17-Day Climb Up Sheer Rock Face

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30041, 28 January 1963, Page 9

17-Day Climb Up Sheer Rock Face

(N.Z.PA.-Reuter—Copyright) CORTINA d’AMPEZZO (Italian Alps), Jan. 26. Three German climbers today made history by climbing the sheer north wall of the Western Lavaredo in an inch-by-inch, nail-by-nail climb lasting 17 days.

Experts said the climb brought the men to the limits of their endurance. 4t was made in temperatures dropping as low as 68 degrees of frost The climb was up the “impossible” direct route — straight up the 9480 ft mountain’s perpendicular north wall: a sheer 2275 ft rock face. Last August a British climber died while negotiating the same area. The three heroes of the elimb—all of whom spent all their savings on the feat—were Peter Siegert, aged 26, and Rainer Kaushke, 24, both steeplejacks, and Gerd Uhner, a 22-year-old carpenter. All come from Munich. Siegert was the first to reach the summit. The keeper of the Aurunzo mountain refuge, 7870 feet up the mountain, reported that Siegert reached the summit shortly after noon. Kaushke and Uhner got to the top about three hours later. Stuck like flies on the rock face, braving snowstorm* in near - Arctic temperatures, they had inched their way upwards. They are estimated to have used about 1000 expanding pressure nails on the climb. On Monday and Tuesday the cold was so intense the climbers had no sleep. They kept themselves from freezing by exercises as they clung desperately to the sheer face. But on Wednesday night the temperature rose. They were heard singing—end they got 11 hours’ sleep. Last night they reached a narrow ledge at the top of the rock face and burst into song again. Spotter planes watched the progress of the climbers, who were dressed in brightlycoloured jacket* so that they could easily be seen. The refuge keeper was reported to be selling “exclusive photographs” of the climbers to raise money for their return fare to Germany. Meanwhile, five climbers—three Italian* and two Germans—had made their way to the Lavaredo summit by the normal route to await the team, and help them on their way down. During the climb, food and hot drinks were sent to the

three men by rope each day. They were in contact with the ground by radio-telephone and by rope signals. The young Germans made history not by reaching the top of the north wall—it has been scaled twice before—but by the route they took. The previous ascents, in 1933 and 1958, were made by climbers skirting the edge of the hazardous 2275 ft of perpendicular rock face. Siegert, Kaushke and Uhner went straight up the middle, between the routes of the two previous climbs, over what experts regard as the toughest part of the wall.