LOCALadk Magazine
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The Matterhorn By Michael Virtanen Photos by Wayne Failing LOCALadk 33 The first successful ascent of the Matterhorn, the iconic pyramid-shaped mountain on the border of Italy and Switzerland, was made by Edward Whymper and six companions. They reached the 14,692-foot summit in 1865. It killed four of them on the way down. One slipped, landing on another and pulling the next two roped men above them off the rock. Luckily for the three climbers higher up, who'd braced themselves, the rope broke and they didn't follow into the abyss. "For two or three seconds we saw our unfortunate companions sliding downwards on their backs, and spreading out their hands endeavoring to save them- selves; they then disappeared one by one and fell from precipice to precipice on to the Matterhorn glacier below, a distance of nearly 4,000 feet in height," Whymper, who was British, wrote to The Times of Lon- don. "From the moment the rope broke it was impossi- ble to help them." When Wayne Failing climbed the same steep, narrow northeastern Hornli Ridge in July 1976, he was roped to only one other mountaineer, Wayne Piggen from Anchorage. They had climbed even higher to the sum- mit of Alaska's Denali together on a guided expedition the year before. With them were Steve Hardy from Malone, N.Y., by the Canadian border, and Roland Frank, a German climber. They had similarly summited Denali in 1975 with guides and would rope together in Switzerland. Hardy organized the two-week outing. Theirs, too, was a fraught descent in the Alps. By na- ture, it is the more dangerous part of mountaineering, where hand holds can be difficult to see, foot place- ments blind, and the route down unclear. Add fatigue from going up and a tendency to hurry down. In addition, the four were slowed in the 5,600 -foot climb above the Hornli Hut, a popular Alpine desti- nation where they'd spent the previous night on the mountainside among many other visitors who'd hiked up there. The next day climbing higher with their gear, they encountered only one guide and his client also as- cending, whom they passed. But Piggen developed ap- parent altitude sickness. He became nauseous, slightly delirious, out of breath and had trouble balancing on the ridge. That slowed them. They ended up summit- ing late and having to descend part of the treacherous route at night.