Notes on my "needing" a climbing guide book, Berner Allen~

 I bought so many books in March I declared a book-buying moratorium for April.  When a book 

arrived by mail on April 7, Aisha accused me of breach of contract.  Not so, I explained, I ordered it on 

March 31.

I made good on my self-imposed declaration for exactly three weeks.  On April 21 I was in Powells and there my moratorium ran counter to another self-imposed imperative: always buy a book when you (I) go into an independent bookstore.  The book that caught my eye was a small climbing guidebook, published by the Swiss Alpine Club, that is, the Schweizer Alpen-Club.  The text is in German.  Its title is Berner Alpen, Band (volume) IV.  The book is small: 4.5 inches by 6.5 inches.  It has a dust wrapper. The book is 276 pages long; however, is only a half inch thick.  This is because the paper is super thin, not unlike scritta paper, used traditionally to make Bibles. Also, the book features a red ribbon bookmarker, not unlike my grade school missal, St Joseph Daily Missal. Because of delicacy of the paper, and despite what the book’s size might suggest, this is not a book to toss into ones’ climbing pack.  Though, now that I think of it, what book is?  

Arguing for a comparison between a religious text and a climbing guidebook may or may not bebe a stretch (one that I will take up at a later time!).  But I do recall when Fred Beckey’s Cascade Alpine Guides (three volumes) started appearing in the mid-1970s they were referred to as Beckey’s Bible.  And both the religious text and the climbing guidebook purport to lead the true believer to higher ground.

Confession: I’ve been known to vandalize my own guidebooks by slicing out pages and folding them up and into my pockets. After, I flatten them out, dirty, ink-smeared, and wrinkled, and reinsert them into the book. In any case, now I have seen climbers at crags reading route descriptions on their phones. 

The content of the book. It’s a climbing guide to the very well-known Bernese Alps, home to the Jungfrau, Monch, and Eiger. Like many climbers I have long been fascinated by the north face of the Eiger, first climbed by the team of Harrer, Heckmair, Kasparek, and Vörg in 1938. And scene of some of the most epic climbs and climbing accidents of the 20^thcentury. Harrer’s story of the first ascent, The White Spider is one of the cornerstones of any alpine library.  Nonclimbers may know of the north face because it’s featured in Clint Eastwood’s The Eiger Sanction, based on the book by Trevanian.

I harbored mostly private plans to try the north face, but first wanted to check out the descent route by climbing it, in this book: Über die Südwestflanke und den Westgrat, first climbed in 1858—to give you a sense of its technical difficulties.  When we got to the Eigergletscher from which the climb started we were met with newly fallen knee-deep snow. We abandoned our plans and drove to the Dolomites, the “sunny side of the Alps,” where the weather was much better. 

I do not expect to return to the Eiger and, even if I were to, the north face is way beyond me now, and probably always was.  So why buy the book?

Bern Alpen features beautiful topographic drawings of the routes and clear black and white photos of them as well.  And as for the German, sometimes the topographic maps and photos are all you really need.  Besides even if it were written in English, grades of difficulty in foreign guidebooks always require a ‘translation” into the Yosemite Decimal System. Not to mention the problems of translating words on a page to the mountain under your feet. 

Guidebooks can have an intrinsic value beyond their obvious utilitarian purpose. One of my favorite guidebooks, actually one of my favorite books, is Rolando Garibottti and Dörte Pietron’s Patagonia Vertical, Chaltén Massif  I have no immediate plans to climb in Patagonia and probably, it’s safe to say that I never will, just as I am not likely to return to the Eiger. But these are gorgeous books, and I’m crow-like, on the lookout for shiny objects.