Eiger
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| Eiger | |
|---|---|
 The north face of the Eiger |
|
| Elevation | 3,970 metres (13,025 (feet) |
| Location | Switzerland |
| Range | Bernese Alps |
| Prominence | 356 m |
| Coordinates | |
| First ascent | August 11, 1858 |
| Easiest route | basic rock/snow/ice climb |
The Eiger is a mountain in the Alps of Switzerland. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge-crest that extends to the Mönch (4,099 m) and across the Jungfraujoch to the Jungfrau (4,158 m). The peak is mentioned in records dating back to the 13th century but there is no clear indication of how exactly the peak gained its name. The three mountains of the ridge are sometimes referred to as the Virgin (Jungfrau, lit. "Young Woman"), the Monk (Mönch) and the Ogre (Eiger). The name has been linked to the Greek term akros, meaning "sharp" or "pointed", but more commonly to the German eigen, meaning "characteristic".
The first ascent of the Eiger was made by Swiss guides Christian Almer and Peter Bohren and Irishman Charles Barrington who climbed the west flank on August 11, 1858.
The Jungfraubahn railway runs in a tunnel inside the Eiger, and two internal stations provide easy access to viewing-windows in the mountainside.
In July 2006, a piece of the Eiger, amounting to approximately 2 million cubic metres of rock, fell from the East Face. As it had been noticeably cleaving for several weeks prior and it fell into an uninhabited area, there were no injuries and no buildings were hit.[1]
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[edit] The Nordwand
The Nordwand, German for "north wall", is the spectacular north (or, more precisely, north-west) face of the Eiger (also known as the Eigerwand, "Eiger wall"). It is one of the six great north faces of the Alps, towering over 1,800 m (5,900 ft) above the valley in the Bernese Oberland below.
It was first climbed on July 24, 1938 by Anderl Heckmair, Ludwig Vörg, Heinrich Harrer and Fritz Kasparek of a German–Austrian group. The group had originally consisted of two independent teams; Harrer (who didn't have a pair of crampons on the climb) and Kasparek were joined on the face by Heckmair and Vörg, who had started their ascent a day later and had been helped by the fixed rope that the lead group had left across the "Hinterstoisser Traverse." The two groups, led by the experienced Heckmair, co-operated on the more difficult later pitches, and finished the climb roped together as a single group of four. A portion of the upper face is called "The White Spider", as snow-filled cracks radiating from an ice-field resemble the legs of a spider. Harrer used this name for the title of his book about his successful climb, Die Weisse Spinne (translated into English as The White Spider). During the first successful ascent, the four men were caught in an avalanche as they climbed the Spider, but all had enough strength to resist being swept off the face.
Subsequently the face has been climbed many times, and today is regarded as a formidable challenge more because of the increased rockfall and diminishing ice-fields caused by climate change than because of its technical difficulties, which are not at the highest level of difficulty in modern alpinism. In summer the face is often unclimbable because of rockfall, and climbers are increasingly electing to climb it in winter, when the extreme cold solidifies the crumbling face.
Since 1935, over fifty climbers have died attempting the north face, earning it the German nickname, Mordwand, or "murder face", a play on the face's real German name Nordwand.
[edit] Timeline
- 1858: First ascent by the west flank, 11 August (Charles Barrington, Christian Almer and Peter Bohren).
- 1871: First ascent by the southwest ridge, 14 July (W. A. B. Coolidge, Meta Brevoort, Christian Bohren, Christian Almer and Ulrich Almer).
- 1890: First ascent in winter time (Mead and Woodroffe, with guides Ulrich Kaufmann and Christian Jossi).
- 1921: First ascent by the Mittellegi ridge, 10 September. {Fritz Amatter, Samuel Brawand, Yuko Maki and Fritz Steuri).
- 1924: First ski ascent via the Eiger glacier.
- 1932: First ascent via the Lauper route on the NE face.
- 1934: First attempt on the north face by Willy Beck, Kurt Löwinger and Georg Löwinger reaching 2,900 m.
- 1935: First attempt on north face by the Germans Karl Mehringer and Max Sedlmeyer. They froze to death at 3,300 m, a place now known as "Death Bivouac".
- 1936: Four Austrian-German climbers, Andreas Hinterstoisser, Toni Kurz, Angerer and Rainer, died on the north face in severe weather conditions during a retreat from Death Bivouac.
- 1938: First ascent of north face by Anderl Heckmair, Heinrich Harrer, Fritz Kasparek and Ludwig Vorg (three days).
- 1947: Second ascent of north face by Lionel Terray and Louis Lachenal.
- 1950: First one-day ascent of north face by Leo Forstenlechner and Erich Wascak, in 18 hours.[2]
- 1957: An inexperienced Italian pair, Claudio Corti and Stefano Longhi run into extreme difficulties above the second ice field. Corti becomes the first man rescued from the face from above, when German guide Alfred Hellepart is lowered from the summit on a steel cable. The injured Longhi is not so lucky, and dies of exposure before he can be rescued. Franz Mayer and Gunther Nothdurft, two highly skilled German climbers, are also killed after leaving the stranded Italians.
- 1961: First winter ascent of the north face by Toni Kinshofer, Anderl Mannhardt, Walter Almberger and Toni Hiebeler.
- 1962: First all-Italian ascent of the north face by Armando Aste, Pierlorenzo Acquistapace, Gildo Airoldi, Andrea Mellano, Romano Perego, and Franco Solina.
- 1962: First all-British ascent of the north face by Chris Bonington and Ian Clough.
- 1963: August 2-3: First solo ascent of the north face by Michel Darbellay, in around 18 hours of climbing.
- 1963: August 15: Two Spanish climbers die in a storm, Ernesto Navarro and Alberto Rabadá.
- 1963: December 27-31: Three Swiss guides complete the first descent of the North Face, retrieving the bodies of Ernesto Navarro and Alberto Rabadá from the White Spider.
- 1964: German Daisy Voog becomes the first woman to summit via the north face.
- 1966: After a fixed rope breaks, American John Harlin falls to his death while making an ascent of the north face by the direttissima, or "most direct" route. His colleagues (Haston, Lehne, Votteler and Hupfauer) push on to achieve the first direttissima ascent, which is named the "John Harlin route" in his honor.
- 1968: 28–31 July: First ascent of the north ridge, by Polish team: Cielecki, Łaukajtys, Szafirski, Zyzak.
- 1970: First ski descent, on the west flank, by Sylvain Saudan.
- 1971: Peter Siegert and Martin Biock are winched from above the Death Bivouac to a helicopter, the first such successful rescue.
- 1974: Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climb the north face in 10 hours.
- 1981: 25 August: Swiss guide Ueli Bühler solos the face in 8 hours and 30 minutes.
- 1983: 27 July: Austrian Thomas Bubendorfer solos the face without a rope in 4 hours and 50 minutes, almost halving Bühler's time.
- 2003: 24 March: Italian Christoph Hainz breaks Bubendorfer's record by ten minutes, climbing the face in 4 hours and 40 minutes.
- 2006: 15 July: Approximately 20 million cubic feet (700,000 cubic metres) of rock from the east side collapses. No injuries or damage are reported.[3]
- 2006: 14 June: François Bon and Antoine Montant make the first speedflying descent of the Eiger.[4], [5]
- 2007: 21 February: Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck breaks Hainz's record, soloing the north face in 3 hours and 54 minutes.[6]
[edit] Pictures
 Maximilien de Meuron, early 19th century |
 Sunrise above the Eiger Mittelegi-Ridge |
 The North Face on a clear summer day |
 Eiger North-Face with fresh snow. View from Beatenberg, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland. |
 View from the face of the Eiger looking down at the town of Grindelwald, Switzerland below. |
[edit] Popular culture
- The 1972 novel The Eiger Sanction is an action/thriller story based around the climbing of the Eiger by Rodney William Whitaker, written under the pseudonym Trevanian. This was then made into a 1975 film starring Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy.
- Eiger Dreams, a collection of short stories by Jon Krakauer, begins with an account of Krakauer's own attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger.
- A track in the game Gran Turismo HD is set around the peak.
- Skiiers Shane McConkey and J. T. Holmes "skibase"-jumped off the western flank of the north face. This footage can be seen in the film Yearbook by Matchstick Productions.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Anker, Daniel (ed.) Eiger: The Vertical Arena, Seattle: The Mountaineers, 2000
- Harrer, Heinrich, The White Spider: The History of the Eiger's North Face, translated from German, London, 1959 (revised 1965, 1979)
