Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage by Buhl Hermann; Merrick Hugh; Wilson Ken

Author:Buhl, Hermann; Merrick, Hugh; Wilson, Ken
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing
Published: 2015-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

The south-west wall of

the Marmolada, in winter

I could not put the sky-raking buttress of the Grandes Jorasses out of my mind; it had made an indelible impression on my heart and brain. I thought of it, dreamed of it, lived in a fever of imagination about it. But I am not the sort who is satisfied just to yearn for something I desire so hotly: achievement is the only final answer. And between desire and achievement lies preparation.

I have always taken preparation seriously. Perhaps it is because I am lucky enough to be able to visualise difficulties and dangers in advance, and have the gift of assessing mountains and the routes up them with accuracy. I have never wanted to belong to that class of climbers who underestimate their mountain and then give up at the crucial point. Such withdrawals are only the result of insufficient preparation. The first thing is to know ourselves; to establish – or at least assess – our own limitations. Then we have to see to it that our level of performance matches the difficulty and danger of the proposed climb. It is essential to take every mountain seriously.

I certainly took my plan to climb the north buttress of the Grandes Jorasses to the Pointe Walker very seriously indeed. The months before I could make my attempt would have to be devoted to training and to preparation.

It was the beginning of 1950, and winter still reigned. I had found the ideal partner in Kuno Rainer. That cheerful, silent man possessed all the virtues of a first-class mountaineer – courage, absolute dependability and extreme virtuosity on both rock and ice. He was not of the breed who recoil in horror if you suggest a plan which mediocre men would stigmatise as sheer lunacy, and he was just as ready as I to attempt the most difficult faces in our own mountains under winter conditions, so as to be completely adequate for the greatest climbs in the Western Alps in summer. We consequently climbed the south-east gully of the Fleischbank in the Wilde Kaiser together in early February, a climb which ranks as one of the hardest in the northern Limestone Alps and the severest among the faces dominating the Steinerne Rinne; this was one of the few repetitions of that formidable gully ever made, and certainly the first in winter. We took little longer than a good ‘rope’ requires under summer conditions, so we were obviously in pretty good form.

But we wanted to improve on it, and therefore set ourselves new and even more difficult targets. Hadn’t Fritz Kasparek first climbed the north wall of the Grosse Zinne in winter because he had in mind the Eiger north wall for the following summer? And wasn’t there a Dolomite wall – the south-west face of the Marmolada – steeper, harder and more dangerous than all others, waiting for us? The Italian team led by Solda was the first to climb it, years ago, after days of bitter struggle with the merciless rock, with grim bivouacs on tiny ledges in the overhanging wall.

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