‘Every night, do you understand, I see my comrades of the Matterhorn …’
EDWARD WHYMPER
THE DATE: 18 February 1880. The place: Cotopaxi in the South American Andes range. The world’s highest active volcano. A man holds the ankles of his colleague as he hangs over the edge of the crater.
Twelve hundred feet below him rages a melting pot of lava and flames.
Most people would have wanted something a little more secure than just a friend holding their legs.
But Edward Whymper wasn’t most people. He was a man whose thirst for exploration remained unquenched, despite the terrible tragedy he had once been part of.
Away from the mountains, he lived the quiet life of a book illustrator. But his quietness hid a character of steel. One that would embark on some epic quests of adventure, from the harsh mountains and volcanoes of South America to the frozen wastes of Greenland.
But his most celebrated expedition was, without doubt, the first ever ascent of the Matterhorn. It’s a tale of persistence and courage, but also of disaster. A reminder that sometimes, glory goes hand in hand with sacrifice. And that it is not enough just to keep your wits about you on the way up. You must tread even more carefully on the way down.
The Matterhorn. It’s up there with the Eiger as one of the most impressive peaks in the Alps. It rises to the sky like a great rocky pyramid on the border between Italy and Switzerland. It’s like a siren. Beautiful, but very dangerous – and more than willing to kill all manner of climbers who, over the years, have found themselves drawn towards it.
The peak’s flanks are so steep that snow and ice can only cling to them in patches. Avalanches – both of snow and rock – are commonplace. Its location and its height make it vulnerable to sudden and extreme changes in the weather. You can have perfect visibility one moment; the next you’ll be climbing blind.
A winter storm in these mountains is not like your regular storm. Needles of ice blast and stab at your face. Chunks of ice a foot wide have been known to have blown vertically upwards from the glacier below.
Yet despite this, the mountain is a magnet, both for tourists and mountaineers. The tourists come because it’s beautiful. The mountaineers come because it’s deadly. Even today, people regularly die trying to climb it, their broken, blood-stained frozen bodies perfectly preserved in icy couloirs where nobody will ever see them.
But, for many a mountaineer, the danger only increases the allure. The Matterhorn is a formidable challenge, waiting to be tackled.
Nowadays, the ascents are well mapped. There are even fixed ropes on parts of the more awkward pitches. But, of course, this has not always been the case. By the middle of the nineteenth century, many people had taken up the challenge to climb the Matterhorn. None of them had achieved it.
This was a time known as the golden age of Alpinism. Intrepid mountaineers sought to conquer the most difficult peaks of the Alps. But by 1865 the Matterhorn’s summit still remained untouched by humans – not for want of trying.
The peak first came to the attention of the young Edward Whymper when he was dispatched to the Alps in 1860, to draw Alpine scenery for a series of book illustrations. It was his first visit to the region, and he soon became captivated by mountaineering.
One of his subjects was Mont Pelvoux, which a mountaineer by the name of Professor Bonney had attempted to scale, and failed. By 1861 Whymper had conquered the peak. He clearly had an aptitude for the sport. Armed with his simple gear and inexhaustible enthusiasm, Whymper went on to claim many of the greatest Alpine peaks.
One, though, still eluded him.
*
There was, at the time, a huge rivalry between the Italian and British Alpinists. They didn’t just want to beat the mountains – they wanted to beat each other.
Whymper and his English contemporaries had bagged the first ascents of most of the main Alpine peaks. When only the Matterhorn remained, a group of leading Italian climbers decided that they should restore a little national honour and be the first to scale the peak.
Jean-Antoine Carrel was one of these mountaineers. Between 1861 and 1865, he and Whymper both attempted to conquer the Matterhorn via the south-west ridge. This was widely accepted to be the most accessible means of ascent. But neither had any success.
It’s worth taking a moment to think about the gear those early Alpine explorers would have used. Nowadays, mountaineers have incredibly lightweight, reliable, well-tested equipment. Not Edward Whymper. For him, the few bits of gear he had were some coils of thick (heavy!) manila rope; an ‘alpenstock’ – or a good, sturdy stick to you and me; wool gloves and hobnailed boots (he wasn’t a fan of the crampon); a canvas tent or bivouac for protection (again, heavy!); and a compact spirit lamp – or ‘Russian Furnace’ – for light and heat.
With this, he was good to go.
On one occasion, Whymper attempted a solo ascent. It very nearly killed him. He slipped on a particularly treacherous ledge and tumbled down a 45-degree slope. His body smashed into some rocks before tumbling over a ledge and into a gully. As he fell, his skull cracked against rocks and hard ice. (No modern helmet for him!) He continued to crash down for more than 60 feet, until rocks broke his fall and brought him to a sudden, violent halt.
He was a mess. His body was covered in deep gashes – more than twenty of them. The worst were on his head. Blood gushed out of the wounds, blinding him, covering his skin and clothes. Turning the snow scarlet.
He would surely have bled to death if he hadn’t hit on the idea of pressing a large chunk of hard snow against his face as an improvised dressing. It stemmed the bleeding enough for him to continue the descent.
Back in Zermatt, he tended his wounds with a mixture of raw salt and vinegary wine. Never fun on an open wound.
On another attempt, a storm blew up when Whymper and his companions were halfway to the summit. They pitched their tent as the storm raged around them. For twenty-six hours they stuck it out, nothing but a piece of canvas between them and the ferocious elements. In the end they had to turn back. Their survival depended on it. It seemed that whatever Whymper threw at the mountain, the mountain cast back in his face.
By 1865 Whymper had attempted the Matterhorn seven times. Each attempt had ended in failure.
But you know what they say. Fall down seven times, stand up eight. And Whymper wasn’t going to be defeated.
By now, any Alpinist worth the name wanted to be the first to scale the Matterhorn. It led to huge rivalry and secrecy. Of all of them, Whymper was the most obsessed. One of his rivals described him as ‘that fellow whose life seems to depend on the Matterhorn … suspiciously prying into everything’.
But what some people might call obsessive–compulsive, others would call thinking outside the box.
Was the south-west ridge, which had defeated everybody, really the only way up?
Nobody thought that climbing it via the so-called Hornli Ridge, which looked so forbidding from the ground, was even possible.
Whymper now considered it.
Sure, it looked deeply menacing from below, but mountains look different close up. And Whymper thought that he had maybe spotted a route. People thought he was mad. Whymper didn’t care. He decided to give it a go.
Six other men joined Whymper’s team. Three Englishmen: Lord Francis Douglas, Charles Hudson and Douglas Hadow. A French climber: Michel Croz. Two guides, father and son, both called Peter Taugwalder. They set off from Zermatt at dawn on 13 July 1865.
By midday, they had climbed to a height of 11,000 feet. So far, so good.
They pitched their tents and sat it out till the following morning. Just before dawn they packed up their camp. As soon as it was light enough to climb they started their final ascent. The conditions stayed good, their new route was working. By 1.40 p.m. the party had conquered the peak.
They stayed there for an hour, revelling in their success. Time passed quickly. They were euphoric. Ecstatic. Elated. Not quite literally on top of the world, but not far off.
Then the men started their descent. Which was when things went very horribly wrong.
The treacherous Matterhorn had reeled them in with a relatively easy ascent. Now she was preparing to spit them out.
She was about to show the mountaineers that she wouldn’t be taken lightly.
*
Perhaps it was their euphoria that betrayed them. Perhaps it was fatigue. Or maybe it was just bad luck.
At Whymper’s instruction the men roped themselves together. It was a good idea, in theory, and was typical of early Alpinists learning the fundamentals of modern-day mountaineering techniques through trial and error. The rope is there to stop a slip becoming a fall – as long as it is kept taut.
But the downside is that if the rope is allowed to fall too slack, and someone falls, then the force could rip those above them off the face. All of them. Like dominoes.
Croz led the way. Then Hadow, Hudson and Douglas, followed by the two Taugwalders – old Peter and young Peter. Whymper went last. But as they climbed down, Hadow – who was in second place and also the least experienced of them – lost his footing. Fatally, the rope above him had also been too slack.
As he slipped, he crashed into Croz, the leader. As the rope behind him pulled tight, it yanked Hudson and Douglas down the face.
It had only taken seconds. But on a dangerous peak like that, seconds is all it takes.
Further up the rope, Whymper and the two guides heard the desperate screaming of the men below. Immediately, they clutched at some rocks.
But their luck was not to hold. Nor was the rope.
The force of the falling men was too much for it.
It strained – drum-tight.
Held for a second or two.
And then it snapped.
Whymper stared, horrified. From his elevated position he saw Croz, Hadow, Hudson and Douglas tumble down the face.
They spread out their hands, trying to grab something that would halt their fall.
But there was nothing to grab.
And with the rope broken, there was nothing Whymper and his two companions could do.
Except watch.
One by one, Whymper’s four companions slipped out of sight. Nothing could have saved them as they tumbled from one precipice to another.
They fell a total of 4,000 feet.
As they’d fallen, a single word had echoed up towards the remaining mountaineers. It came from the mouth of Croz.
‘Impossible!’
*
‘Impossible!’
Whymper had shown that climbing the Matterhorn was not impossible. But the costs can be impossibly high.
There is a special bond between men who set out on an expedition of that scale together. A kind of comradeship that is hard to find in everyday life. But then to lose any of those companions is a brutal blow that is hard to describe. It turns the victory sour, and any triumph hollow.
Whymper and his two guides shouted out the names of the fallen as they continued their dejected descent. But they knew it was in vain. Nobody could have survived a fall like that.
The broken mountaineers didn’t reach Zermatt until the following day. There was no glory in their return home. In fact, there was nothing but controversy. They were accused of having cut the rope in order to save their own skins. People said that, rather than try to save their companions, they had betrayed them. It was a cruel twist for Whymper, the man who had risked his all.
Whymper’s embittered success did not kill his enthusiasm for mountaineering or adventuring. But he never attempted another Alpine peak. And in the years that followed he could barely bring himself to talk about the climb that had made him famous – or maybe infamous.
His fallen colleagues haunted him nightly. In his dreams he saw them slipping away from him, to their deaths. And when he finally died, aged 71, in 1911, he was buried in Chamonix, not far from the scene of his greatest, and most dreadful, achievement.
Times change. So do people. But mountains don’t. Not in the lifetimes of men. The Matterhorn still remains a great challenge today. And in the 150 years since Edward Whymper and his team first reached the summit, it has claimed the lives of more than five hundred climbers.
For me, the story of Edward Whymper serves as a reminder that, in extreme situations, you can’t let your guard down for a moment. If you do, then mountains have a habit of coming up and biting you on your backside. Hard.
You may have reached your pinnacle, but a mountain doesn’t care if it kills you on the way up or the way down. Never get complacent. Complacency kills. And remember that the time to concentrate hardest is when you are feeling weakest.
Edward Whymper’s own words remain as true as ever: ‘Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence … Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.’