The EIGER · Wall of Death

the north face of the eigen it's the most notorious mountain face in the world the iger will always be a dangerous mountain i'm afraid therefore there will be people killed on it in the i was definitely seriously frightened before i set out in the air a vertical mile of brittle blasted limestone hanging ice and howling winds the eye get kind of it opens its little doors for you and you get higher and higher and higher and it will shut them and there's no easy way out more than 60 people have died on the north face but it continues to fascinate like no other mountain it's climbing's grand stage a uniquely public arena where mountaineering becomes theater [Music] i think it was a bit like being an actor and suddenly being told you can do hamlet now its history has reflected the national tensions of europe in the 20th century i think horror had the swastika flag in his backpack it's a testing ground a rite of passage a place of innovation where new standards are set this whole sense changed my mind for other mountains i can go maybe to himalaya with a completely different different minds this will change climate we set out to explore the reputation of the igers north face and to understand what has made it such an iconic mountain [Music] [Applause] [Music] perfection it's march 2009 and mountain guides kenton cool and neil brodie are in grindelwald switzerland planning an attempt on the north face of the iger kenton is one of the world's leading mountain guides he's guided clients to the top of everest eight times and serrano finds to the top of the eiger i've never seen so much snow here this is outrageous it'll probably be good for jumping over the train on skis wouldn't it probably be quite easy [Applause] neil is a professional mountain guide based in the shamany valley they have both climbed the iger's north face before but its unique combination of history and danger still draws them back for any modern alpinist climber these days i think if you ask any of them what would you like to climb you might get everest or possibly ground your ass but almost certainly you would get i want to climb in the north area to the iger i mean certainly i mean i grew up reading all the books it's just catches the imagination they want to be able to meditate their friends i climb the north face of the either climbers are not you know all uh level-headed or reasonable you know it's kind of uh quite often you know it's kind of quite a country so you know they they are attracted to the anger because of its the reputation launch off point for the uh the iger epics last year in the summertime it's just lovely green meadows and now it's all covered in snow quite foreboding actually for most climbers the iger remains an elusive prize it's a challenging alpine route that demands a high level of skill and commitment and the face must be in good condition before climbers will even set foot on it conditions this winter are far from perfect it's been snowing heavily for days and the eiger is shrouded in heavy cloud i mean if it stops snowing right now tomorrow we could we could look across and we could see these like avalanches of snow and ice and sometimes rock cascading down the face we basically called it shedding now that the eigen will be shedding its winter cloak in a way and it'd just be complete death to go anywhere near it and it'll probably take 48 hours of you know weather doesn't need to be sort of blue sky or like that it just needs to stop snowing the wind needs to drop a little bit and it will shed its winter coat and then we would need good weather for the period that we will be climbing yeah i mean i'm kind of going to be optimistic and say we've got a 50 50 chance of giving an attempt you know we're here for 10 days and things can change very very quickly so um yeah i'm hopeful yeah [Music] we've been trying to film an ascent of the north face for two seasons but the weather has been against us and the iger's history has shown that this is a place that demands the utmost [Music] respect when the cloud lifts the next morning you can see why the eiger towers above the hamlet of kleiner scheideg no other great mountain occupies such a public position i think we'll be up to our armpits and snow basically i don't know about you but i don't think i've ever seen it quite especially the upper reaches it looks like it's been kind of blasted it almost looks like a big rhyme ice on it kind of like patagonia style at the top just such an immense face it's giving me chills just looking at it the iger is unusual its summit can be reached relatively easily along the ridgelines up its flanks but its sheer face is an altogether more serious mountaineering challenge it faces north so it's perpetually in deep shadow [Music] it's concave so it traps bad weather close to the face one writer described it as being hollowed out like a sick man's chest the key danger of the argo is probably um stone fall but it also because it's right on the edge of the alps um it can almost have its own private weather system and any front that's coming in from the northwest is going to hit the iger first within minutes of a storm breaking over the summit the face is just being strewn with rubble and water and snow cascading down it and it becomes it would become a horror show to be caught on that face in bad weather in a exposed spot the thing that nightmares are made out of the bands of rocky have to progress through to wake way up the mountain have very little protection very little places to place pegs or any other kind of protection and very sharp kind of rock as well very very loose so you may have no protection and the holes you're holding onto might snap off as well but it's not just the physical challenges that intimidate the iger north face has its own powerful mythology the route by which the iger was first climbed is one of the most iconic in mountaineering the names of each pitch evoke stories of extraordinary heroism and terrible tragedy the stolen lock the hinters toys to traverse the flat iron death bivouac [Music] the traverse of the gods the white spider i think the fact that every ledge on the iger is covered in the sediment of history makes it very special and it adds to that sense of awe you know when you get to the hinter story to traverse you know what terrible scenes unfolded there and that's bound to instill a an anxiety and nervousness you go past those spots those spots of history climb in history you clip a peg who put that peg in maybe it was heckmay himself you know maybe it was tony kurtz on that epic descent maybe it was chris bonington you know all the all these people and they've all had their moments on their face doogler hasten john harling falling into his death it's slowed it in history [Applause] [Music] the igers story began back in 1858 when irishman charles barrington and two local mountain guides reached the summit via the west flank apparently he really wanted to climb the matterhorn but didn't have the money to get there [Music] during the latter part of the 19th century the british had dominated the alps they had forged a golden age in mountaineering pioneered great routes all over the alps and defined what the sport was to become the victorian way was to claim peak after peak it was a romantic tradition where dying was simply bad form the driving force was very much british middle class dons lawyers clergymen who almost invented this pastime of mountaineering and most of the first cents of the big alpine peaks were made by british climbers relying heavily on the skills of their local swiss french italian and german guides particularly swiss guides by the early 1930s the british felt that everything in the alps had been done all that was left was the great north faces of mountains they had already climbed the last great problems of the alps but they were turning their attentions to the himalayas and the great prize of everest [Music] young european climbers sensed an opportunity to reclaim the mountains they had grown up in and their style of climbing could not have been more different to the aristocratic british germans and austrians and italians were doing climbs of a technical standard way beyond anything we were doing uh particularly in the eastern alps in the dolomites and bavaria they had a technical brilliance and a boldness and a whole new attitude to what was possible and what was desirable which uh which a lot of the traditional british climate is actually rather disapproved of and this this was all sort of epitomized in the north face of the iger these new alpine climbers were poor working class young men many were unemployed during the depression this german climbers they had nothing to lose they just had they just were good climbers they thought yeah if if we do the iron norse face we will be famous in august 1935 two of these bold young men made the first serious attempt on the north face bavarians max settlemeyer and karl mehringer had studied the face intently and believed that they had found a direct line to the summit no one ever really tried to climb the north face so when um the two munich uh mountaineers called merging and max edelmaer started up the wall in august of 1935. there weren't really any experiences about how dangerous it is how difficult it is the only thing one knew at the time was that it was a huge face they set out at 2 am on august the 21st they made good progress and at the end of the second day they had reached the top of the first ice field and still the weather held then on the third night the weather broke and a great thunderstorm engulfed the eigen the temperature incliner shide egg fell to minus eight on the fifth day the clouds lifted briefly and the queues of people at the telescopes could see them high on the face still battling upwards nearly at the flat iron the curtain of cloud closed once more and mehringer and settlemeyer were never seen alive again their bodies were later found on a small ledge at 3 300 meters that became known as death bivouac that first accident in 1935 that really cemented the reputation of the igos well it became known as the mordevant the the death wall and the the press just flocked to grindelwald and of course because it's so public in full view of the cameras and the telescopes these grisly dramas were played out to the cameras to the world's press the tragedy captured the public imagination like nothing before for the first time this was mountaineering as theater people could sit on a terrace and watch life and death drama unfold before them the stage was set for the iger's second act by the summer of 1936 the iger's terrible reputation was attracting the best and the boldest young climbers in europe eager to be the first up this dreadful wall or to die trying that summer there were 12 young men camped in the valley waiting for the face to come into condition [Music] they were the most brilliant climbers of their generation among them were germans andreas hintersteiser and tony kurtz and austrians willie angerer and eddie reiner they too had studied the face and had spotted an intricate complex line that would demand huge commitment [Music] the classic roots at the ige band which so many of us have now followed was really discovered in 1936 by reina angora kurtz and hinter stoyssa and it was andel hintersteiser who led this critical passage where you're basically sneaking in from the right hand side of the face underneath a great red vertical cliff and you're sort of sneaking your way into the center of the face and there's a critical passage where this very steep slab is at about 70 degrees and it looks really smooth and he did what was then a very modern technique he did he did a a sort of tension traverse using tension from the rope to edge his way across this smooth slab for a long way for about 80 feet or so when you go along industries of traverse it's got a rope fixed in place now but it still feels quite committing because you're kind of on a traverse line and as soon as you start traversing the mountain it makes retreat a lot more difficult because retreating downwards is quite straightforward but as soon as you have to start retreating sideways um then it all gets a lot more complicated hinterstoice's brilliant and bold traverse had unlocked the north face of the iger the route upwards lay open to them they got right up onto the flatiron almost to the point where settlement mariner had reached the year before and it was then that they started to retreat the reasons for their retreat are unclear but it's likely that anger had been seriously injured by a falling rock their line of retreat put them in the path of the constant avalanches all the time they've been bombarded by these lethal salvos of of loose rocks falling from above and probably hail storms coming down and even waterfalls when it gets warmer it can be absolutely murderous and intermittently during gaps in the clouds the people in the valley were able to see these tiny tiny little figures retreating watching through the telescope as they arrived back at the traverse they realized that they had made a terrible mistake instead of leaving a rope in place hinderstoicer had taken it with him he would have to reverse the move without the rope in place and now the weather had broken to make matters worse those smooth slabs of limestone were now covered in this glaze this veneer of ice and so the thing had become virtually impossible he tried and tried but eventually had to give up in exhaustion the only way off the mountain was straight down the problem with that is below the hint of steroids traverse you've got great overhangs it's undercut and so as they set off abseiling down they were abseiling into unknown territory with huge overhangs which we're going to leave them dangling in space and it was during that whole business with frozen ropes four people setting up anchors desperation to to get this injured man down and at some point during all that confusion we didn't know exactly what happened but basically someone fell [Music] pulled the others off an anchor failed and there were bodies hurtling through the air there were ropes whipping through the air and it ended up with three men dead and one man tony kurt still alive but hanging literally hanging on the rope in space beneath the lip of one of those those great overhangs [Music] the iger railway runs right through the mountain and there are viewing windows high in the face for the railway guards and the public to look out of that night a guard heard a shout through the stolen lock window realizing that there were climbers in trouble he alerted the mountain guides and a rescue party set out through the window into the storm they come up in a special train they climb out onto the face and they shout up to cut we can't do anything tonight just try and get through the night we'll be back in the morning [Music] the hotels of kleiner scheidegg were packed with visitors eager to watch the drama high on the mountain [Music] early the next morning the guides climbed out to the stolen lock window and managed to get to 40 meters below kurtz but they couldn't reach him because of the overhang above them kurtz managed to haul up the two lengths of rope he would need to descend the last 40 meters somehow he managed to tie the ropes together but as the abs sailed down the knot joining the ropes jammed in his carabiner mountain guide arnold gladhart was one of the rescue party i said look i give you a knife up and you have to cut the rope above you because i'm so good here we are all good we are 100 and you don't fall more than five meters to us and we will hold you cut the rope and then we will you will be safe they were just down there the people who could save his life and he just couldn't get his fingers were completely frostbitten they were just dead he just couldn't get it through and they were saying go on you can do it you can do it you can do it and he was desperately fumbling and fumbling and then this has been going on forever 24 hours now and eventually he just just said it's finished [Music] believes that kurtz could have been saved there was one thing that happened that was really bad luck you know one of the guides had a long rope um just put between the back and the rucksack but not into his work sake and when he made a sudden movement the rope dropped and fell to the base of the of the of the north fall and that was a thing you know that was um really tragic because maybe this would have saved tony curt's life kurt's body was later cut down this recently discovered footage shows mountain guides retrieving his body the press and the public were enthralled by the exquisite horror of tony kurt's death tony court that was perfect i mean it's a little bit ironic but it was life that was two days three days and people were there and and the radio was there and newspaper was there the ghouls the ghouls were all there yeah they flocked the telescopes it was really good for business for tourism i was like reverse the roman circle instead of looking down into the amphitheater looking up at it i always said if there would have been television i think they would have filmed life how tony quartz is dying because that was so dramatic i mean there were four climbers tracked in the north face and then two rescue teams fighting against other the weather was bad and stuff like you couldn't invent it better the iger was front-page news all over europe once again the swiss authorities banned climbing on the north face of the iger and colonel strut of the british alpine club was outraged he wrote words to the effect that this was simply a past time for the mentally deranged and that whoever finally succeeded in climbing the north face of the iger could satisfy themselves by knowing that they'd pulled off the most imbecilic variants in the history of mountaineering in basilic or not for mountaineers the iger's north face had become an even bigger prize [Music] i think it's the only modern face in the world we can actually get a train and then just like walk on to the north face isn't it sort of halfway out kenton and neil have special permission to visit one of the iger's most extraordinary features the stolen lock when the iger railway was built the workmen used this window high on the face to throw rubble out it's the same window that the mountain guides used to try and rescue tony kurtz the stolen lock would allow kenton and neil to check conditions on the face cool wicked eh awesome this is amazing can we start digging you can almost see light i love it you can always see light so this is a stolen lock this is quite exciting i've not popped out of this window before i've actually climbed past this now within about 50 60 meters so it's going to be really really exciting i mean this is just great because you read all the books about it and you know you hear all the epics about people getting back in on some people unfortunately not getting back in storms and things like that and then literally having to walk down the railway track to uh to safety i can't believe i'm so excited about going out of the law it's not escape to victory yeah it's like the greatest game living trying digging come on oh awesome check this out [ __ ] me this is awesome look at the walls are both wow hey look at him yeah that is amazing that's where the base jumpers leap from one slip certain death this is just amazing absolutely amazing we just popped out and it's just like we're on the north face a spin drift coming down and it's uh pretty cold it's quite foreboding actually i mean this is a scene of so many epics so many almost horror-like stories about people battling for their life to get up here and then in and probably none quite as bad as the 36th epic of tony kurtz and his uh you know really good climbing companions and friends you know as a boy growing up reading things like the white spider uh the book that you know tells you about the the history of the iger to to be here and to be part of it and actually have time to think about it that's what that's what's so emotional today we normally come up here as fast as we can climbing really fast to try and get up as high on the face before we pivot but today i've got time to look around and just soak it all in it's it's quite an emotional place to be actually it really is and just to climb through the windows who's pushed the door open and claps inside going thank god we're alive you know we've we've escaped and or conversely who shut the door knowing that someone is left out here it's it's a powerful place to be [Music] the kurt's tragedy had made the iger irresistible to climbers the swiss ban lasted just four months and in 1937 two young italians died on the face [Music] in 1938 the last summer of peace before world war ii four exceptional climbers arrived in kleiner scheideg germans andreas heckmeyer and ludwig vorg and austrians fritz kasparek and heinrich [Music] their route has become one of the great classics of alpine climbing it's a big complicated route it's not going up straight up and down it works its way up a series of lines of weakness and if you're in thick cloud quite easy particularly in the upper part to actually lose your way and it's a technically not super hard but it's because of the complexity the size and the length it's a hugely complex mountaineering challenge and problem and i think it still is you know it is one of the really great routes of the alps it's a classic route and it's a serious route and i mean in 38 it was like just an outstanding performance they did you have to move fast there are a couple sections there is not good protection so it's still a serious climb work had a camera with him and he made all the time he made pictures and people could see how not only read it but also see how they did it and these pictures i find these pictures if you look at it it's still it look wow gee that was bad conditions harrah and kasperek set off first at 2 am on the morning of july the 21st they climbed slowly harrah had left his crampons behind and they were soon passed by vorg and kasperek it was much worse than we ever thought and had anticipated we underestimated the whole thing the height the difficulties the snows the storms the difficulty to find the birac place for instance you know we had given us a promise cars breaking myself never to climb during the afternoon and you english have a wonderful saying have a plan and stick to it and we did stick to that plan we were at the beginning of the second ice field at two in the afternoon but we started be walking because in the afternoon it's hell on the on the second ice field and you hardly can avoid to get hit by a stone at midday on the 22nd they rested together at death bivouac but continue to climb as separate teams by now they were higher on the north face than anyone had been before they crossed the third ice field and onto the ramp as they reached the traverse of the gods they decided to join forces and climb on together as they reach the great hanging ice field of the white spider the inevitable iger storm hit [Music] hickman and ferg shouted to us we move into the spider there we find the safe place you follow us you end up with absolutely vertical crack they disappeared above us and it took hours and hours and they didn't call for us to continue and suddenly blood and snow came down on me and they shouted the buffers and heckmeyer he crashed down onto ferguson ferg was vertically underneath him fair put up his hands and he jumped with the krampus right into the hands of ferg so blood came out some of the sinews were actually cut later on i heard the story of course and ferg had a bottle given to him by a doctor and this bottle said take only 10 drops but you know ferc was absolutely pale in his face so heck my poured half the bottle into his mouth and then he said so nicely to me the other half i i drank myself because i was so thirsty he said to me the bottle is thought to have contained strong amphetamines cassbrick was about 30 feet above me and then he shouted at me and evelyn she's coming and so i've just pressed my body towards the ice slope and i had just time to push my rucksack above my head and that saved really my life and now one avalanche after the other came across me and and i thought well i'm the only one who survived now because i couldn't imagine that anybody above me could have withstood that force of that avalanche the four climbers they made it to the top and as hechmeyer said to me 60 70 years later when he was an old man i was actually pleased there was that storm because it wasn't a walk-over we had to fight we had to struggle and that struggle through the the exit cracks was was astounding it was a brilliant brilliant achievement by by any stand there's a brilliant achievement and as they came down the west flank late in the afternoon they got down to kleine scheideg and the whole press of europe was there to meet them so instant fame for the for them and there's a wonderful photo of the four of them and you can just see that that radiant glow of of fulfillment and happiness on their faces it's a wonderful picture but not everyone was delighted you couldn't read a lot about it in the english press you know and there was still sort of resentment of course because of the political political development in in germany um the german climbers were not really very popular of course you know because the everyone thought that they had been directed to the wall through the nazi party which wasn't the case i think horror had the swastika flag in his backpack but he didn't took it out on the summit i think they just were glad to be on the summit no no swastika fog no picture no nothing just jesus let's go down it was instantly politicized because no sooner they got down to grindelwald then they whisked off back to germany they were taken to the olympic stadium in breslau and there they were paraded in front of of the adoring crowds the fuhrer no less came to meet them and they were national heroes here was this perfect example of the prime of germanic manhood achieving glory on the ultimate alpine climb it was a spin doctor's dream handed to him on a plate the story of the 38 ascent has assumed the power of myth four young heroes taking on an evil ogre overcoming huge odds taking a magic potion that gives them the power to defeat the monster heinrich herrera went on to lead an extraordinary life as a climber explorer writer and filmmaker allegations of nazism followed him throughout his life but his account of the climb the white spider remains one of the most important pieces of mountain literature ever written the very public success of vorg kasperek harrah and heckmeyer did little to diminish the power of the iger it unlocked the door to a host of young ambitious and highly skilled guides eager to prove their worth and claim the ultimate alpine prize for their nation the next two decades would see a further 30 successful ascents but for every successful season it seemed that the iger must exact the price death disaster and controversy continued to dog the north face by the end of the 50s it was no longer enough to climb the heckmayer classic the first solo attempt was made and a remarkable winter ascent in 1961 in the most severe conditions but there had still been no british ascent of the iger now a new wave of highly skilled british rock and ice climbers were turning their attentions back to the alps by the time a 20 year old chris bonnington arrived in grindelwald in 1957 the north face had been climbed successfully 12 times and claimed 14 lives it was the start of a long association with the igers north face in july 1962 bonnington attempted the iger with legendary british climber don williams i wanted to climb the north wall of the eyebrow i was fascinated by it as was dom probably i would say in 1961-62 don was at the absolute height of his powers i mean he was one of the best climbs in the world at that time but much more than that he had the best uh kind of mountain judgment feel for a mountain of anyone that i've ever met i mean uh the streets ahead of me i mean it's more experienced than i was anyway but he had he he was very he was very thoughtful about his climbing very focused about it and he thought through absolutely everything and on a mountain you just couldn't have a better partner i mean you knew he would never ever let anyone down at the same time there was another strong british team on the face brian nally and barry brewster there was a race you know amongst british climbers to be the first to get there we had gone up the conditions were obviously wrong and it was much too warm there's water pouring down there's a huge amount of stone fall and we went up to the um the beginning of the second ice field just to have a look and we we were only going to have a look and we'd already planned to turn back and just as we're about to turn back these swiss guides came up behind us and shouted up to us saying two of your comrades are in trouble at the end of the second last fall will you help us to rescue them and you know you don't think twice about him just turned around and started across the second ice field it was very dangerous i mean the stands just hurtling down around us and then when we're about halfway across we could see them and then we saw this one little figure arching down the face it was barry brewster and the previous day he'd been hit on the head bar stone and brian nelly managed to secure him on this little ledge at the end of the second ice field brewster and nally spent the night exposed on the north face in this bbc documentary a traumatized brian nully takes up the story at first light i tried to try to really make this decision he seemed to stir a little moved an arm and he seemed to regain consciousness a bit so i went back again up the slope and and got a stove thinking that i'd i'd make a drink or some soup or something if he could take it and i had started to make this and it he seemed to come to a bit and he opened his eyes and he seemed to know where he was and who i wasn't and he said i'm sorry brian he died [Applause] and everything went dark and that really was the end of everything the first reaction was to go for the summit at any cost because that's what we come to do and i couldn't bear thought of going down but time passed and i'm rationalized a bit more and came round to the proper decisions to make and i took up the rope and started the long haul back there's a huge amount of media there flashlights and everything else and then when you got back to kleiner scheidegger even more it was you know it's big news because it was a kind of an epic tragedy and uh and i think don and i we were both we're kind of revolted by it and that's why we're just very glad to escape willens returned home but bonnington stayed on in the alps and later that summer joined forces with british mountaineer ian clough we were at the absolute peak of our form and ian and i got on very well together it was just a really good climbing partnership and so i can wake him up about five o'clock in the morning i've got a brain wave let's go here i go and dear early and say yeah okay and so three days later we were going up the eigen that time it was perfect [Music] bonnington and cluff had claimed the first british ascent of the iger's north face success on the iger changed bollington's life forever because of the i go i was asked to write my first book we had a lecture tour a bit more more money it is an extraordinary face and extraordinary climb and got to think of what it was like in 1962 when yeah it was very mysterious very challenging kenton and neil are out on the face near the stoddenlock window climbing part of the 1938 route feel quite small all of a sudden it still has a real aura about it and you set off in the i got quite nervously and quite anxious and wondering am i going to be up to it am i going to live up to the the challenge well i had a little spin drift coming down yeah that's fine drift is not looking good it's looking horrendous ah here comes the wind straight down my neck you're up there and it's always dark it's always you know you can see the amazing alpine meadows below you with the sun shining on them or in the winter you see every skiing in the sun and sitting in tables eating and drinking and having a great time but yet you're kind of in this kind of shadow land of on the edge of the iger really so it isn't like a normal mountain all really as is kind of just something there's something there there's something living there bloody hell yeah this is not there's not no face conditions at all god if my mother saw me now she'd uh she'd not be very happy being able to judge the conditions judge your team uh to decide whether to go on or retreat is really important on that climb because the judgment at the bottom when you decide yeah we're going for this it's huge on the argo whereas with another climb um it might be that you try it and you think oh actually it's not on today i don't feel right or we can come back down but actually even if you just climb half the iger you know you're then very committed with a bad weather coming in tomorrow it's it's just not realistically going to happen i don't think so well i think we've basically reached a point today where i've seen enough i'm happy with the conditions aren't perfect we've got a bad weather forecast coming in i think it's time to retreat back down to the uh to the window down there and then uh we can come back and fight the face another day but as far as i'm concerned from his perspective of a guide and a climber this is wrong this isn't gonna happen yeah get your head down mate yeah these aren't great conditions on the face terrifying mesmeric the iger stands there beckoning young men to enter the list and try their courage graveyard though it is the elite of the climbing world still look and wonder whether there isn't another route a direct route perhaps with no diversions for the hindustoys or travis or for the ramp or for the travis of the gods a new line straight for the summit over every [Music] by the early 60s climbers all over europe were looking for the next great prize on the igers north face the dilatissimo or direct route straight up the face from the bottom to the top it became quite obsessive it actually originated with a famous italian climber who said where a drop of water will fall there i will make my roots and regardless of whether it's actually the natural way to go up [Music] in the summer of 1965 chris bonnington was one of many climbers planning an attempt on the direct route once again the press and public struggle to understand why these young men would risk their lives on such a dangerous mountain especially one that had already been climbed chris you've done the ordinary north face why on earth are you going on it again risking your neck well for a start mac i don't like that term risking your neck we've taken a lot of trouble and time thinking out going on this route we've planned the route for a long time we'd also be prepared always to turn back we're certainly not taking unjustified risks going on from that for why we're going on the route anyway well the directism aligns a completely separate line up the north face of the iger and a very worthwhile one and it's also new and this is the reason why i want to go on it because it is a new route 25 people have already been killed on the face who didn't think they were taking any risk at all i think the risk is unjustifiable i wouldn't set foot on it particularly the direct route also planning an attempt was john harlan a charismatic american based in laissan switzerland where he ran a mountaineering school initially bonnington agreed to join forces with him but as the winter drew on he changed his mind i just got increasingly worried about the whole thing john harlan was an extraordinary incredibly powerful personality um and i was just worried by instead bonnington agreed to photograph the climb for the daily telegraph working out on the face as the teams climbed the harlem direct was this big media hyped up circus thing climbers are always split when media gets involved in mountaineering because they like it to be something a little bit private which is why it's not very well understood generally because climbers don't open up about it and some people really were very anti that it being filmed it you know having newspaper reporters and all this sort of razzmatazz by february 1966 the pressure was on a strong german team was also planning an attempt on the direct route [Music] harlan had invited brilliant young british climber dougal haston to replace bonnington the world's press gathered in kleiner scheidegg to watch the show the germans set off first an eight-man team using siege tactics pioneered in the himalayas fixed ropes ladders high camps stocked with supplies dedicated climbing teams supplied from below would mean that they could push on through bad weather they would continue till they reached the top the eiger direct would be climbed john harlin dougal haston an american rock specialist leighton kor set off alongside it turned into a race it's not it wasn't a race of climbers devising but it developed into a race with the german team very fine german climbers climbing parallel to a british american team they had chosen the worst winter for decades they inched up the face in appalling conditions after 18 days they had reached death bivouac the place at which settlement and meringue had frozen to death 31 years before back in the 60s the idea of climbing this great wall in winter was almost outrageous it just seemed so forbidding and to do that kind of technical climbing with very very cold fingers with everything deep in powder snow seemed almost impossible [Music] the weather was horrific storm after storm thundered in as the teams battled up the face this footage of dougal haston approaching the white spider was shot by john harlin it was the last footage he would ever shoot [Music] on march 22nd one month after his team first set foot on the wall a fixed rope snapped and john harlan fell to his death it was just an accident waiting for happening we were using fixed ropes with miles too thin and i think it was inevitable that one of them was going to break sooner or later and it could have happened to any of us and tragically it happened to john and so he felt his death the others were in the white spider and they i think absolutely rightly decided that you know if they abandoned the trip then and there it would um you know it'd be throwing john's life away dougal haston the scottish member of the team was above the snap rope and he joined forces with the germans to complete the climb in john harland's memory it was a stunning line with some very very hard climbing taking an almost straight line directly up the center of this immense triangle so it was it was a huge achievement [Music] the press had a field day the story had all the elements of the perfect eiger tragedy that was like uh exactly i guess what the iger's about journalism film razzmatazz people looking through telescopes somebody died all this sort of stuff climbers falling out drama it is wonderful wonderful theater and it was um it was very very exciting i mean the whole thing actually was exciting because the climbers were doing what they really wanted to do and i think one of the aspects in which i think my generation of climbers has been fortunate is that the the kind of climbs that we wanted to do for their own sake be it the north wall of zagar by the ordinary route or the eiger direct they were real genuine mainstream climbing challenges which the the media could get their heads around and could follow whereas today i don't think the media can any longer get their heads around hard climbing in the 1930s the iger was considered unclimbable the preserve of imbeciles and the mentally deranged in 2009 swiss phenomenon ulistek completed an ascent of the north face in just two hours and 47 minutes for me it was completely different you go there and it's like you go running you take the first train you have a coffee then nine o'clock in the morning you start climbing and you know exactly for lunch time you will be latest on summit it changes completely in your head so you you just three hours exposed in the face it's not the same mountaineering like serious mountaineering anymore and i spend like one year training especially for this speed ascend it's like training like a marathon the iger's role as grand stage for the most brilliant climbers of a generation remains undiminished but while headline grabbing speed ascents provide useful column inches for professional climbers and their sponsors this is not a publicity stunt this whole sense changed my mind for other mountains i think there's a lot possible in a different way on climbing i can go maybe to himalaya with a completely different mind and this will change climbing i'm not a better climber than than heckmeyer was in his time it's just another time so this is what's changing but the mountain is still the same the iger is the great grandfather of alpine north faces once considered an invincible evil ogre it has now been climbed of every conceivable route it's a playground for the world's extreme elite standing on the iger 3186 meters of the [Music] ground people have run up it jumped off it and skied down its great face but despite all this the iger's north face still commands the respect of the world's best alpinists i've often wondered whether with the iga it's a purely human construct whether it really is just this story we've created around it and very public position all the kitsch down at kleiner schedule the people with the telescopes the terrible stories of the accidents and the grim tragedies i wonder whether it's that's all it is or whether the wall itself is intrinsically interesting and actually when you go there it is the biggest wall in the alps it is colossal it's unique a lot of people they will never climb the eiger not because they couldn't do the moves on it you know if they had the safety of a rope all the way above them but really because it's so committing that the risks and the test of your self-belief [Music] you would look quite like it if it fell down you didn't have to do it but you have to you know you you aren't really complete you have to have climbed it or at least had some big epic on it advances in weather forecasting and rescue techniques have made the iger a much safer place than it was 50 years ago and while other great mountains have been diminished through commercialism the iger still retains something special it has been the stage on which some of the most iconic stories in mountain history have been played out to an eager audience and for that reason alone it remains unique [Music] we personally think the rewards are worth the risk yet to the non-climate it would just seem insane we do it for those moments which are totally priceless so you know why we pit ourselves against a north face weird really and especially this one this is the biggest bad is nasty is one of them all [Music] you

Channel: David Snow

Views: 896,827

Keywords: The, Eiger:, Wall, of, Death., climbing the eiger, the eiger vand, eiger dreams, eiger mountain, eiger mountain documentary, eiger climbing, how to climb the eiger, eiger expeditions, eiger hiking, eiger deaths, eiger bbc, eiger routes

Id: DJkbST_Tt5c

Length: 59min 7sec (3547 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Technical-Avocado233]

Watched this last night, good doco

[u/japekai]

Is Clint Eastwood in it?