The Human Flies

Dark and forbidding, the rocky pinnacle rises 9,750 ft. out of the Italian Dolomites, and the last 1,800 ft. of its north wall is as sheer and smooth as a Manhattan skyscraper. An Italian team first scaled Cima Grande di Lavaredo's north wall in 1933. and the rock is stitched with hundreds of pitons, or spikes, left behind by alpinists following the winding "staircase" trail to the summit. But not until this month did anyone tackle Cima Grande's north wall by the "elevator route"--straight up. Even in summer, that route was so perilous that it carried a No. 6 rating, highest on the Alpine scale. as a climb to test "the ultimate limit of human endurance." In winter, it seemed sheer lunacy.

When Germany's Peter Siegert, 26, boldly announced that he would lead a party up the "elevator route," the Italian Scoiattoli (literally, "squirrels") predicted that they would "scrape his remnants off the wall with a spoon." Not if Siegert could help it. For his team, he recruited two Munich friends with whom he had escaped from East Germany seven years ago: a lightning-rod fitter named Rainer Kauschke, 24, and a tough, muscular carpenter named Gerd Uner, 22. Taking unpaid leaves from their jobs, the three each chipped in $1,000 for food and medical supplies, down-lined clothes, lightweight nylon ropes and 1,000 special pitons, designed by Kauschke. On the sheer slate and limestone of the "elevator," Siegert knew they would find few natural handholds; only the ropes and pitons would keep the three human flies from plunging to their deaths.

"Quiet, Icy Death." The temperature at the base of the peak was 5DEGF. as the climbers began their ascent. Siegert and his companions hammered in a piton every 3 ft., averaged only 100 ft. a day. Fearful of the "quiet, icy death that sneaks up on you when you sleep at 20DEG below," Siegert allowed his men to sleep only in the late afternoons, and only in turns; at night, the Germans anchored their sleeping bags to the wall at 30-ft. intervals, shouted and sang to keep awake.

For the first five days, the weather held. "We are fine," Siegert scribbled on a piece of paper and lowered it to helpers waiting 600 ft. below. "What's lacking is champagne. We're thirsty." On the sixth day, a howling blizzard raked the north wall. The temperature plunged to 40DEG below. In the base camp, thermos jugs were hastily filled with hot soup and coffee. The climbers hauled them up, reported that the soup and coffee were "solidly frozen in the thermos" by the time they arrived. The blizzard lasted for 40 hours. When the skies finally cleared, onlookers below anxiously scanned the wall with telescopes, and light planes swarmed back and forth. There were the climbers--start ing up again.

"Like Ants." On the twelfth day, the three men reached the treacherous "black board"--a 230-ft.-high cliff of solid slate almost impervious to drills and pitons. "They look like ants crawling up a building," reported one pilot. "But they wave and seem all right." Cautiously, the climbers eased their way through the "great cathedral"--a double-faced outcropping of rock. At last, after 16 days of suspended existence, Siegert reported: "We feel solid ground beneath our soles." He was on a ledge, 300 ft. below the summit, that measured just 1 ft. wide.

Last week, on the 17th day of their ascent, the three men stumbled up a sloping snow field, into blinding sunlight, and fell tearfully into the arms of Italian guides who had gone up Cima Grande's easy south wall to meet them at the summit. "We want to sleep," mumbled Siegert. "It was rough."

Gerd Uner was sent back to Munich for amputation of several frostbitten toes. Rainer Kauschke was suffering from an "acute rheumatic disorder." Team Lead er Siegert complained of uncontrollable trembling in his arms and feet. It will never be so hard again, said one Italian alpinist. "The Germans blazed the vertical trail--and their pitons are still in the rock. This summer, you will see climbers do the same thing in a single day."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.