The White Spider. Heinrich Harrer

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       The First Ascent of the Face

      THE summer of 1938 began sadly enough, with the death of two young Italian climbers. Bartolo Sandri and Mario Menti, employees in a wool factory at Valdagno in the Province of Vicenza, were both respected members of the Italian Alpine Club though only twenty-three years old. Sandri, especially, was known to be an unusually fine rock-climber, who had done a number of super-severe climbs ranking as “Grade VI”, among them some first ascents. True they had hardly any experience of ice-climbing in the Western Alps. Like all true mountaineers, they came to Alpiglen and the Scheidegg quietly, without any fuss, indeed almost secretly. They studied the Face, tried themselves out by a reconnaissance of its lower structure and came down again. They decided that the direct route, followed three years before by Sedlmayer and Mehringer, was easier than that discovered by Hinterstoisser. But it wasn’t any easier. The fact is that the Face was not yet fit for climbing at all.

      None the less Bartolo and Mario started up it early on June 21st. They reached a greater height than Sedlmayer and Mehringer had on their first day. Their courage and enthusiasm ran high, and they were driven on by a burning urge to succeed. They just couldn’t wait. Nature, however, followed her own laws, heedless of courage, enthusiasm or ambition. Late in the evening one of the Eiger’s notorious thunderstorms set in….

      The very next day a search-party of Grindelwald guides, led by Fritz Steuri Senior, found Sandri lying dead on a patch of snow at the foot of the Face. Menti’s body was only recovered with some difficulty a few days later from a deep crevasse.

      That was a bad enough start to operations on the Eiger in the summer of 1938, but it could not hold up the developments which were due. The memory of the successful retreat of Rebitsch and Vörg, which had been the turning point in men’s minds, was still vivid. So was the lesson that it was impossible to capture the Face by surprise. Veni, vidi, vici wouldn’t work on the Eiger. Endless patience was required and long waiting … for days, even weeks.

      Meanwhile, Fritz Kasparek was waiting impatiently for my arrival. That tremendous climber from Vienna, bursting with life, blessed with an optimism nothing could destroy, had already been in Grindelwald for some time, skiing around the Bernese Oberland, keeping a constant watch on the Eiger’s mighty Face. Though, so far, there hadn’t been much to watch except continual avalanches, sufficient in themselves to nip in the bud even the thought of an attempt. All the same, Fritz would have liked by now to have had with him his partner on the big climb they had planned to do together; for one never knows what may happen to interrupt one’s plans. Sepp Brunnhuber, too, with whom Fritz had done the first winter ascent of the North Face of the Grosse Zinne as long ago as February—to some extent as a training climb for the Eiger project—could still not get away. I had promised Fritz to arrive at Grindelwald by July 10; but at the bottom of his heart he had good grounds for mistrusting students’ promises.

      Actually I was no longer a student by the time I got to Grindelwald. My tutors at the University of Graz were greatly astonished at the speed with which I suddenly attacked my Finals. I could hardly explain to them that I wanted my studies out of the way before I climbed the North Face of the Eiger. They would certainly have shaken their heads and—not without some justification—reminded me that it was quite in order to “come off” that climb without having graduated first. I told nobody of our plan, not a fellow-student, not a mountaineering or sporting acquaintance. The only person I let into the secret was that wise, practical and plucky woman, my future mother-in-law, Frau Else Wegener. In 1930 her husband Professor Alfred Wegener had given his life for his companions on Greenland’s inscrutable inland ice, when he perished in a blizzard; so she might well have had strong grounds for being fiercely opposed to ventures involving a risk to life. She, however, uttered no warning word; on the contrary, she encouraged me, though well acquainted with the reputation of the Eiger’s North Face.