about the other summits as exhausted, harmless tatters of mist. Or else the mere contrast between the cold air trapped on the Face and the sun-warmed air external to it forms a cloud pregnant with tension of its own making, to whip rain, snow and ice into the Eiger’s flanks.

These two men, who believed they had spotted a route—probably the only possible one—up the Face, had noted all this. The lowest point of the Face was at about 6,900 feet. The first 800 feet of the climb—although steep and exposed to falling avalanches and stones—looked difficult but not impossibly so. With field-glasses it was possible to distinguish some holes in the rock up there—the windows of Eigerwand Station on the Jungfrau Railway, which winds its upward way for miles in the heart of the mountain. About 400 yards to the west there is yet another such gallery-window in the Face, the window at the 3-8 kilometre mark from which, during the construction of the line, they used to dump the rubble down the outside of the mountain. Of course, one could take the train to Eigerwand or the window at Kilometre 3-8 and start the climb from there; but one might just as well climb the Eiger by the normal route and only look at the Face. No, the railway inside the mountain was meant for the rest of the world. For the men interested in the climbing of the Face, only one thing counts—a climb, unquestionable in the eyes of sporting and climbing circles, from the lowest point to the 13,041-foot summit of the Eiger.

Sedlmayer and Mehringer studied the Face for days on end, prepared their gear for the climb, lay there for hours on the Alp, looking through field-glasses. Above the railway-window in the Face a vertical rock-step went surging up for more than six hundred feet. Could it be climbed? That could only be decided once you got up there. Above the step gleamed an ice-field, the First Ice-field, as it is now called. How high was it? How steep? Very hard to decide those questions from down below.

Above that again a second rock pitch, followed by a huge sheet of snow and ice, which one would have to ascend diagonally to the left. Then there was a third ice-field, whose rock and ice outlines had a strange shape, almost that of a huge hawk beating upwards with outspread wings. To reach the beak of this hawk one would have to climb a sharp arète leaning against the perpendicular summit-wall at that point—a ridge later christened the “Flatiron” by its climbers. Could all this be climbed? From the ridge one would have to traverse leftwards across that steep, third ice-field, from whose further end an abrupt ramp goes surging diagonally to the left across the Face towards the Mittellegi Ridge. Could it be climbed right up to its top? Could one traverse off it to the right on to the huge snow-field which throws out slender snow- and ice-runnels in every direction like a huge spider crouching above the gulf 5,000 feet beneath? And finally: could one climb from the “Spider” to the Summit through the cracks and couloirs above?

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.

Sedlmayer’s brother and his friends—tried and tested climbers all—stood powerless before the fury of unbridled nature.

Swiss military planes tried to fly along the Face during the following days. They discovered no sign of the missing men. Weeks later, on September 19th, when the weather at last improved, came Ernst Udet, Germany’s ace airman. This was an extraordinary twist of fate. In 1928 Dr. Arnold Fanck had introduced Udet to mountain flying during the filming of the “White Hell of Piz Palü”. Then it had been make-believe; Udet had to fly close to an ice-slope to try to locate a party which had lost its way, and to lead the rescue operation. This time it was tragic actuality. Only now there was no question of rescuing anyone only of finding some bodies.

The outstanding Grindelwald guide and ski-runner Fritz Steuri accompanied Udet on his daring venture. Flying to within sixty feet of the cliff, they located one of the missing men—which of them was it?—knee deep in the snow, still upright, frozen to death at the last bivouac at the point of the “Flatiron”, at the upper rim of the Third Ice-field, ever since known as the “Death Bivouac”.

Two men had perished on the Face.

But courage had not been quenched, nor the eternal yearning for adventure, nor the longing to press forward into the unknown. It was decided to search for the bodies next year and, if possible, to bring them down.

All the same, it was possible to recognise the mistakes—avoidable mistakes—the first pair had been bound to make just because they were the first. And if the youth of the climbing world, itself brimming over with life, felt they were fulfilling their duty towards the dead men by trying to bring down their mortal remains, their enthusiasm and imagination were at the same time fired by their thoughts of the menacing Face and the way up it.

Youth didn’t bother its head about the sharp tongues of the wordy warfare which flared up after the first tragedy on the Eiger’s face. It only heard in the mountain’s threats a siren call, a challenge to its own courage. It even invented the pious untruth that it was its duty to fulfil the bequest of the men who had died. Perhaps it even believed it. But the real spur was that inexplicable longing for the eternal adventure.

1936 was to be the year marked by the shattering death of the last survivor of two parties; of the man who tried to come back from the beyond into the world of living men—the year of the tragedy of Toni Kurz.

1Kurt Maix, “Im Banne der Dachstein Südwand,” Publishers, Das Bergland Buch, Salzburg, 1952.

The Tragedy of Toni Kurz

As is often the case with mountain folk, whose features have been carved by wind and storm so that they look older in their youth, younger in their old age, Albert von Allmen’s face is ageless. He might be in his middle thirties or his middle fifties.

The mountains have been von Allmen’s strict teachers and loyal friends, even if his profession leads him more into than onto the peaks. For Albert is a Sector-Guard on the Jungfrau Railway. He is responsible for everything along the line inside the Eiger, and sees to it that nothing goes wrong in that long tunnelled section; but he is equally interested in everything that goes on outside. True, he doesn’t quite understand the young people who are trying to climb the terrific Eiger precipice, but, even if he thinks them a little deranged, he has a soft spot for them. Von Allmen’s eyes are kindly eyes. They are surrounded by many little creases which record not only cares and the hard life of the mountains, but also the joy of laughter.

At noon on July 21st 1936 Albert was standing outside the gallery entrance at Kilometre 3-8, after opening the heavy wooden door.

It was a Tuesday. Ever since Saturday the 18th there had been four climbers on the Face; two Austrians, Edi Rainer and Willy Angerer, and two Bavarians, Anderl Hinterstoisser and Toni Kurz. Everyone had fallen for the fresh-faced, clean-limbed Toni Kurz, not only because he was himself a professional guide, but because of his laugh. When Toni laughed, it was as if life itself were laughing. All young men, these; Angerer, the eldest, was twenty-seven, Kurz and Hinterstoisser just twenty-three. They had already climbed almost as high on the Face as Sedlmayer and Mehringer the year before, on their ill-fated attempt from which they did not return. But these four would come back safely; what had been seen of them during the last few days gave solid grounds for hope that this time there would be no disaster.

None of those present had seen such magnificent climbing. True, one of the climbers, apparently Angerer, seemed to have been struck by a stone. That was why the party had been moving so slowly for the last two days, and that was probably why they had decided to turn back. The descent over ice-fields and rock cliffs swept by falling stones and avalanches looked ghastly enough; but the four men were moving steadily, if very slowly, downwards towards the safety of the easier ground below, in obvious good heart and without a moment’s hesitation The three fit ones were continually attending to the one who had clearly been hurt. They couldn’t be bad, these lads who looked after each other so well. They must be fine fellows, even if a bit crack-pot.

Albert von Allmen thought of the Sunday tourists and excursionists, the blasé men and the ladies in high heels who went to the tunnel-window at Eigerwand Station and uttered their “ah’s” and “oh’s” as they gazed at what seemed to them the terrifying gulfs and immeasurable heights of the Eiger’s precipice. It was people like those, hungering for sensation, who were now crowding round the telescopes at Grindelwald and Kleine Scheidegg. And then too there were the pronunciamentos of the know-it-all’s, busy weighing up the chances of another catastrophe or of the safe return of four living men to the valley.

They must get back safely, thought Albert. His sympathy lay with Youth, youth generally, but particularly these four youngsters on the Face. It would be a good idea to take a look at them and hear for himself how they were getting on. Allmen pushed back the bolts of the heavy wooden doors and stepped out into the open, as he had done a hundred times before. He was used to the grim aspect of the Face; but that day, perhaps because there were people on it, it seemed particularly horrific. A layer of glassy ice overlaid the rock; here and there a stone came clattering down; many of those lethal bullets went humming menacingly down for thousands of feet quite clear of the Face. Then, too, there was the hissing of snow-avalanches as they slid down, whole cascades of snow and ice. The very thought that there were living men somewhere up in that vertical Hell was oppressive. Could they still be alive?