The White Spider. Heinrich Harrer

into the fleecy sleeping-bags they had cached there. And there they perched themselves, huddled together and went to sleep.

      Their fourth morning on the Face dawned, and the weather was if anything still more miserable. A final descent was inevitable; but now it had to be done carrying all their gear, whose weight had been doubled by the wetting it had sustained. Both were in the habit of humping rucksacks of such vast proportions that even on ordinary expeditions to Huts their wearers groaned and sweated under them. A descent with such ballast seemed quite impossible.

      All the same, Rebitsch and Vörg climbed down safely with all their luggage. First along the traverse, then down the overhanging pitches—a bitter struggle made far harder by the stiffness of the ropes—to the top of the Pillar, then down and down for hour upon hour.

      It was late afternoon before they reached the foot of the Face.

      There they met a solitary figure coming up the debris-slopes. Was he a member of the rescue-service? Were people searching for them already then, already talking of new Eiger-victims?

      No, it was only their devoted friend Eidenschink coming up. It is a good thing to be welcomed home by a true and understanding friend when you come back to earth.

      The Face had not claimed Rebitsch and Vörg. They were tired, but not exhausted; they were able to laugh and to tell their story. All the same their tent near Alpiglen seemed like a palace to them.

By their safe return and by the manner of it Matthias Rebitsch¹ and Ludwig Vörg brought about the change in the attitude of conservative climbers, of the guides, of the publicity media towards the problem of the North Face. The Face had given nothing away to them; yet they had been higher on it than anyone else and had still come back safely, relaxed and calm. This spiritual superiority, the fruit of bodies incomparably well trained, was the decisive factor. The two men had learned from the tragic errors of their predecessors and had themselves made no new mistakes. They had maintained their strength and their courage alike from start to finish of their venture. From now on, nobody talked of ridiculous, presumptous earth-worms. Instead, they spoke of Men.

¹See footnote p. 44.

¹In the following year Rebitsch was appointed Deputy Leader of the German Nanga Parbat Expedition, which prevented his taking part in the first successful climb of the Face. None the less his name stands high indeed in its history.

       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.