has been written about the North Face of the Eiger (in German, Eigerwand) – in the 1930s the most dangerous and difficult face in the Alps. In the first four years of attempts none succeeded, and of the ten who set foot on the face, all but two lost their lives. (For comparison, of every 30 people who climb higher than Everest Base Camp, four reach the summit and one dies on the mountain.)
What is less frequently realised is that the eventual conquest of this face was down to advances in bivvy technique.
The early attempts fell into a pattern that soon became familiar to the watchers at the telescopes of the Grindelwald hotels. Fit and vigorous, the climbers would make excellent progress on day one, crossing the first icefield and even the second before being pinned down by the afternoon stonefall. They would then bivouac. After the bivouac they would continue much more slowly, hesitating at every difficulty. They would make less than half the height gain of the previous day and be forced to a second bivouac. On the third day they would vanish behind the clouds of an Eigerwand blizzard, and some time later their bodies would be found in the avalanche cone at the foot of the face.
Most famous of the Eiger overnight spots was at the top corner of the Flatiron buttress, between the Second and Third Icefields. This small stance under an overhang, sheltered from stonefall, became known as the Death Bivouac. The first seven to sleep here either died of exposure and exhaustion or were caught soon afterwards by storm or stonefall; the eighth, the Italian Corti, only got away by being winched off the Traverse of the Gods by a climber who descended 1,000 feet from the summit on a wire cable. The bivouac was again used on 28th August 1961 by Adi (Adolf) Mayr, attempting the first solo ascent. He climbed very strongly to reach the Flatiron early on his first afternoon, but was brought to a stop there by stonefall. The next morning he was seen to climb with unaccountable hesitancy and slowness, and fell to his death from the Ramp.
The discovery that was the key to the face was not the famous Hinterstoisser Traverse but rather the bivouac site immediately above: the Swallow’s Nest. Here it is described by Heinrich Harrer (all quotations are from his book The White Spider, translated by Hugh Merrick).
‘We reached our rock knob and were able to fix two belaying-pitons; then we spent hours in digging a small seat out of the ice below it. We tied ourselves and our belongings to the pitons for security’s sake, furnished our seat with coils of rope, and started to cook our meal. The knob of rock afforded us complete protection from stones; the view from our perch was magnificent. All the conditions for a happy bivouac were present…’
At this bivvy, in 1962, Chris Bonington used as a bivvybag the plastic cover of Hamish MacInnes’s motorbike. Coming across another climber who needed rescuing they abandoned their attempt without much regret – a bike cover isn’t an adequate bivvybag at 2500m (8200ft).
It was an Austrian climber called Ludwig Vörg who discovered this Swallow’s Nest, level with the bottom corner of the First Icefield and protected by an overhang. Its comforts allowed the climbers to start the second day refreshed, and to cross all three of the icefields before stonefall.
Not for nothing was Vörg the ‘Bivouac King’ (Bivakkonig). He equipped the Swallow’s Nest with fleece-lined sleeping bags and airbeds, and built it a low wall of stones. And as the ascent unfolded, his bivouac technique was crucial. The four climbers spent their second night on the Ramp, below the Waterfall Chimney (the ‘usual bivouac place, a good bivouac’).
‘We arranged our bivouac about 8ft below that of Heckmair and Vörg. We managed to drive a single piton into a tiny crevice in the rock. It was a thin square-shafted piton. It held after only a centimetre, but it was just jammed.
Obviously, once we hung our whole weight on it, it would very likely work loose with the leverage. So we bent it downwards in a hoop, till the ring was touching the rock. In this way we did away with any question of leverage and knew we could rely on our little grey steely friend. First we hung all our belongings on it and, after that, ourselves…
We managed to manufacture a sort of seat with the aid of rope-slings, and hung out some more to prevent our legs dangling over the gulf. Next to me there was a tiny level spot, just big enough for our cooker, so we were able to brew tea, coffee and cocoa.
Heckmair and Vörg were no more comfortably lodged. The relaxed attitude of Vörg, the ‘Bivouac King’, was quite remarkable; even in a place like this he had no intention of doing without every possible comfort. He even put on his soft fleece-lined bivouac-slippers, and the expression on his face was that of a genuine connoisseur of such matters. It is absolutely no exaggeration to say that we all felt quite well and indeed comfortable… Our perch was about 4000 feet above the snowfields at the base of the precipice; if one of us fell off now, that was where he would certainly finish up. But who was thinking of falling off?
It was a good bivouac.’
On the third day the weather, as usual on the Eiger, got very bad. Their final bivvy was above the White Spider, in the Exit Cracks.
‘After we had climbed an ice-bulge, we came upon a rock-ledge protected by overhangs from falling stones and avalanches. When I say a ledge, I do not mean a smooth comfortable feature on which it is possible to sit; it was far too narrow and precipitous for that. Heckmair found a place where he could drive in a rock-piton firmly, and with great patience fixed enough hooks on which to hang all the stuff, as well as securing himself and Vörg. Fritz and I arranged our overnight abode about 10ft away. The ledge was scarcely as broad as a boot, and only just allowed us to stand erect, pressed close against the rock; but we contrived to knock in a piton to which we could tie ourselves. Even then we couldn’t sit, not even on the outer rim of the ledge.
However, we found a solution. We emptied our rucksacks and tried fastening them too to the piton, in such a way that we could put our feet in them and so find a hold. We were sure it would work all right, and so it did.
Between us and our friends we had fixed a traversing rope, along which a cookery-pot went shuttling back and forth. Vörg had taken on the important post of expedition cook… Fritz, being Viennese, is a coffee connoisseur, and praised Ludwig’s concoction…
It was now 11pm. Ludwig had given over cookery and “retired to rest”. Even here, on this tiny perch 12,300ft up, and 5000ft sheer above the nearest level, he hadn’t foregone the comfort of the bivouac-slippers. Andreas had to keep his crampons on, so as to get some kind of stance in the ice for him to maintain a hold; but his head rested on Vörg’s broad back… Fritz and I had pulled the Zdarsky-sack over us; our rucksack architecture served splendidly as support for our legs, and very soon I could hear the deep, regular breathing of my friend as he slept by my side. Through the little window in the tent sack I could see that there were no stars in the sky and the weather was still bad; it looked as if it were snowing. There was an occasional small snow-slide from above, but they only slid over the skin of the tent, with a gentle swishing sound, like a hand stroking it… I wasn’t worried about the weather. I was possessed by a great feeling of peace; we would reach the summit tomorrow. This sense of peace increased to a conscious glow of happiness. We humans often experience happiness without recognising it; but here, in that bivouac of ours, I was not only genuinely happy; I knew I was.
This, the third bivouac for Fritz and me on the North Face, was the smallest in terms of room; in spite of that it was the best. And if you ask me why, the reason was the rest, the peace, the joy, the great satisfaction we all four enjoyed there.’
Harrer’s book not only gives a detailed description of the route, but the all-important data on the various bivouac sites, from the Bivouac Cave, above the shattered pillar and below the Difficult Crack (narrow and wet; too low), to the ‘Comfortable Overnight Spot’ to left of the Ramp icefield – first used by Rébuffat and French members of the European ascent of 1952. Ludwig
