These two men, who believed they had spotted a route—probably the only possible one—up the Face, had noted all this. The lowest point of the Face was at about 6,900 feet. The first 800 feet of the climb—although steep and exposed to falling avalanches and stones—looked difficult but not impossibly so. With field-glasses it was possible to distinguish some holes in the rock up there—the windows of Eigerwand Station on the Jungfrau Railway, which winds its upward way for miles in the heart of the mountain. About 400 yards to the west there is yet another such gallery-window in the Face, the window at the 3-8 kilometre mark from which, during the construction of the line, they used to dump the rubble down the outside of the mountain. Of course, one could take the train to Eigerwand or the window at Kilometre 3-8 and start the climb from there; but one might just as well climb the Eiger by the normal route and only look at the Face. No, the railway inside the mountain was meant for the rest of the world. For the men interested in the climbing of the Face, only one thing counts—a climb, unquestionable in the eyes of sporting and climbing circles, from the lowest point to the 13,041-foot summit of the Eiger.
Sedlmayer and Mehringer studied the Face for days on end, prepared their gear for the climb, lay there for hours on the Alp, looking through field-glasses. Above the railway-window in the Face a vertical rock-step went surging up for more than six hundred feet. Could it be climbed? That could only be decided once you got up there. Above the step gleamed an ice-field, the First Ice-field, as it is now called. How high was it? How steep? Very hard to decide those questions from down below.
Above that again a second rock pitch, followed by a huge sheet of snow and ice, which one would have to ascend diagonally to the left. Then there was a third ice-field, whose rock and ice outlines had a strange shape, almost that of a huge hawk beating upwards with outspread wings. To reach the beak of this hawk one would have to climb a sharp arète leaning against the perpendicular summit-wall at that point—a ridge later christened the “Flatiron” by its climbers. Could all this be climbed? From the ridge one would have to traverse leftwards across that steep, third ice-field, from whose further end an abrupt ramp goes surging diagonally to the left across the Face towards the Mittellegi Ridge. Could it be climbed right up to its top? Could one traverse off it to the right on to the huge snow-field which throws out slender snow- and ice-runnels in every direction like a huge spider crouching above the gulf 5,000 feet beneath? And finally: could one climb from the “Spider” to the Summit through the cracks and couloirs above?
Nobody who had not tried it himself could give a definite answer.
Max Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer left their shelter in the herdsman’s hut at Alpiglen during the night of August 20th-21st, 1935. At 2 a.m. on the 21st—a Wednesday—they started to climb the Face. As soon as daylight came, queues gathered round the telescopes at Grindelwald and Kleine Scheidegg. All day long people watched the intrepid Munich pair; the criticism of the know-it-alls died away into silence, quenched by admiration and sheer wonder. The two men were climbing magnificently, in spite of the steepness of the Face, in spite of their heavy rucksacks. One could see clearly as they belayed each other, as they roped their rucksacks up difficult pitches after them. Not an ill-judged step or an unconsidered movement. Even the guides, watching everything that goes on in their own sector of the mountains with a suspicious and critical eye, had to admit that they were watching two master-climbers at work.
Following a perfect line of ascent, straight up towards the summit, hardly stopping to rest, Sedlmayer and Mehringer were gaining height steadily, like some perfectly-functioning machine, rope’s length by rope’s length, almost as if they were giving an exhibition at a climbing-school. By dusk, they had disposed of the whole lower section of the Face. At 9,500 feet, 2,600 feet above the point where they started to climb, they bivouacked, well above the windows of Eigerwand Station, whose lights shone down almost like stars.
Thursday dawned. Even the sceptics were now almost convinced that the bid was going to succeed. Indeed many were striking bets that the pair would reach the summit this very day, early in the afternoon. But the Face is terribly deceptive. It was still a long way to the top, and the route as difficult as it was unexplored. The spectators, avid for sensations, showed their disappointment. Their gladiators are a lazy lot. There is only that ridiculous little belt of rock; how high can it be? They turn down their thumbs, shaking their heads angrily. Why, it can’t be much more than sixty feet!
But no. It wasn’t sixty feet, it was more than three hundred. Three hundred feet of vertical rock, up which two heavy rucksacks as well as two men had to come. And these two men were climbers, not gladiators. They tackled the cliff, which was of such a degree of severity that it would have graced some tower in the Dolomites more fittingly than this ghastly Face of the Eiger, belaying and safeguarding one another, neither of them aware that they were being, nor in the least desiring to be, watched. Their thoughts were far from the rest of the world, not through any feeling of superiority, but simply because the mountain had taken complete possession of them and because they were constrained to fight with every fibre of their being, with all the awareness of men in mortal danger, to master the difficult pitch. Stones and fragments of ice began to fall from above; so steep is the cliff that they went whistling far out over their heads. After long hours of punishing work they reached the top of the step in the wall. But by then it was afternoon.
It took the whole afternoon to cross that first, steep ice-field—the one that looks so ludicrously short from below. Again and again they could be seen covering their heads with their rucksacks or using them to give some kind of cover as they moved on. The mountain artillery was at work.
At dusk they bivouacked at the upper rim of the First Ice-field. It was impossible to see from below whether they had room to sit; there could be no question of lying down. They looked as if they were glued to the Wall. It was a very long night, but the weather continued to hold.
All through Friday the spectators watched Sedlmayer and Mehringer, who hardly seemed to be gaining height any more. The traverse from the First to the Second Ice-field seemed to be very difficult, too. The huge size of this field could be gauged by the tiny size of the dots which were men, by the short distances which were none the less rope’s lengths of a hundred feet. Again and again the climbers were forced to halt, clearly to shelter against falling stones and ice fragments. The roping-up of the rucksacks took up much time. Slowly, terribly slowly, they gained height, as the hours raced by like minutes; but still they moved upwards towards the left-hand rim of the Second Ice-field. Everyone was asking: “Where will they bivouac”? No one was destined to see, for a curtain of mist sank slowly down the mountain-face, to sever one world from another.
During the night, the weather broke. A strong gale tore across the ridges, rain pattered down on the valleys and, up above, the wind chased the hail-stones along the mountainsides. At first it was just a thunderstorm; but the crashing of the thunder was shot through with the crackle and rattle of falling stones and ice. So great was the din up on the storm-bound Face that the peaceful sleep of tourists at Alpiglen and above on the Kleine Scheidegg was disturbed.
This appalling weather lasted the whole of Saturday. To the hammering of the falling stones was added the rushing roar of avalanches. The cold grew intense. The night temperature down at the Kleine Scheidegg fell to 8° below zero. What must it be up there, high on the North Face? Could the two men still be alive? Many continued to hope against hope; but no one could know anything of Sedlmayer and Mehringer’s desperate fight for life, for the curtain of cloud never parted for a single instant. Their fifth day on the Face was followed by another murderously cold night.
It was now Sunday, the 25th. Who would have dared to believe that the two men from Munich could still be alive? Then, towards noon, the