EIGER’S NORTH WALL

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21186, 5 November 1938, Page 19

EIGER’S NORTH WALL

New Mountaineering Feat Success After Gallant Failures A few young Germans conquered the North Wall of the Eiger, the 13,000 ft. Bernese Oberland giant, and achieved a tremendous feat in the history of mountaineering says the London “Observer." Expert Alpinists hold the Eiger’s North Wall to be the most fearsome in the Alps. Not only has its inviolability hitherto been amply protected with the normal complement of sudden storms and avalanches which defend the High Alps, but it is for all practical purposes precipitous for the last seven thousand feet of its thirteen thousand. So many fine moutaineers had lost their lives in attempts on it that it was believed to be virtually unscaleable. After three days on the face, the party only got through by the skin of their teeth, the climb culminating in a blinding blizzard. It may help illuminate the magnitude of their achievement to recall the details of the most dramatic of all the attempts to climb the North Wall—the 1935 climb, which came so near to success and ended so tragically. Fatal Wait The party in that‘year consisted of two young but experienced Bavarian mountaineers, Max Seldmayer and Karl Meyringer. The local Grindelwald or Scheidegg guides, whom no one could accuse of lack of personal courage, told them they would almost certainly be killed. They were undismayed, studied their intended route with meticulous care, and waited fatally as it turned out—during a whole fine fortnight for “really settled"’ weather. Then at 4.30 one late August morning they started. Like the latest party, they set off from Alpiglen at a point known to British ski-iers as the end of the “White Hare” run. Like the last climbers, they employed a method of conquering the precipitous limestone which is frowned on by classical alpinists, but indispensable for a face like the Eiger Norwand. The leader drove in thirty iron pitons. Then his companion climbed up these, pulling them out, climbed over the leader's back, took the lead in his turn, and drove in the pegs. It is heart-breaklngly slow work when every minute is precious. Still, from below it seemed that they were going well on the rock. It was on the ice that they were fatally slow, cutting only one step in five minutes instead of four or five. The second day the pace of the climb—they had covered over half the distance the first day—slowed considerably. And well it might after a night’s "rest" such as they had had. Only those who have just climbed the North Face and lived to tell the tale can appreciate what they must have endured. While the sun was actually on the rock wall, water from melting snow and ice would have been pouring down their necks and down their sleeves, to become unpleasantly cold in the shadow and to freeze at night. They were climbing light and, therefore without the comfort of even a little warm food. There was no room for a proper bivouac. So they slept dangling in a rope crade from one peg and with a knee crooked over another and a sheer drop of thousands of feet below them. And, on top of it all, the unremitting perpendicular climb. , Violent Storms On the fourth day of such mountaineering—when they must have been utterly exhausted but when their goal was in sight—the weather broke in sudden violent thunderstorms which became blizzards above the snow line. Anybody who, in the security of the Grindelwald valley, has heard the terrifying roar of the Wind across the North Face of the Eiger in a storm, can Imagine what it meant for the climbers dangling on the rock face. The Germans retreated from their highest point to a snow ledge under an overhanging rock. There’ when the storm spent itself, Col. Udet, the famous air ace, and Fritz Steuri, the Grindelwald guide, saw one of the climbers from a ’plane. The other climber, Fritz told me, was apparently in his sleeping-bag under the snow and had probably died first. The climber who was visible appeared to be sitting on his ruck-sack beside his companion. Snow came almost up to his waist. Frozen Figure There he had been frozen—his face turned towards the Scheidegg, as if looking for the help that could never have reached him. And there, until the heavy snows of winter hid him from the morbidly curious with their telescopes, he could still be seen. Since then the North Wall has warded oft half a dozen other attempts, and claimed at least twice that number of victims. Now it has been conquered. It was as inevitable that it should be, as it is inevitable that one day Everest will be conquered. It is in the nature of man to attempt the unattempted at whatever cost to himself, and the mountaineer feels (however - - consciously) with the poet:— That merely by climbing, the shadow is made less, That we have some engagement with a star Only to be honoured with death’s bitterness And where the inaccessible godheads are.