Frêney tragedy
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The Frêney tragedy occurred in the summer of 1961 on Mont Blanc ( 4810 m ) and is considered to be one of the most famous mountain tragedies to which well-known extreme mountaineers fell victim. When attempting the first ascent of the Frêney central pillar, four alpinists were killed in a five-day storm.
background
The three Frêneypfeiler are prominent, parallel standing granite pillars and form the Frêneyflanke on the south wall of the Mont Blanc. The pillars, which are between 300 and 500 meters high, are separated from each other by partially filled-in giant intersections and rise above the uppermost hollow of the Frêney Glacier . They are bounded to the east by the Peuterey ridge and to the west by the Innominatagrat .
The right, northernmost of the three pillars, called the Red Pillar or simply the Right Frêneyppeiler , was first climbed by Giusto Gervasutti in 1940 and is therefore also known as the Gervasutti Pillar . It is the older, classic climb and the easiest of the three pillars. The southern, Left Frêneypsteiler was for a long time uninteresting for experienced alpinists, also because of its short difficulties. So it was finally first ascended in 1963 by John Harlin and Tom Frost . It is therefore also known as the Harlin pillar .
The Frêney central pillar is around 500 meters high, is very susceptible to ice in the event of a sudden drop in the weather and is rated with difficulty level VI according to UIAA ( Very difficult. Climbing requires above-average ability and an excellent level of training. Great exposure, often combined with small standing areas. Passages of this difficulty can can usually only be conquered under good conditions. ). After climbing the pillar, about 300 meters in altitude must be covered through combined terrain to the summit. Also because of the long and difficult approach, the central pillar was considered the last major problem on the highest mountain in the Alps .
After attempts by experienced French and Italian mountaineers had failed in 1959 and 1960, a French and an Italian group made a new attempt at the beginning of July 1961, which failed in the Frêney tragedy. The first ascent was finally made on August 29, 1961 by Chris Bonington , Don Whillans , Ian Clough , René Desmaison , Jan Dlugosz, Ignazio Piussi, Yves Pollet-Villard and Pierre Julien.
tragedy
The three Italian friends Walter Bonatti (1930–2011), Roberto Gallieni and Andrea Oggioni (1930–1961) took the cable car from Courmayeur to the Rifugio Torino ( 3375 m ) and climbed from there to the bivouac box at Col de la Fourche ( 3679 m ). The three already knew each other from previous tours and, among other things, had carried out a first ascent on Mont Maudit together in 1959 . Bonatti was already on K2 in 1954 and on Gasherbrum IV in 1958, and in 1955 he made alpine history with his six-day solo trip on the southwest pillar of the Petit Dru , now known as the Bonattipfeiler . On the night of July 10, they met the French alpinists Pierre Mazeaud (* 1929), Pierre Kohlmann (1935–1961), Robert Guillaume (1935–1961) and Antoine Vieille († 1961) in the bivouac box at Col de la Fourche who had been here since July 8th and had abandoned a first attempt at boarding on July 9th due to bad weather. The French were also top alpinists. Mazeaud had already made several first ascents, such as the Franzosenweg in 1959 on the north face of the Western Zinne , while Guillaume was preparing for a French Himalayan expedition.
The two groups decided to walk up the pillar together and reached the base of the pillar on July 10th after having conquered the Brenva Glacier and the Col de Peuterey . They climbed into the pillar and after about a third of the pillar set up the first bivouac .
In the afternoon of the next day, under Mazeaud's guidance, they already reached the foot of the chandelle (candle), about 80 m high pier head and were thus about 80 meters below the exit. The plan was to reach the pillar exit and the summit for the next day, and on this they also wanted to cope with a large part of the descent.
But they were suddenly surprised by a sudden fall in the weather from the northwest, which they could not see coming from the east side. Mazeaud, who had been warned by Bonatti and was at the highest point, left the hammer, hook and carbine behind and rappelled down. When he reached his belaying rope partner Pierre Kohlmann, he was suddenly struck by lightning in the ear, where he was wearing a hearing aid. He passed out and had to be looked after by Mazeaud. In the meantime there was a strong wind and the temperature dropped suddenly. The lightning strikes did not stop well into the night, throwing the mountaineers into disarray and sustaining burns. The survivors were later asked to compare the pillar to a lightning rod . Kohlmann was struck again by lightning and thrown from the stand, but got stuck in his self-locking device.
After midnight the thunderstorm stopped and snow began to fall. In the late morning the sky cleared, but the climbers could not continue climbing due to icy ropes. However, they also considered a retreat from this height to be too risky. The next thunderstorm came in the evening, followed by a second night of lightning strikes and subsequent snowfall. In the last hours of the night the weather cracked, which gave the alpinists the hope of being able to reach the summit the next day. But this time, too, the weather deteriorated again in the morning with lightning strikes, snowfall and storms. Already exhausted by the wet and cold, they waited another day and night in their now damaged bivouac tents to make a decision the next day.
The next morning Mazeaud tried to climb the last piece of pillar, but failed because of the now heavily iced rocks and ropes. Only now did they decide to withdraw. Bonatti was the first to abseil and set up the abseil points, Oggioni took over the function of closing the rope. On the way back they got caught in another storm and it started snowing. On the way to the base of the pillar, they left everything that could be dispensed with and also lost an 80-meter rope because it could no longer be removed. The badly battered Kohlmann had suffered severe frostbite on his fingers. Nevertheless, they all reached the base of the pillar, where they had to dig their way through the deep, fresh snow. On that day they only reached the Col de Peuterey and bivouacked there in a crevice.
The next morning, all seven of them tied themselves to a rope and decided on a descent route over the crevice- rich Gruberfelsen , as they no longer dared to descend over the Col Eccles . Since Bonatti still had most of his strength reserves, he not only took over the management and tracking through the deep snow, but also abseiling down the rocks. There Antoine Vieille died of exhaustion after severe chills and had to be left behind, secured on a hook. The others then continued the march over the Frêney Glacier in the direction of Col de la Innominata , the last ascent on the way to the Gambahütte (today Rifugio Franco Monzino ). According to Mazeaud later, they were now so exhausted that they often took several minutes to take just one step. The mountaineers suspected rescuers had climbed up on the Innominatagrat , which can be reached via the Col Eccles , and thus missed the exhausted climbers who were east of it on the lower-lying glacier.
Arrived at the Col de l'Innominata , only Bonatti managed the ascent with a hook and was able to catch up with Kohlmann and Gallieni using the rope pull. At the foot of the ascent, Robert Guillaume had also died after falling into a crack. After the attempt to catch up with Mazeaud and Oggioni by rope pull, about 40 meters below the Cols failed and it was soon night, the other three set off in the storm and deep snow in the direction of the Gambahütte to get help.
Mazeaud and Oggioni tried to pull themselves up on the ropes they had left behind, but they couldn't. Oggioni died after midnight hanging from a safety hook. Mazeaud fell to this safety hook on one last attempt. The hook tore from the wall, causing Oggioni to fall back to the glacier. Mazeaud was caught by a rope knot that did not slip through his carbine.
Struck twice by lightning, almost deaf and with severe frostbite, Kohlmann seemed to go crazy on the descent, according to the statements of the other two. Since he resolutely refused to go on, Bonatti and Gallieni had to leave him in a place protected from falling and continue to descend alone. They reached the Gambahütte around three in the morning and alerted the helpers who were already there. They found Kohlmann only dead. Mazeaud was recovered and rescued while hanging on the rope, unconscious.
filming
The tragedy was filmed under the title The Lightning Inferno on Montblanc . The shooting on the original locations lasted from August 1971 to 1972, the director was Lothar Brandler . It premiered in 1972. In 1973 the film was awarded the UIAA Prize in Trieste . During the filming the two actors Milan Doubek and Walter Grimm were killed by a snow bridge collapsing. The mountaineer Andreas Schlick , who played the Italian Walter Bonatti, also died in a snow storm at Manaslu in 1972 before the film was completed .
literature
- The Mountains of My Life by Walter Bonatti ( Penguin Books , Chapter 14)
- Steps upwards, between Montblanc and Montmartre by Pierre Mazeaud ( Ex Libris )
- Safety and risk in rock and ice by Pit Schubert ( Bergverlag Rother , Volume I, pp. 22–28)
- Mont Blanc Group, area guide for mountaineers and climbers by Hartmut Eberlein ( Bergverlag Rother )
- Alpinismus magazine (Issue 1/63, pp. 30–38)
Web links
- Roadmap from the French translation of Bonattis book Le mie montagne (German mountains, my mountains )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Der Blitz - Inferno am Montblanc ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
