Relay named after a woman 30 years later on the fearsome Eiger, the deadliest mountain in the Alps

Laura Tiefenthaler, on top of the Eiger after her solo ascent.

The north face of the Eiger, in the Swiss Alps, has almost 1,800 meters of difference in altitude and in the 30s of the last century it was the theater of mountaineering horrors.

In fact, until the 1960s, for every two climbers who tried to ascend its infinite wall, one died.

The wall, terribly dark, concave, seems designed to swallow the wills of those who aspire to explore its entrails.

Thirty years ago, in 1992, Frenchwoman Catherine Destivelle booked a room at the hotel at the Kleine Scheiddeg rack railway station.

From its terrace, equipped with binoculars, tourists witnessed for years the misfortunes and terrors of mountaineers, as close to civilization as they are isolated in the microcosm of the north face of the Eiger.

So when the owner of the hotel found out that Destivelle was not staying to ski the next day but to do something that no one had done before, she welcomed her with unusual coldness.

“The lady was fed up with so much misfortune”, she would explain Destivelle.

There was no drama the next day, but a brilliant chapter in mountaineering history: Destivelle became the first person to traverse the Heckmair route (opened in 1938) on the day, solo and without prior reconnaissance of the wall.

Several men had climbed it alone before, some in the day, others in several days, but all knew the twists and turns of the route, which is a huge psychological advantage.

“I didn't want to be treated as a female climber but as a female climber.

And for that I wanted to do a first: to be the first human being to climb the North of the Eiger on sight and alone, ”she explained a few days ago the Frenchwoman in a podcast available on Spotify.

“Women, especially the most photogenic,

we had an advantage in this world of mountaineering because we had lavished ourselves so little that almost anything we did would have the title of 'first woman.

She did not want to usurp any place.

I wanted my own space in the mountaineering world and to be respected for it.”

Destivelle succeeded and her aura became so enormous that it took 30 years to find another woman who dared to climb the northern Eiger solo.

On March 25, the Austrian Laura Tiefenthaler completed the original route in about 15 hours, three hours less than the time spent by Catherine Destivelle 30 years ago.

But Destivelle does not consider that the Austrian has signed a repetition, but "a different ascent", as she explained to the online magazine Alpine Mag. According to the French, the fact that Tiefenthaler already knew the route (she had climbed it days ago with a companion ) subtracts the merit of doing so by entering unknown terrain.

The nuance, in her opinion, is very important.

The north of the Eiger is so intimidating that few can sleep in its shadow.

30 years ago, Destivelle forced herself to climb slowly so as not to make mistakes, but she would admit that she climbed the first few meters of the route slowly trying to expel fear and all the ghosts that were chasing her.

Her plan was to rappel the route, so she included a couple of ropes and self-protection material in her backpack.

An exaggerated weight, especially when she climbed 95% of the route solo.

Very near the end of the route, at the exit fissures, she self-belayed in one step.

It was already dark and she weighed the possibility of bivouacing, but she feared frostbite and being unable to climb at dawn.

With cold hands, she continued to scratch meters to the wall.

At eleven o'clock at night, she reached the top,

where a person was found sleeping in his down bag: it was her friend Jeff Lowe, who had come up a simple route to help her in case of need.

Interestingly, Laura Tiefenthaler also had to self-belay at the same point that Destivelle did, and she also acknowledges that she always tried to prioritize safety over speed.

It should be remembered that Ueli Steck holds the speed record for this route: 2h and 22m.

Still, Destivelle's ascent was less astonishing than his approach to the challenge.

The Frenchwoman was an absolute star of rock climbing, winner of the first competition in history, in 1985, and capable of facing the most important alpine rock challenges of the time.

At the age of 14, she first heard the dramatic legends of North Eiger, and the following statement: "One cannot call himself a mountaineer until he climbs North Eiger."

She promised herself that one day she would be a mountain climber.

In 1991, Destivelle gave himself a year to prepare for the Eiger.

He contacted famous ice climber Jeff Lowe and asked him to mentor him.

With him she learned ice climbing and mixed.

“But when I got to the Eiger I lacked experience.

Experience only comes with the passage of time and I had barely invested a year in being a mountaineer”, admits the Frenchwoman.

“I didn't trust the ice axes or the crampons: I was afraid they would break.

I was used to feeling the rock with my fingers or with the rubber of the climbing shoes.

I had to overcome my fears because I needed to fulfill that dream”, she acknowledges.

The presence of death, its tangible possibility, always invaded her thoughts, even the most optimistic: “When mountain climbers die in the mountains, everyone says they died where they wanted to be.

After leaving the Eiger behind, Destivelle spent 10 days in Paris from set to set, from interview to interview, lamenting the loss of the excellent physical form he had achieved.

Nothing cut his momentum.

She would immediately climb the north of the Grandes Jorasses and the Matterhorn alone.

With the perspective of the passage of time, Destivelle, 61 years old and a publisher in charge of him, acknowledges that then he “needed to prove something.

I earned the respect of mountaineers.

Because I didn't cheat."

That passion that led her to undertake impressive challenges in the 80s and 90s has, in her opinion, a recognizable and extremely simple origin: "The gesture of climbing is a permanent return to a childhood that refuses to die."

You can follow EL PAÍS DEPORTES on

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber