win.
Joe Simpson
Sheffield September 2004
Joe Simpson is the author of Touching the Void and The Beckoning Silence.
“WRITING a book about the North Face of the Eiger? Whatever for?” The question was put to me by a man of some standing in Alpine circles. I was taken aback and slightly cross, so I gave him a somewhat off-hand answer: “For people to read, of course.”
That started him off on a passionate tirade.
“Who’s likely to read it? Don’t you think the handful of climbers who are really interested in that crazy venture have had quite enough literature on the subject already? Or do you just want to join the sensation-mongers, from whose ranks a serious climber like yourself should keep as remote as possible?”
I answered him: “If all climbers shared your point of view, it wouldn’t be surprising to find the newspaper reports overflowing with misstatements and exaggerations. I believe the public has a right to authoritative information, especially when mountaineering problems become human ones. And I think it is a climber’s duty to contribute to the formation of public opinion in such matters.”
And with that I dropped the unpleasant argument.
However, he had failed to shake my purpose to write a book about the Eiger. I had already been engaged on the preliminary work for months, indeed for years. My home was piled high with books, periodicals, newspaper-cuttings—about two thousand of them in various languages—on the subject of the Eiger’s North Face. I had written, and received replies to, innumerable letters. Every letter from a climber who had actually done the North Face was a personal document and, more than that, the documentation of a personality. I had no intention of allowing the History of the Eiger’s North Face to become a mere calendar of climbs, its foreground theme was to be the men who had done those climbs.
This man, who was so shocked at the idea of my writing a book about the North Face of the Eiger, was akin to a certain type of climber, who plants himself on a pedestal of extreme exaltation and merely smiles superciliously at the nonsensical idea of writing for the layman about climbing. But one cannot ignore public opinion and at the same time expect it to judge one sympathetically and intelligently.
No less an authority than the late Geoffrey Winthrop Young, one of the Grand Old Men of British climbing and outstanding in its literature, recognised the demands of the age and dealt with them in his article “Courage and Mountain Writing”.1 He understood well enough the general public’s thirst for sensation, but he faced it squarely and yet refused to give in to it.
“The modern lay-public,” he writes, “is now ready to read mountain adventures among its other sensational reading. It still demands excitement all the time. The cut rope is no longer essential, and the blonde heroine has less appeal, now that she has to climb in nailed boots and slacks. It wants records, above all. Records in height, records in endurance, hair-breadth escapes on record rock walls, and a seasoning of injuries, blizzards, losses of limbs and hazards of life…. I have suggested that the writers and producers of mountain books must also take some of the responsibility….”
Responsibility with regard to the subject-matter—responsibility with regard to the wishes of the reader. The key to a proper comprehension and understanding between the layman and the climber may well lie here.
And how is the climber to write? In Young’s view: “If he is to be read by human beings, he must write his adventures exactly as he himself humanly saw them at the time. General or objective description, such as satisfied the slower timing of the last two centuries, now reads too slowly, and is dull.”
But how can he avoid becoming a positive bore, if he intends to write a whole book about a single Alpine mountain-face and the solitary route up it? Once again I will quote Young: “However well-known the peak, or the line of ascent, no mountain story need ever repeat itself, or seem monotonous. Both mountain surface and mountain climber vary from year to year, even from day to day.”
There is no mountain, no mountain-face anywhere, of which that can more truly be said than of the Eiger and its North Face. And all the men concerned—those who succeeded, or those who tried and failed—were all sharply defined personalities. No two of them were alike.
“A book about the Eiger? Whatever for?”
The question continued to rankle, though probably the man who asked it never intended to make me angry. Yet the barb persisted. And, though I needed neither an explanation nor a justification for my undertaking, I was greatly heartened to read the following words in an article by Albert Eggler, the well-known Alpine climber and leader of the Swiss Everest Expedition of 1956: “However, we Westerners more especially, who owe the improvements of our lifetime to the selfless devotion of a few exceptionally courageous and probably highly zealous men, ought not to be too hard on people who take on an assignment which in the end proves too big for them. Men who take unusual risks are not by any means the worst types. But what we could and should do is to open the eyes of young climbers in appropriate fashion to the very special dangers of the mountains. And in this direction, a great and worth-while duty still lies before the Alpine clubs and Alpine publications generally.”
But was the duty really worth while? Was it really a duty? And, if it was, dared I, could I perform it? I kept on remembering that question: “a book about the Eiger? Whatever for?” I am not usually the kind of person to dither about a selected target, or about a route, once I have recognised it as the right one. To spur me on, I had all the mass of writings and photographs, the notebooks, the letters, much of the material already sorted and arranged under the individual attempts on and ascents of the Face. But those misgivings aroused by a thoughtless remark were a poor source of driving power to start me on my work.
Then, one day, my old friend Kurt Maix called on me. In Austria there is no need to introduce Kurt. In his own country everyone who has anything to do with mountains or mountaineering knows him. His ability to describe things graphically has enabled him to interest laymen and those who know nothing of mountains in Alpine affairs, and to tell the devoted readers he has won for himself in this way everything he wants to, and everything he knows how to, about climbing and climbers. And that means plenty. For not only was he in his day a pretty sporting climber; but he continues to take a lively, indeed a passionate, interest in everything to do with mountains and mountaineers. He is no hack-writer; every report on a climb, an expedition, a successful ascent, or an accident is a living experience for him. And though Maix is a journalist and writes by profession, he has never renounced his role as the mountaineer he remains at heart.
I was delighted to see Kurt again, but it was high time I were getting on with my book. After our first joyous greetings, I said to him: “I’m sorry I haven’t much time for you. I’m up to my neck in work.”
“So I hear,” said Kurt. “They tell me you are writing a book about your African trip and Ruwenzori.”
“No, not about Ruwenzori,” I confessed.
“Then
