‘They’ll never make a climber of me’

I was born in Innsbruck; the hills looked down into my cradle and I must have inherited my love for them, for my father loved to wander among the mountains. My mother was from the Grödnertal, in the very heart of the Dolomites, but I lost her when I was only four; she was spoken of as a fine, sensitive woman whose intelligence reached out beyond the cramped confines of everyday existence to those things on which it is impossible to set a material value. Her picture and my sense of loss have been with me all my life.

My desire to become a climber, the unquenchable fire that burned within me for the world of peaks, faces and ridges, were hardly sensible things. I was so delicate, so weak a child that I could not even go to school till a year later than usual. But I still dreamed of the mountains. On school outings I used to stop at waterfalls and such romantic places. It was as though the hills had a special language for me, to which I had to listen. When teachers or the other boys scolded or laughed at me, I held my tongue. If they couldn’t hear the voices I heard, how could they be expected to understand me?

On my tenth birthday my father asked me whether I would prefer to celebrate it by the train journey to distant Bregenz on the Lake of Constance, or a stroll up the local knob, the Glungezer. I didn’t have to think long. The Glungezer was, after all, over 8,500 feet high. And so we walked all the way up on to the mountain-top which looks down on Innsbruck. From there, across the valley of the Inn, I could see the whole of the Northern Range, a welter of teeth and towers, of exciting rock formations and long, fierce ridges. One would have to be big and strong to go climbing there, from peak to peak – from tower to tower …

Not many years later Innsbruck’s Northern Range had become the regular field of my activities. I was up there almost every Sunday. But that wasn’t so simple, either, for we had been very strictly brought up. Sunday had to be given its right reverence and recognition by attendance at Mass, so there was no question of going mountaineering without having been to Service first. Luckily for us who lived at Innsbruck, where the needs of the mountaineer have long been reconciled with the claims and dignity of the Church, there were special early celebrations, services held on the borders of night and day, but if you wanted to go to church and still be up in the mountains in time, you had to be up before four in the morning.

People who pitied me because I looked so frail, or thought of me as a poor specimen of a boy, were wrong. I was not too weak for the mountains. I walked and played about, I climbed and ran – up hill, down dale. Going uphill seemed so easy to me. And wherever bare crag grew upwards out of rubble or snow I stuffed my boots into my small ‘Schnerfer’ rucksack and climbed up the rock in my woollen socks. I had no money for proper climbing shoes; though that did not in the least depress me. In fact nothing depressed me, so long as I could be up there among the crags. By evening I was back in the Inn valley again, and maybe I stopped in one of the streets of my home-town and thought, as I looked up at the Northern Range: ‘So you have been up there? On one or another of those spikes?’ I was small and delicate and I expect that in the eyes of the worthy people coming back from their Sunday walk I presented a slightly comical spectacle. All the same, my childish pride in my achievement gave me a great sense of superiority over them. At home my enthusiasm was for the most part soon quenched. All they saw was the factual manifestation – my torn socks. I tried every kind of excuse and explanation; in the end I always stood there, my cheeks nicely reddened. Yes, I would look after my socks better in future. Till next Sunday, in fact!

A man grows with his highest aims, even when as narrowly confined as I was. The time came when I wanted to do something really worthwhile with my chum Ernstl from school – a proper climb, with a rope and all the outward show laid on. In the windows of the sports shops there were maddeningly lovely ropes. Those were for people who could afford them, not for small boys with big ideas in their noodles. But a rope there had to be. That was why my stepmother’s washing-line found its way from our balcony into my rucksack.

When we got outside the city gates it changed places again. We took turns in wearing it round a very puffed-out chest – a most exalting thing to do. It did not occur to us that we were the least bit ridiculous; we simply saw ourselves as daring heroes of the mountains, like in the climbing books or in such songs as ‘With a rope around my breast … ’

Our objective was the Brandjoch, whose 9,000 feet would be a height-record for me. Even then, as a thirteen-year-old stormer of peaks, whose importance must have been clear to everyone the moment they saw the washing-line round his shoulders, I could not bear the idea that there were other tourists ahead of us. We ran up the path, overtaking them, feeling like really confident ‘tigers’ of the rocks – though we and real rock climbing were leagues apart. And all because of a length of washing-line …

We reached the base of ‘Frau Hitt’ – a fine-looking rock-outline into which, according to the legend, the noble and exclusive lady had been transformed. Even in the stony form into which God had condemned her she had lost none of her unapproachability. Steep rock; smooth and holdless. Some of our youthful confidence began to ebb.

Others were by now reaching the foot of the pinnacle. Proper tough people with brown, sun-scorched, fine-drawn faces – the way climbers ought to look. Our approach earned us a few questioning, slightly scornful looks, but we did not let them point out our lack of safety precautions. While the others were tying on to a real climbing rope, we were undoing our ridiculous cord with all the composure we could assume.

And how they could climb! They tackled the stony old lady by firm hand- and footholds, gaining height without noticeable effort. Then it was our turn, and our anxiety was soon forgotten. There really were holds and stances; one really could make headway. Up we went, and not too badly at that. When we joined the others on the narrow summit platform, the scornful looks had vanished.

We looked down the north face, with its definite overhang – a rock wall leaping 130 feet sheer. If we could only climb a thing like that, we should be full-blooded, real climbers. Would we ever reach that standard?

For the moment the main thing was the descent of the precipice; we should have to rope down it – an abseil, which sounded rather alarming! We tried to forget that we had never done one on a proper mountain, watching exactly how the others did it. Then it was our turn to slide down into space. At first it gave one an odd feeling in the pit of the stomach, but with a growing sense of safety, it began to be rather fun.

We were very proud when we joined the climbing party afterwards. One of them, whose handsome face was shadowed by a broad-brimmed hat, made a special impression on me. There was a badge on his hat: an edelweiss, a rope and an ice axe struck obliquely through it. One would have to belong to a body, to a club, like him, some day. I was immensely impressed, being only a child, by these young men. I said very little, but listened all the more breathlessly. There were the names of mountains, faces, climbs – the Hohe Warte, the Grubreissen, Kumpfkar, Schüsselkar … Each name opened up an exciting, savage world of its own – a world I must attain. But would we ever even get as far as that? I must see to it that we did!

The Grubreissen Towers … they became my dream objective for a whole year. Those crags behind the Hafelkar – in my dreams they embodied all the joys of climbing, nay all earthly joys. For was there anything lovelier on earth than climbing? I was just fourteen. Although I was still unusually thin and ‘soft’, I felt thoroughly seasoned the next time I stood on the Hafelkar. Of course I had come up from Innsbruck on foot. Who could afford the funicular and luxury of that kind?

I stood there looking across at the grey rock pinnacles to the north in the Karwendel ranges. Far away I could distinguish a few little dots there, moving about. Climbers! Perhaps they might take me along, if I …

I hurried down the short slope, crossed the gully to a snow couloir opposite and climbed up it to the saddle at its top. There they were, my rock pinnacles, the Grubreissen Towers. On the right, the harder one, the South Tower, sometimes called the Melzer Tower. That was the North Tower, at the back. I knew it all from hearsay, even the approach routes. I had seen pictures and read accounts, too. Was it worth tackling the easier one? No, it had got to be the difficult one, the Melzer Tower.

I went straight at it, just as I was, in heavy skiing boots and a waterproof cape – in my highly unsuitable attire. I went up quite a long way like that. Then I couldn’t go any further. There I was stuck like some comical bat against the rock. But bats can fly; upwards, if they want to. The only way I could fly was downwards … It was a nasty moment.

Then I heard voices, and remembered the climbers whom I had seen earlier as little points in the distance. They had spotted that I had got into serious difficulties and were offering the silly young idiot a rescue party. I would have been only too glad of the help, but I obviously couldn’t accept it. How could I start my career as a climber in the role of a rescue party’s prize? So with due pride...