An Ascent of the Watzmann Ostwand

An Ascent of the Watzmann Ostwand R ic h a rd N. Me y e r T H E Watzmann, an 8900-foot peak in the Bavarian Alps, domi nates the ancient little town of Berchtesgaden as majestically as the Matterhorn does Zermatt. Many thousands of Americans admire it every year, for Berchtesgaden is a major recreation and vacation center for all the American troops and civilians and their families stationed in Europe. The posh Berchtesgadener Hof, which only a few years ago echoed to the “Heil Hitler” greetings of the Third Reich’s rulers, is now only one of several hotels still under requisi tion by American authorities. There is never a dull moment at Berchtesgaden. Entertainment abounds: all kinds of sports; visits to the bleak, bombed-out resi dences of former Nazi V IP’s; American movies and night clubs; snack bars and real bars. In particular, the American authorities have tried hard to rouse an interest in climbing. The challenge of the peak is always there, an interesting and steep scramble of seven or eight hours with an overnight stay at a comfortable Alpine Club house; and there is a “Watzmann Club” which issues certificates to Amer icans who make the climb. The tour is really worth while, with a fine view and close-ups of magnificent, rugged mountain scenery, not equalled on many a higher and more difficult peak. Despite these well-publicized attractions, the thousands of Amer icans in the valley rarely lift their eyes to the hills. I have been on the Watzmann three times by different routes; and, except my wife and three friends who once accompanied me, I have never seen another American on the mountain or at the cabin. On the easiest of the three summits I once saw two little children shepherded by a woman in a tailored suit and high-heeled shoes. In the course of the climb which I am about to relate, on the airy summit ridge, we met an attractive girl with an artificial leg, and her companion on the rope told us she had lost it in a bombing raid during the war. But never a fellow-American, although one hears more English than German down in the valley! The Watzmann was probably climbed many times by chamois hunters long before anybody thought of alpinism. There is even a bronze plaque on the summit commemorating an ascent by German royalty almost a hundred years ago. However, there is another and unexpected side of the mountain, very different from the one seen from Berchtesgaden. That is the great East Face, Ostwand in Ger man, which rises almost a sheer 7000 feet from the shore of the Koenigssee. It is thus one of the great walls in all the Alps, the second highest in the Eastern Alps, exceeded only slightly by Triglav in Jugoslavia. In its wildly romantic setting this tremendous cliff is one of the finest pieces of mountain scenery in the world. The boat glides silently across the deep green Koenigssee; great cliffs, with black fir trees clinging precariously to them, rise precipitously from the water. One flat bit of meadow is visible, with the ancient Chapel of Saint Bartholomew at its edge, a white-stuccoed little pilgrims’ church with onion-shaped towers, like so many in Bavaria. Suddenly, and without warning, as the boat nears the landing stage at the Bartholomew, the whole sweep of the wall, all 7000 feet of it, breaks into view. It rises at the head of a short valley; the great vertical pitches are crossed by a series of diagonal, parallel ledges; the top is a long, serrated ridge. The Ostwand became a sort of obsession with Johann Keder- bacher, a local guide; and, after much preliminary observation and exploration, he led an Austrian tourist up for the first ascent in 1881. As is customary, they were ridiculed before the climb for attempting “the impossible.” It is a tribute to Kederbacher that his first route up the wall is still the easiest, the “classical,” route. What marvellous instinct he must have had to pick out his route in the jumbled chaos of innumerable chimneys, slabs, ledges and blind alleys! It was not until the late 1920’s that somebody got the idea of climbing the wall in winter, when it becomes a great tilted sheet of avalanche-swept ice. This was at the beginning of the most reck less German and Italian climbing in the Alps, which ended just before World War II with the bloody conquest of the Eigerwand. In all fairness, though, and despite statements to the contrary in the 1931 Alpine Journal, I think the Watzmann winter climb was, on the * A.J., XLIII (1931), 190: “We are informed that the expedition was quite un justifiable, and that the participants should have perished to a man.” Cf. C. F. Meade’s account of the second winter ascent (1937) in Approach to the Hills (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1940), pp. 103-14.— Ed. whole, carefully planned and reasonably executed.* The participants were all thoroughly familiar with the wall in summer and had studied it with field glasses from all angles all one winter and spring. They had trained on the most difficult routes on Mont Blanc. The climb was made in 1930, from December 6th to 8th, without inci dent, despite a bad break in the weather, which necessitated a second bivouac just under the summit. At the time the natives took a dim view of the expedition. The young members were accused of blas phemy and godlessness for “courting suicide,” and were publicly condemned in the churches and insulted in the streets of their village. It is rare that one gets to complete an Ostwand ascent at the first try, because of the unstable weather in the deep Koenigssee pocket. Any storm that hits that part of the Alps hangs around the Ostwand extra long. Furthermore, it seems to be practically impossible to pre dict the weather. Even the oldest inhabitants and the guides only guess, although they always predict good weather with such assur ance that the poor tourist believes them and dreams of tomorrow’s sunshine while sheltering from today’s rain. W e gave up on our first visit after huddling miserably under a big boulder at the foot of the cliff from five to seven in the morning, waiting for the rain to stop. As it turned out, it did not stop for a week. My second attempt—for my climbing companions it was to be, re spectively, the 24th and 14th ascent of the Ostwand!—came a fort night later, in the middle of August 1949. The first of my two friends was Hans Flatscher, a quiet, modest little mountaineer of the old school. He has only one eye—a handicap which seems not to bother him at all on the most difficult rock and ice, but which forces him to proceed with great caution along an ordinary meadow trail! The other was Toni Beringer, a leader of the first winter climb in 1930. Hans is a cable car motorman, and Toni Beringer drives a mail bus. Among their many Alpine experiences together was that of cutting steps in black ice for 13 hours up the Pallavicini ice couloir on the Gross Glockner in Austria. As our boat putt-putted across the Koenigssee, the usual gloomy weather outlook was accompanied by my friends’ usual optimistic predictions. Despite the fame of the Ostwand and the large number of parties who climb it every year, it was only in 1949 that the German Alpine Club was able to establish any overnight quarters. All of this area used to be the private hunting preserve of Bavaria’s former royal family, the Wittelsbachs; and during the Nazi era Hermann Goering took it over. The Bavarian State, conservative to the point of idiocy where its forests are involved, will still not permit the Alpine Club to build a cabin there. Climbers used to bivouac either in the woods or in a cave rather high up on the cliff, but now the Club has the use of a few bunks in the loft of an old stable near the chapel. It was for this place we headed. Personally, I have never felt that it was necessary to torture one self by sleeping on hard rocks or in dirty straw the night before a big climb. I prefer the spotless, comfortable little hotel-like rooms of so many Alpine Club huts, particularly in Austria and Switzerland. Most climbers (certainly those of the “week-end tourist” variety) sleep best in a clean bed—and the better you sleep the more you are likely to enjoy the following day. Our loft, however, was passable. A thunderstorm woke us, and two mules fighting just outside, and the usual late arrivals stumbling apologetically about in the dark. But we did get some sleep. On account of the uncertain weather it was almost six before we started, Hans and Toni vehemently assur ing each other and me that the day would be fine yet. An hour’s walk through the woods brought us into a mighty cirque. On three sides the Ostwand swept up to blot out the horizon. Another hour’s easy scramble brought us to the first interesting problem, the Schoellhorn Glacier. This extraordinary phenomenon is a tiny living glacier, only a few hundred feet long, less than a mile high. It is pitched at an angle of perhaps 30 or 40 degrees, usually requiring step-cutting. There are some crevasses and a bergschrund which can be very difficult in late summer.

Load more