Biner_Leseprobe

Did the rope break?
This next part of the story is widely known. The seven mountaineers successfully
reached the summit of the Matterhorn. The descent was taken
on in the following order: Croz, Hadow, Hudson, Lord Douglas and Peter
Taugwalder Senior. Whymper and Peter Taugwalder Junior were the last
ones to attach themselves to the roped party, so in the end, they were one
roped party of seven. Then the tragedy occurred: just below the summit,
in the almost vertical north face, Hadow slipped, according to Whymper’s
account. He dragged Hudson, Douglas and Croz down with him. The rope
was under such tension that it broke off between Lord Douglas and Peter
Taugwalder Senior. The first four mountaineers disappeared into the awful
abyss of the north face and fell almost 1,000m to their deaths. Whymper
and the Taugwalders were the remaining three survivors. This tragedy is
still controversially discussed today, 150 years after the accident.
In Whymper’s account, it seems as if he was the one leading the two
mountain guides down, instead of the other way around. The Taugwalders
described it as being quite the opposite. The fact that Whymper remained
roped up between the two Taugwalders speaks in favour of the second
version of the story. The leader of the roped party should definitely not be
in the middle. Furthermore, Peter Taugwalder Senior’s quick reflexes saved
Whymper’s life; he managed to fixate the lax part of the rope between him
and Whymper behind a boulder before the pull of the falling companions
got to them.
Did Peter Taugwalder or one of the other survivors cut the rope? This claim
was first made by an author who never in his life had anything to do with
Zermatt or the Matterhorn: Alfred Meissner, an Austrian poet and writer who
grew up in Bohemia. However, the same question had already been raised
in Zermatt immediately after the accident. Nonetheless, several facts contradict
this version.
36 The conquest of the Zermatt Mountains