An Ascent of the Watzmann Ostwand

Richard N. Meyer

THE Watzmann, an 8900-foot peak in the Bavarian Alps, dominates 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 requisition by American authorities.

There is never a dull moment at Berchtesgaden. Entertainment abounds: all kinds of sports; visits to the bleak, bombed-out residences of former Nazi VIP’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 Americans 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 Americans 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 German, 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 reckless 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 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 incident, 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 blasphemy 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 predict the weather. Even the oldest inhabitants and the guides only guess, although they always predict good weather with such assurance that the poor tourist believes them and dreams of tomorrow’s sunshine while sheltering from today’s rain. We 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, respectively, the 24th and 14th ascent of the Ostwand!—came a fortnight 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 oneself 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 assuring 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. The glacier is replenished every spring by the tremendous avalanches which all funnel into this spot.

At the top of the glacier we caught up with a pair whom we had been following for some time. One turned out to be Simon Flatscher, the brother of my friend Hans and a professional guide; he was leading a solid and jovial young priest. Simon had also been along on Beringer’s 1930 winter ascent. The five of us stayed together, partly for sociability and partly for safety, on account of the danger of loose rocks. About this time someone remarked that our expedition was bound to be successful, being now under the protection of both American Military Government and the Lord!

The bergschrund crossing and the vertical 40 yards of rock thereafter represent the hardest part of the Kederbacher route, the so-called “key” to the wall. The rock consists of a chimney, a smooth slab and an exposed corner. Although only of climbing grade four, it seems worse for two reasons: first, the bergschrund yawns cavernously just below; and, second, the slab must usually be climbed under a small waterfall. It is not easy to concentrate with this wretched trickle of water pouring into your face and running down through your clothes, and there is no possible way to avoid it. It was at this spot that the first of the innumerable accidents on the Watzmann occurred. In 1890 a young man named Schoellhorn was killed by falling from the rock into the bergschrund. The glacier was named after this first Watzmann victim.

Just above this point, one hits the first of the three great ledges which, for short distances, offer comfortable trails diagonally up across the face of the wall. It is very easy to get lost in this area, where the scale of sizes is most deceptive, and where dangerous alternatives and tricky culs de sac abound. Again one must admire old Kederbacher’s unerring mountain sense in finding the right route.

Halfway through the second ledge, the priest suddenly bent down with a startled exclamation and came up with a white object. “This is a human thighbone,” he said, with a strange look. It was, too. I could hardly believe it, but our friends did not seem very surprised. “Oh, that happens sometimes in the Ostwand,” Toni said. I was reminded of the summer of the year before, when a friend and I were poking about the meadow below the Rifugio Umberto at the foot of the Tre Cime in the Dolomites. Suddenly he leaped into one of the zigzag World War I trenches which still defile that area, and, like the priest, emerged with a bleached human bone. The man on the Watzmann at least had not died at the hands of his fellow-men.

A few minutes after this incident we picked up a potential relic, a young man of 19 spread-eagled on the rock face about 30 feet below our ledge. He had failed to locate the bivouac cave the night before, and had spent a cold and exhausting night in a drenching rain. Now, having made a mistake of judgment, he was too tired to extricate himself alone from his difficult situation. If we had not happened along, someone in a few years might have found his bones. We lowered him a rope, and he stayed meekly at our heels the rest of the way, having had enough of the glories of solo alpinism.

German climbing seems to me to have a needlessly high accident rate, due mainly to attempts by inexperienced and ill-equipped young climbers, like this one, on the more difficult ascents. There are a great many solo climbers, and after every summer week end one reads of their accidents. The German Alpine Club carries on an educational campaign to the best of its ability. But it is handicapped by its slim resources, and by the fact that the Bavarian Alps, being easily accessible to the large centers of population, are overrun by huge numbers of people every fine week end. Also, there is still some hangover of the reckless climbing of the 1930’s. The Watzmann Ostwand alone has claimed about 45 lives. Schoellhorn’s was the only death between 1881 and 1922; the other 44 have occurred since 1922.

The third diagonal ledge ends at a great ridge, one of the main buttresses of the wall, which runs straight up to the South Summit. The transition from the ledge to the ridge—the “Kaserer Eck”—is the airiest bit of the whole climb, a classical mauvais pas. It involves a long step around a jutting rock with almost a thousand feet of space below. This is the best place I have ever seen for taking those sensational photographs with which we scare our wives and impress our friends. Simon dutifully snapped us all as we rounded the corner.

From this point on, the climb consists of steep and rather exposed slabs and chimneys, but it is easy climbing with good holds. We were now high enough to enjoy a magnificent view. Thousands of feet below us, and seemingly only a stone’s throw distant, was the Koenigssee in varying shades of greens and blues, with the Bartholomew a tiny toy church in a postage stamp meadow. Across the valley rose the gray peaks of Bavaria, and behind them the snowy summits of Austria peeked forth. But the most tremendous sight of all was the thousands of feet of the Ostwand itself, surrounding us in every direction.

Up to now the weather had been good, eliciting many “I-told-you- so’s” from Hans and Toni. Now the clouds suddenly closed in, and the last two hours of our climb became monotonous going in the fog—scramble up a rope’s length, pay out the rope for the man ahead, roll it in for the man behind, start over. Somewhere along in here Beringer pointed out the spot where he and his friends had bivouacked the second night on their winter ascent. A half-hour later the fog suddenly thinned, and without warning we emerged into beautiful weather on the South Peak of the Watzmann. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. We had left the Bartholomew at six that morning, entered the wall about seven, and stopped about an hour or so to eat and rest. We could now look north and west over the foothills and the green Bavarian plain, dotted with villages, and cut by the narrow, winding ribbon of the Autobahn. North of the Autobahn the huge Chiemsee glowed a dull blue-gray in the afternoon light.

Here we parted company with our friend the priest, and with Simon and our young foundling. They were descending by the shortest route to the valley, for the priest had to conduct an early mass the next morning, and the young solo climber was in no condition to do anything more that day. An hour later Hans, Toni and I set off to traverse the three Watzmann summits and descend for the night to the Alpine Club cabin on the shoulder below the last peak. This traverse is traditional, and the Ostwand climb is not really complete without it.

Our route followed the ridge along the whole top of the mountain, and in the late afternoon the chasm below us was filled with writhing masses of gray clouds. They stopped at our feet, however, except for a few tattered shreds of fog which drifted past us from time to time. It was strange to have this bleak, disturbed mass of vapor on our one side, and a clear, pleasing landscape, illuminated by the setting sun, on the other. This ridge is well outfitted with cables. Otherwise it would present considerable difficulty, particularly to people fatigued by eight or ten hours of climbing, and trying to beat nightfall to the cabin. It is still interesting climbing.

As a matter of fact, it is on this relatively easy ridge that two of the worst disasters in Alpine history took place. In the month of June 1922, a sudden change in the weather caught two parties of three and four men, respectively, on the ridge, after they had emerged from the Ostwand. Five of these seven climbers died of exhaustion and exposure. In August 1946 three more men died in the same place, within sight of aid and shelter. The prevalent post-war malnutrition may have been partly to blame for this second tragedy, for at that time many Germans were attempting climbs on rations consisting of a cold potato and a crust of bread.

It was between the South Peak and the Main Peak that we caught up with the one-legged girl whom I mentioned earlier. This successfully completed climb (she had not, of course, come up the Ostwand, but the regular route), for which she had trained long and hard with her terrible handicap, was obviously a great psychological victory for her, and she was glowing with pleasure as she worked her way through the rocks.

After a while, with the whole Ostwand behind one, this ridge becomes well-nigh interminable. Even the trail down to the cabin from the third summit, the Hocheck, seems about as tiresome as the usual final pull up to a cabin after a day’s march up the valley. How slowly those lights get nearer, and how completely the thought of rest and hot foods dominates us at this time! We finally pulled in about eight o’clock, having been 14 hours en route. Ah, the delicious taste of split pea soup and dumplings, with the moist warmth of an Alpine cabin seeping into one’s bones, and the relaxing feeling of a happy and successful climb behind one!

When word got around that we had just come off the Ostwand, there was considerable buzzing about that rare phenomenon, a mountain-climbing “Ami.” The hut manager, his beer-belly bulging over his leather pants, led his buxom frau and his lanky son-in-law over to our table, while the other guests looked on respectfully. Even his daughter took five minutes off from fetching and carrying beer, and we all had a few schnapps on the house.

Since Europeans insist on dedicating each sip to something, we drank to America, to Germany, to American climbing and to German climbing, to mountaineering in general, to the Alps, to the Rockies, and to quite a bit more. A sort of Alpine glow entered into all our souls. And so our Ostwand expedition ended with what must have been one of the all-time highs in German-American relations under the Occupation, an atmosphere generated not only by the spirit of schnapps, but also most certainly by the spirit of mountaineering.

* A.J., XLIII (1931), 190: “We are informed that the expedition was quite unjustifiable, 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.