Solo Faces by James Salter

Author:James Salter [Salter, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4382-4
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2012-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

21

THE EIGER IS THE great wall of Europe. It exists in a class by itself. Six thousand feet high, twice the height of the Dru, and more treacherous. It is black except for the snow which in winter clings everywhere, hiding the fields of ice. The climbing is difficult, the danger from storm and falling rock extreme.

The first attempts were all fatal though they forged the way. Men fell or froze to death, their bodies remaining on the face, grotesquely, for long periods of time. In 1938 it was finally climbed.

There is an old hotel, the Kleine Scheidegg, not far from the base. The rooms are comfortable, the downstairs is filled with photographs of those who have made the climb. Above, so immense that it cannot be seen, the mountain rises.

They were all staying at the hotel—Cabot had gotten five climbers, he was trying to find a sixth. Early in the morning, before dawn, they would leave for the foot of the wall, trudging across frozen fields. At night they would return exhausted.

“You know anyone else we could get?” he asked Bray.

“I know someone in Paris.”

Cabot glanced at him. “Is there anyone you know in England?”

Bray said, “Not for this.”

It was like war, a city besieged. All day they fought furiously. At night they slept in their beds.

Carol was there; she was the leading woman. Audrey, who came in January, was pale beside her. In the evening, if no one was back, they ate together, sometimes with the television crew. A chain-smoking man named Peter Barrington was the producer.

“Huh! Damned cold today,” he said, batting together his mittened hands. “Glad I’m not up there. Where’s our pilot this morning?”

He’d made films on architecture and English poets. Then he’d gone to Nepal, which made him the expert on mountaineering, he said with a captious air. He knew all the jargon, however. He used it freely. Cabot, he secretly called “The Strangler.” Much of his time was spent in the bar at a table with an overflowing ashtray—he was waiting for certain equipment, for the weather to improve, for a call from London.

“Good morning, Mr. Barrington,” they would say.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it? What do you suppose we should do today? Take a few more pictures of the mountain?”

“We could do that.”

“What are they up to today?”

It had been slow going. Cabot had broken his thumb in a twenty-foot fall. It hadn’t stopped him; he kept at it, doing as much as anyone, even more. He was the only one who believed they would reach the top. The others, in a sense, were automatons.

The face was completely frozen. There was no rockfall to speak of but the cold was intense. Avalanches were frequent. Slowly, with unwavering determination, a route, completely new, was being pushed up. Fixed ropes were left in place so that going up and down could be managed quickly. The focus of effort was always the highest point.

By mid-January they were halfway up the wall. Two well-stocked bivouacs dug out of snow had been established, bunkers Cabot called them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.