Eiger
| Eiger | |
|---|---|
 The north face of Eiger |
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  Eiger
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| Elevation | 3,970 metres (13,025 ft) |
| 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 notable mountain in the Bernese Alps, rising to an elevation of 3,970 m (13,025 ft.) It is the easternmost peak of a ridge-crest that extends to the Mönch at 4,107 m (13,474 ft.), and across the Jungfraujoch to the Jungfrau at 4,158 m (13,641 ft.). 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 (German: Jungfrau, lit. "Young Woman" - translates to "Virgin" or "Maiden"), 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. The railway terminates at Jungfraujoch, the highest railway station in Europe, located in the col between the Mönch and the Jungfrau.
In July 2006, a piece of the Eiger, amounting to approximately 700,000 cubic metres of rock, fell from the east face. As it had been noticeably cleaving for several weeks and it fell into an uninhabited area, there were no injuries and no buildings were hit.[1]
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The Nordwand
The Nordwand, German for "north face", 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: The Classic Account of the Ascent of the Eiger). 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 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 crumbling face is strengthened by the hard ice present.
Since 1935, sixty climbers have died attempting the north face, earning it the German nickname, Mordwand, or "murder wall", a play on the face's real German name Nordwand[2]
Timeline
- 1858: First ascent by the west flank, 11 August (Charles Barrington, Christian Almer and Peter Bohren). According to Harrer's "The White Spider", Barrington would have performed the first Matterhorn ascent instead, but his finances did not allow him to travel there as he was already staying in the Eiger region.
- 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, by Mead and Woodroffe, with guides Ulrich Kaufmann and Christian Jossi.
- 1921, September 10th: First ascent by the Mittellegi ridge by 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 northeast 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 and German climbers, Andreas Hinterstoisser, Toni Kurz, Willy Angerer and Edi Rainer, died on the north face in severe weather conditions during a retreat from Death Bivouac.
- 1938: Alpine Journal editor Edward Lisle Strutt calls the north face 'an obsession for the mentally deranged' and 'the most imbecile variant since mountaineering first began'.[3]
- 1938: First ascent of north face by Anderl Heckmair, Heinrich Harrer, Fritz Kasparek and Ludwig Vörg, achieved in 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.[1]
- 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 in an attempt to get help for them. They died in an avalanche on the west face of the mountain after completing the 13th ascent of the north face.
- 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 reach the 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 honour.
- 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.
- 1970: Leo Dickinson, Eric Jones, Pete Minks and Cliff Phillips (GB) make the first complete film of the climb.
- 1971: First Belgian ascent of the north face by Renaat Van Malderen and Vincent de Waele.
- 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.
- 1977: First Dutch ascent of the north face by Ronald Naar and Bas Gresnigt.
- 1981: First British solo ascent by Eric Jones - Filmed by Leo Dickinson and released as "Eiger Solo"
- 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.[2]
- 2006: 14 June: François Bon and Antoine Montant make the first speedflying descent of the Eiger.[3], [4]
- 2007: 21 February: Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck breaks Christoph Hainz's record, soloing the north face in 3 hours and 54 minutes.[5]
- 2008: 28 January: Swiss mountaineers Roger Schäli and Simon Anthamatten set a new record for a team ascent (of the Heckmair route) climbing it in 6 hours and 50 minutes.
- 2008: 13 February: Ueli Steck breaks his own record, soloing the north face in 2 hours, 47 minutes and 33 seconds.[6]
- 2008: 23 February: Swiss mountaineers Daniel Arnold and Stephan Ruoss have now bettered the team record set by Schäli and Anthamatten, climbing the Heckmair route in 6 hours and 10 minutes.[7]
- 2008: 31 May: Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck was presented with the inaugural Eiger Award.[8]
- 2008: 07 August: American climber and 'Aerialist', Dean Potter, Free Solo's Deep Blue Sea (5.12+) on The Eiger's North Face, Then B.A.S.E. Jumps from the top using an ultralight rig he wore during the climb.
Panorama
Popular culture
- The 1972 novel The Eiger Sanction is an action/thriller novel by Rodney William Whitaker (writing under the pseudonym Trevanian), based around the climbing of the Eiger. This was then made into a 1975 film starring Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy. The Eiger Sanction film crew included very experienced mountaineers as consultants, in order to ensure accuracy in the climbing footage, equipment and techniques.
- 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.
- The track Eiger Nordwand in the game Gran Turismo HD Concept and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is set on the north face. Interestingly this is despite the fact that motor racing is actually illegal in Switzerland.
- Skiers 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.
- The Eiger was the name of the first song on 2005 album The Wedding by the rock band Oneida.
- The IMAX film The Alps features John Harlin III's climb up the Eiger's North Face in September 2005. Harlin's father, famed alpinist John Harlin II, set out 40 years earlier to attempt a challenging new route straight up the Eiger's 6,000-foot (1,800 m) face. At 4,000 feet (1,200 m), his rope broke, sending him plummeting to a tragic death. Harlin III faces his inner demons and honors his father's memory on the same climb that took his father's life when he was only nine. James Swearingen created a piece named Eiger: Journey to the Summit in memory of him.
- The 2007 docu/drama film The Beckoning Silence features mountaineer Joe Simpson, of Touching the Void fame, recounting - with filmed reconstructions - the tragic 1936 expedition up the north face of the Eiger and how it inspired him to take up climbing. The film followed Simpson's 2003 book of the same name, which covered the same subject among musings on broader mountaineering topics. Those playing the parts of the ill-fated team were Swiss mountain guides - Roger Schäli (Toni Kurz), Simon Anthamatten (Andreas Hinterstoisser), Dres Abegglen (Willy Angerer) and Cyrille Berthod (Edi Rainer).
Climbing accounts
- The White Spider, by Heinrich Harrer.
- The Climb Up to Hell by Jack Olsen
- Are you still here? A bagman's view of climbing the Eigerwand, by Charles Sherwood.
See also
- Bernese Oberland
References
- ↑ The Associated Press (2008-07-14). "Massive chunk falls from Swiss mountain", MSNBC. Retrieved on October 26, 2008.
- ↑ Venables, Stephen (2006-08-27). "The Eiger is my kind of therapy", The Sunday Times. Retrieved on October 26, 2008.
- ↑ From Strutt's Presidential Valedictory Address, 1938, in Alpine Journal, Vol. L, reprinted in Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, ed. Walt Unsworth, London: Allen Lane, 1981, p. 210
- 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)