Survival at the Eiger

They call it the “murder(0us) wall” – the Eiger north face, one of the six great north faces of the Alps. When we made the Eiger our hiking destination for today, we had no clue yet, how close we’d come to experience this mountain’s treacherous reputation for ourselves.

You see, everything started out just lovely. All we’d wanted was a fun day in the mountains, with a bit of hiking, and a lot of grand views of the mountains and the scenery around. And with dear cousin living so close to the famed mountains of Eiger, Monk, and Virgin (Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau), our day’s destination was pretty clear to start out with: the Lauterbrunnen valley, from where we would decide what and where we would hike. (Last year, I’d hiked the mountain ranges across from Eiger and its two companions.)

So, we parked the car in Lauterbrunnen, and decided to hike up to Wengen (more like walk, because there’s no trails; just follow the road). The weather was glorious (warm, the sun shining happily all around), and we arrived in Wengen after about an hour’s walk. Seeing the mighty peaks around, however, we got tempted. Tempted to see a bit more, and so quickly the decision was made that we’d take the train up to the mountain hotel “Kleine Scheidegg” (a real tourist magnet), from where we would hike back down the mountain, all the way back to Lauterbrunnen. Nothing adventurous about that, really. Tons of tourists do that every day, people who’ve otherwise never hiked a yard in their lives. The mountain is littered with trails all up and down, and all trails are pretty easy walks, really.

Soon enough, the train arrived, and we set out, up, up, far up the mountain. At the foot of the famed Eiger north face, we got off the train, and soon had found us a pretty place for a little picnic. Glorious view. Everything perfect. But then, as we turned to actually begin our hike back down the mountain, we noticed something. Clouds. Lots of them, and very low … they came streaming in, up from the valley. Still, the weather had be so happy that I didn’t think much of it. Until it began to drip. Soon it was pouring and we found ourselves in a mighty thunderstorm – wondering which way to turn to be safe from all the lightning that struck all around. (It was probably a good thing that we didn’t know that on this very day, on the same mountain, another mountaineer died – struck by lightning.)

At any rate, we pretty much ran all the way down that mountain, hoping that the trails we chose would help us escape the lightnings, and still we all got soaked long before we reached Wengen and Lauterbrunnen again.

How good, we realized, that due to the perfect weather conditions at the time we started out, we’d left all our rain protection gear in the car … so now we had at least something dry to change into!