The weather was worsening; it had in fact already broken. The water which had all along been pouring down the rocks must have hardened into ice. All the experts with field-glasses could sense the fearsome tragedy to come. Retreat was cut off; nobody could move over the glassy film overlaying the rock, not even an Andreas Hinterstoisser. The precious hours of the entire morning were consumed by vain, frustrating, incredibly exhausting and dangerous attempts. And then came the last desperate decision: to climb straight down the vertical rock-face, some 600 or 700 feet high, which at some points bulges far out even beyond the vertical.
The only way led through the line of fire from stones and avalanches. Sedlmayer and Mehringer had taken a whole day to climb that pitch, and that in fine weather on dry rock. Now all Hell had broken loose on the mountain. But it was the only chance.
They began to get the ropes ready for the descent through thin air.
It was at this moment that they heard Albert von Allmen’s shouts coming up from below.
Someone shouting, so close at hand? Then things could not go wrong! A man’s voice, giving strength and courage and the certainty that the bridge back to the living world was still there. And in spite of the dangers and their awareness of the seriousness of their situation, they all joined in yodelling back: “All’s well!” Not a single cry for help, not even an admission of their terrifying peril.
All well….
Albert von Allmen was getting cross. How long was he expected to keep their tea warm? Presently his irritation changed to apprehension. Two whole hours had gone by since he spoke to the climbers, and still no movement at the entrance to the gallery. Could they have climbed down past it? Could they have missed the ledge, which runs across to the window?
The Sector-Guard went back to the door. The Face was looking grim and ghastly now; visibility was very restricted; mists were steaming up everywhere. Stones and avalanches were singing their pitiless song. Albert shouted.
And back came an answer.
This time no cheery yodel, but a shocking answer coming now from one man, the last lone survivor, crying for help…. Toni Kurz.
The voice of a brave, unbelievably tough young guide, cradled in Bavaria in the shadow of the Watzmann; a man who had rescued many in distress on the mountains, but who had never yet shouted for help. But now he was shouting, shouting desperately for his very life.
“Help! Help! The others are all dead. I am the only one alive. Help!”
The wind, the avalanches and the whistling stones forbade a more exact exchange of information. In any case, Albert von Allmen by himself could bring no aid. He shouted “We’ll be coming” and hurried back into the gallery to telephone.
Eigergletscher Station, down below, answered his call.
“Allmen speaking. There’s been a fearful disaster on the Face. There’s only one survivor. We must fetch him in. Have you any guides with you?”
Yes, there were guides down there—Hans Schlunegger, with Christian and Adolf Rubi, all from Wengen. Yes, they would come up, of their own accord, even in face of instructions. It was a case of humanity triumphing over the regulations.
For Bohren, the chief guide of Grindelwald, in his concern for the guides under him, had issued a communication to the Guides’ Commission in Berne, and to the Central Committee of the Swiss Alpine Club, which had also been repeated in the Grindelwald Echo.
One cannot help regarding the contemplated climbing attempts on the North Face of the Eiger with serious misgivings. They are a plain indication of the great change which has taken place in the conception of the sport of mountaineering. We must accept that the visitors who take part in such attempts are aware of the dangers they are themselves risking; but no one can expect the despatch of guides, in unfavourable conditions, on a rescue operation, in case of any further accidents on the Eiger’s North Face…. We should find it impossible to force our guides to take a compulsory part in the kind of acrobatics which others are undertaking voluntarily.
That was the Chief Guide’s stated position. Nobody could have held it against the guides at Eigergletscher Station if they had refused to take a single step on to the Face when they heard of the accident. But there was one man still alive. They were all determined to rescue him, to snatch him, if possible, from the clutches of that fatal wall.
The railway provided a train, which immediately took them to the gallery-window at Kilometre 3-8; through it they stepped on to the Face, glistening under its coat of ice. Clouds of snow-dust blew into their faces, as they quietly traversed diagonally upwards on the slippery, treacherous ledges, till they reached a point about 300 feet below where Toni Kurz was hanging from the rope in a sung.
There was mixed despair and relief in his voice—still astonishingly strong—as he heard his rescuers and answered them.
“I’m the only one alive. Hinterstoisser came off and fell the whole way down. The rope pulled Rainer up against a snap-link. He froze to death there. And Angerer’s dead too, hanging below me, strangled by the rope when he fell….”
“All right, pal. We’ve come to help you?”
“I know,” shouted Toni. “But you’ve got to come from above, to the right, up through the crack where we left some pitons on the way up. Then you could reach me by three descents on the doubled rope.”
“That’s impossible, pal. Nobody could climb it with this ice about.”
“You can’t rescue me from below,” Kurz shouted back.
Day was drawing to its close. The guides would have to hurry if they were to get back safely to the gallery window before dark. They shouted up the wall: “Can you stick it for one more night, pal?”
“No! No! No!”
The words cut the guides to the quick. They were never to forget them. But any aid was out of the question in the dark, on this Face, in this weather.
“Stick it, pal!” they shouted. “We’ll be back first thing in the morning!”
They could hear Toni’s shouts for a long time, as they climbed down.
The young Berchtesgaden guide must have despaired of seeing the night through. But life had a strong hold on him; in spite of the gale, the volleys of stones, the fearsome cold, he survived the night, swinging backwards and forwards in his rope sling. It was so cold that the water thawed by the warmth of his body froze again immediately. Icicles eight inches long formed on the points of the crampons strapped to his boots. Toni lost the mitten from his left hand; his fingers, his hand, then his arm, froze into shapeless immovable lumps. But when dawn came, life was still awake in his agonised body. His voice too was strong and clear, when the guides got in touch with him again.
Arnold Glatthard had by now joined Schlunegger and the Rubi brothers. The four guides together were ready to fight this merciless wall for the life of their young colleague from Bavaria. The rocks were covered with an appalling glaze of ice. It seemed almost impossible to climb at all. And there was Toni pleading again: “You can only rescue me from above. You must climb the crack….”
It was impossible. Even Kurz and Hinterstoisser in their full and unimpaired strength could not have climbed the crack in such conditions. It was a pitch which even in fine weather would have seriously tested these four men, first-class guides, brought up in a great tradition, master-climbers all, but little versed in the technique of modern, artificial climbing. It would have called for just that kind of “acrobatics” against which Chief Guide Bohren had taken such a strong stand.
However, the four guides succeeded in reaching a point only about 130 feet below where Toni Kurz was hanging on the rope. So far did the overhang beetle out