The Beckoning Silence (L'eco Del Silenzio)

Joe Simpson : I knew people died in mountains

Joe Simpson : long before I had my accident.

I sort of understood you were playing a game

for very high stakes

and you might not actually have a choice over your fate.

You'd like to think you control the odds

by your judgment and by your skill

and it's not exactly true.

Steven Mackintosh : The climber, Joe Simpson,

Steven Mackintosh : was 25 when he had an accident

Steven Mackintosh : that nearly killed him.

He wrote a book, "Touching the Void",

about his extraordinary battle to survive.

Now, he is going back to the mountain

that first inspired him to climb,

to tell a story that has haunted him since he was a boy.

It is the tale of a great adventure, that just like his,

turned into a terrifying test of endurance.

- When I was 14, I read the story that stayed with me

for the rest of my life.

It was the story of Toni Kurz.

It says so many things about friendship, courage,

and strength, and human spirit.

It inspired me to climb.

In many ways, it's my story.

We thought it was worth risking everything.

And we did.

I've spent my life climbing mountains.

Climbed difficult mountains, climbed easy mountains

and I've climbed all over the world.

But my dream is always to climb the Eiger.

Of all the summits in the Alps,

the Eiger is the mountain that is a legend among climbers.

It has fascinated Joe Simpson

for as long as he can remember.

- It is not the greatest mountain in the world.

It is not the most beautiful mountain in the world,

and the climbing on it is not the hardest,

but to me, anyway,

and I think to many others of our generation,

it's a seminal mountain

and it has a sort of hypnotic power about it.

It has an atmosphere, something truly intimidating.

This brooding presence.

The first time you see it, you just look up and up...

and you just think, "Good God."

From the east, west and south,

the Eiger looks like any other mountain.

It is it's north face that makes it a legend.

A 6,000 foot vertical wall of rock and ice,

it is a place that never gets the sun.

And standing exposed to every storm sweeping into the Alps,

it is a mountain where the weather can change

with breathtaking speed.

I've seen it happen.

I've seen the face turn into a maelstrom

of rockfall and avalanches,

the like of which I've never witnessed on any mountain

in my life.

There's something else extraordinary about it,

that almost heightens the sense of danger.

You are so close to luxurious hotels,

to people having fun,

you could hear the excited chatter

of tourists getting on and off the trains

and drinking their beers.

You can see them and they can see you.

More than 60 men have died

on the north face of the Eiger.

It has killed some of the best young climbers

of their generation,

and forced some of the most dramatic mountain rescues

in the Alps.

And it was this bleak history

that caught Joe's imagination as a boy.

- My father gave me a book called "The White Spider".

It was fascinating and it was frightening.

And it was those stories, and one story in particular,

the story of Toni Kurz, that made me want to climb.

There's a picture of Kurz sitting in meadow

in the summer of 1936.

This smiling young man looking at you from the past

and he was just a vibrant,

energetic, ambitious young climber.

It was just absolute excitement, it's what he lived for.

But this is not just a story

that inspired Joe to climb.

11 years after reading of what happened

to Kurz on the Eiger,

Joe had a climbing accident in Peru that nearly killed him.

And what has haunted him ever since

is that in strange and disturbing ways,

his accident echoed the story of his childhood hero.

Kurz was always there.

Kurz was always this figure

but what happened to me in Peru led me back to him.

Toni Kurz set out

to climb the north face of the Eiger

on the 20th of July, 1936.

He and his fellow climbers were only the second team

in its history to attempt it.

Kurz was 23, a newly qualified mountain guide from Bavaria.

He was climbing with his friend and fellow guide,

a brilliant young rock climber

called Andreas Hinterstoisser.

They had joined up on the climb with two Austrians.

27 year old Willy Angerer was the eldest.

His partner, Edi Rainer, was the most experienced,

a highly talented route finder and mountaineer.

Their progress up the north face that day

had turned into a public event.

They were being watched from the valley below

by a cluster of reporters and tourists.

One by one, in the early 1930s,

the great north faces of the Alps had been claimed,

but the Eiger was still unconquered.

It was so difficult, so dangerous,

that one climber called it an obsession

for the mentally deranged.

- As you approach the bottom part of the face,

you climb the sheers of shattered rock walls

and rubble strewn ledgers.

Then you get under the Rote Fluh.

It's a tiny feature on this face,

and yet, it's 1,000 feet high, an overhanging wall of rock.

Then around the corner to the edge of the first field.

The second ice field is this great swath of ice,

1,800 feet wide, it's steep, it's getting steeper.

And every time from now on that you get onto rock,

it's getting steeper and steeper.

Until you get right to the base of the great ice shoot,

called the White Spider.

If you fell at this point, you would zip out into space.

You probably wouldn't touch anything for 5,000 feet.

- It was the scale of this vertical rock face

that defeated the first climbers to attempt it.

Karl Mehringer and Max Sedlmeyer set off in the summer

of the previous year.

Three days into their climb, a storm hit the face.

The men were seen trying to climb up and out to safety.

But on the fifth day, they disappeared.

Sedlmeyer's body was found frozen into the ice

at a place now called Death Bivouac.

It was a very controversial tragedy.

Climbers had died on many mountains in the Alps,

but not in full view of the public.

The north face was called a suicidal challenge.

There was talk of banning it to climbers.

But the following summer, Kurz and his friends arrived,

ambitious young climbers chasing a great first ascent.

- They wanted to do it for the same reason we did,

to see if it was possible.

You don't feel like you ever have to justify yourself

to anybody else.

You go and do these things

and if other people think you're stupid or irresponsible,

you don't give a damn.

And I suppose, as a young boy, I just thought,

"God, what an extraordinary thing to do."

Not just a brave thing to do, an extraordinary thing to do -

to look at a face like that

and just think, "I'm good enough.

"I will climb this, I will succeed."

- But there was a reason people said

the north face was impossible.

Confidence and optimism do not protect you on this mountain.

And what happened to these four young climbers

over the next five days

proved beyond doubt that the Eiger

was every bit as frightening as its reputation suggested.

The risk of an unexpected avalanche

is always present in the Alps.

Unstable ice and snow, the threat of sudden storms

are what make these mountains dangerous.

Joe has been waiting for days for a weather window

to climb on the Eiger.

Local mountain guides advised that heavy snowfall

and the unpredictable weather made it too great a risk

for him and his climbing partner, Cubby.

- The Eiger is a mountain Joe has dreamt

of climbing all his life.

But bad luck and bad injuries have intervened each time.

This mountain, it's quite addictive.

I've made six attempts on the face

and got bad weather every single time.

But it calls you.

I sort of had this phrase,

'The Beckoning Silence of Great Height'

and what I was meaning by that was this,

when you stand on the edge of a great drop,

it's very difficult not to be absolutely staggered by it.

When you look at a face like that and you're most near,

you just want to go up there and play games on it.

Joe is here to retrace key sections

of the route that Toni Kurz and his friends

took up the north face in the summer of 1936.

He will do the climb in stages,

and for the first, he has an easy shortcut to a point,

a third of the way up the face

because the Eiger has one other unusual feature.