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E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
180 Seiten
Englisch
Vertebrate Digitalerschienen am23.01.2020
The North Face of the Eiger was long notorious as the most dangerous climb in the Swiss Alps, one that had claimed the lives of numerous mountaineers. In February 1966, two teams - one German, the other British-American - aimed to climb it by a new direct route. Astonishingly, the two teams knew almost nothing about each other's attempt until both arrived at the foot of the face. The race was on. John Harlin led the four-man British-American team and intended to make an Alpine-style dash for the summit as soon as weather conditions allowed. The Germans, with an eight-man team, planned a relentless Himalayan-style ascent, whatever the weather. The authors were key participants as the dramatic events unfolded. Award-winning writer Peter Gillman, then twenty-three, was reporting for the Telegraph, talking to the climbers by radio and watching their monumental struggles from telescopes at the Kleine Scheidegg hotel. Renowned Scottish climber Dougal Haston was a member of Harlin's team, forging the way up crucial pitches on the storm-battered mountain. Chris Bonington began as official photographer but then played a vital role in the ascent. Eiger Direct, first published in 1966, is a story of risk and resilience as the climbers face storms, frostbite and tragedy in their quest to reach the summit. This edition features a new introduction by Peter Gillman.

Peter Gillman is an award-winning author and journalist. He was born in London in 1942 and edited Isis while at Oxford. He joined the Weekend Telegraph as a feature writer in 1965 and, a climber himself, covered the 1966 Eiger Direct for the Telegraph group, which sponsored the British-American team. He later spent twelve years as a feature writer and investigative reporter at the Sunday Times. He has written numerous books, including The Wildest Dream, a biography of George Mallory co-authored with his wife Leni, which won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature in 2000. His writing has appeared throughout the national and specialist press, and he has won a record seven awards from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild, some jointly with Leni, including one for their book Extreme Eiger, first published in 2015. He was elected chair of the OWPG in 2016. He also works as a trainer in journalism and writing and has presented workshops at the annual Byline journalism festival.mehr
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KlappentextThe North Face of the Eiger was long notorious as the most dangerous climb in the Swiss Alps, one that had claimed the lives of numerous mountaineers. In February 1966, two teams - one German, the other British-American - aimed to climb it by a new direct route. Astonishingly, the two teams knew almost nothing about each other's attempt until both arrived at the foot of the face. The race was on. John Harlin led the four-man British-American team and intended to make an Alpine-style dash for the summit as soon as weather conditions allowed. The Germans, with an eight-man team, planned a relentless Himalayan-style ascent, whatever the weather. The authors were key participants as the dramatic events unfolded. Award-winning writer Peter Gillman, then twenty-three, was reporting for the Telegraph, talking to the climbers by radio and watching their monumental struggles from telescopes at the Kleine Scheidegg hotel. Renowned Scottish climber Dougal Haston was a member of Harlin's team, forging the way up crucial pitches on the storm-battered mountain. Chris Bonington began as official photographer but then played a vital role in the ascent. Eiger Direct, first published in 1966, is a story of risk and resilience as the climbers face storms, frostbite and tragedy in their quest to reach the summit. This edition features a new introduction by Peter Gillman.

Peter Gillman is an award-winning author and journalist. He was born in London in 1942 and edited Isis while at Oxford. He joined the Weekend Telegraph as a feature writer in 1965 and, a climber himself, covered the 1966 Eiger Direct for the Telegraph group, which sponsored the British-American team. He later spent twelve years as a feature writer and investigative reporter at the Sunday Times. He has written numerous books, including The Wildest Dream, a biography of George Mallory co-authored with his wife Leni, which won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature in 2000. His writing has appeared throughout the national and specialist press, and he has won a record seven awards from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild, some jointly with Leni, including one for their book Extreme Eiger, first published in 2015. He was elected chair of the OWPG in 2016. He also works as a trainer in journalism and writing and has presented workshops at the annual Byline journalism festival.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9781912560585
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2020
Erscheinungsdatum23.01.2020
Seiten180 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse2027 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.11928731
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Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe



- CHAPTER I -


The North Wall of the Eiger is the greatest face in the Alps. Like a giant, gaunt tooth it rises a sheer 6,000 feet from the meadows of Alpiglen. At its base it is a mile wide. It is in the front rank of the peaks of the Bernese Oberland, and the huge amphitheatre that forms its upper part attracts the first storm clouds to arrive in the area.

The lowest part of the Face, comprising one-third of the total, is more easily angled than the rest. Then comes a steeper series of tiers of ice broken by rock steps. The Face then steepens even further to the point where almost no ice adheres to it, except for the icefield in the centre of the upper part called the Spider. Radiating from the Spider are snow-filled cracks that form its web.

The Eiger s summit was first reached by an Irishman, Charles Barrington, in 1858. He chose it in preference to the Matterhorn - also unclimbed at the time - because it was nearer to where he was staying. He followed the ridge between the North Face and the West Flank. The Mittelegi Ridge, which runs up almost from Grindelwald and arrives at the summit from the east, was first climbed by a Japanese, Yuko Maki, with three Grindelwald guides in 1921. In 1932 the Swiss climber Dr Hans Lauper, in a party of four, climbed the North-East Face, a fine classical route. Traditional alpinists now considered the problem of the North Face solved. To them, there was no question of venturing on to the vast wilderness of rock and ice to the right of Dr Lauper s line.

But there was a new generation of climbers, out of harmony with classical alpinism. In 1935 two climbers attempted the North Face proper. They were Max Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer and they came from Munich, home of the new thinking. In three days they reached the top of the vast Second Icefield, about half-way up the Face. Then a shattering storm hit the Face. Sedlmayer and Mehringer took two more days to reach the top of the Flatiron, a huge rock buttress that ends above the Second Icefield, and there they died. The place became known as the Death Bivouac.

At once the two Germans were violently attacked. The Swiss journal Sport wrote: It is a deeply to be regretted result that the survivors of modern Eastern Alps technique should now inflict this evil demonstration on Swiss peaks. If they had reached the top it would have been merely a degradation inflicted on one of our great peaks, with the honoured traditions of mountaineering perverted into monkey tricks.

Colonel E. L. Strutt, President of the British Alpine Club, reprinted the article in the Alpine Journal, of which he was the editor. He added the footnote: With which sentiments, while expressing sympathy for the relatives of the young climbers, every British mountaineer will concur.

In 1936 four more climbers from the Eastern Alps, Edi Rainer and Willy Angerer, both Austrians, and Anderl Hinterstoisser and Toni Kurz, Bavarians, made an attempt, joining forces when the two parties met low down on the Face. The climb ended in the worst accident in the history of the Eiger. In two days they had reached the Death Bivouac but then started to retreat, probably because of an injury to Angerer. During the descent the Face was again hit by a storm. Hinterstoisser had opened up the Face with an exceedingly difficult 150-foot traverse below the First Icefield, but when they attempted to reverse the traverse they found the rock impossibly iced up. They attempted to abseil1 down and one of them fell. He swept another with him, and a third was strangled by the rope. Toni Kurz survived the fall and spent an agonising night in the open. He died of exhaustion the next day, after he had roped down to within ten feet of a rescue party of guides.

Colonel Strutt wrote about what he called this insane deed , saying that modern German methods of what is misnamed mountaineering in that country are, but too often, thoroughly misused, and in every way destructive to the first principles of that pastime as known to every beginner throughout the remainder of Europe. He agreed with the words quoted in the Alpine Journal of one of the Alpine Club s Swiss members, Dr Hug of Zürich: The forcing of the Eigerwand [the North Face] is principally a matter of luck - at least 90% of the latter is required. Extreme forms of technical development, a fanatical disregard of death, staying power and bodily toughness are in this case details of mere secondary importance. The incalculable elements of fate, chance, etc. are so overwhelmingly important that this face climb belongs far more to a degenerate form of the Children s Crusade of the Middle Ages. In his farewell address as retiring President of the Alpine Club in 1938 Colonel Strutt said: The Eigerwand continues to be an obsession for the mentally deranged of almost every nation. He who first succeeds may rest assured that he has accomplished the most imbecile variant since mountaineering first began.

The clash was between generations. The critics of the attempts were conservatives, resisting innovation and change, failing to understand the new mood of climbing. They saw a piton as something that defiled the rock it was banged into; any man who put a piton in English rock would shoot a fox was representative of the classical British attitude. The new climbers were scramblers , desperadoes , acrobats . There was also a political tinge to the criticism: the German climbers were accused of attempting the North Face for the glory of the Fatherland.

Old men were criticising the young for trying to reach places they themselves had never dreamt of going to. They ignored the fundamental aspect of climbing: that it is each man s personal choice; that the integrity of a climber s methods are a matter for him alone.

In 1938 the North Face was climbed. Two Germans, Andreas Heckmair and Ludwig Vorg, and two Austrians, Fritz Kasparek and Heinrich Harrer, left Alpiglen in July as two separate ropes, and teamed up when they met on the Face. By the end of the second day they had reached a point near the top of the Ramp, the difficult gangway leading from the top of the Third Icefield to a point level with and to the left of the Spider. The next day they reached the Spider - and then the usual storm came up. The first men ever to reach the Spider quickly discovered that in storms it becomes one long avalanche chute. Several times they were almost hurled from their stances into the void. They bivouacked a third time in the Spider and the next day fought their way up the Exit Cracks and the Summit Icefield.

It was a stupendous achievement, for which the four men had needed to draw on their last reserves of mental and physical energy. They had climbed a face on which eight men had died; they had solved the immense problems of finding a route in that vast upper bowl in a savage storm. They were rewarded for it by fresh outbursts of criticism, even from inside Swiss mountaineering circles. They too were accused of being reckless, fame-seeking, fanatical. The critics still maintained that the Lauper route was the only true route on the Face; the new editor of the Alpine Journal, H.E.G. Tyndale, wrote that the Eigerwand may be said to possess little or no mountaineering value - even though the new route made a classical attack on the Face, taking advantage of its weaknesses, following the line of least resistance.

The main objection to the route was still that there were too many objective dangers - hazards such as stonefalls and avalanches beyond a climber s control. But on the Lauper route - called by H. E. G. Tyndale the true route up the Eiger s North Face - the objective dangers were even greater, for the sun strikes the North-east Face sooner in the day than the North Face proper, causing the rockfalls to start that much earlier. Two Austrians on the Lauper route in the summer of 1937 found avalanches, showers of stones, rushing torrents , with every foot of the climb treacherous and slippery .

The truth is that both routes are dangerous. But if the dangers are beyond a climber s control, he must avoid them. He can avoid stonefalls by studying where and when they occur, and by staying away from the exposed areas at the dangerous times. The North Face of the Eiger was a problem that could be solved by the rigorous application of a climber s skills. It was also a problem that could not be resisted. Climbing is essentially a personal challenge and the new generation of climbers naturally ignored the criticism of their elders. In the years after the war some of the best climbers in Europe climbed the North Face: Buhl (Austrian), Lachenal, Terray and Rebuffat (French). Then came the young Swiss climbers, professional guides also of a new generation: from the Schluneggers in 1947 through to Hilti von Allmen, Ueli Hürlimann, Martin Epp, Paul Etter and Michel Darbellay - who made the first solo ascent - in the 1960s. In 1961 four Germans - again from Munich - made the first winter ascent: Toni Kinshofer, Anderl Mannhardt, Toni Hiebeler and Walter Almberger. The new British climbers were not far behind: Chris Bonington and Ian Clough in 1962, the Rhodesian Rustie Baillie and the Scotsman Dougal Haston in 1963. In making his climb Dougal Haston says he felt at one...

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Autor

Peter Gillman is an award-winning author and journalist. He was born in London in 1942 and edited Isis while at Oxford. He joined the Weekend Telegraph as a feature writer in 1965 and, a climber himself, covered the 1966 Eiger Direct for the Telegraph group, which sponsored the British-American team. He later spent twelve years as a feature writer and investigative reporter at the Sunday Times. He has written numerous books, including The Wildest Dream, a biography of George Mallory co-authored with his wife Leni, which won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature in 2000. His writing has appeared throughout the national and specialist press, and he has won a record seven awards from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild, some jointly with Leni, including one for their book Extreme Eiger, first published in 2015. He was elected chair of the OWPG in 2016. He also works as a trainer in journalism and writing and has presented workshops at the annual Byline journalism festival.
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