James and I went to school together, where I remember the first time I found out he climbed and I asked if my trainers where good enough to climb in. 10 years later having never climbed a single route together, we are bivied out at the base of the North Face about to attempt the infamous Heckmair route.
I’ve had lots of bad last minute climbing partners, but this seemed to be a working partnership, each strong with their own traits. James a strong technical winter climber, me with organisational skills and rational thinking, enough for the both of us. Together I felt we had this one in the bag. I hadn’t even shared a belay with James before, and I hadn’t been winter climbing in the last year, and only having ever done a handful of grade 5 Scottish. Determination definitely got me through this ordeal.
Either way confidence in our partnership and my desire to finish
the route was determination enough to make us succeed. We bivied at the bottom about 400m away from the route, planning to start at 4am, but we started early at 2am due to our eagerness and the many parties walking past us.
The first snow terraces had a few rocky steps but it was quick going following footsteps from earlier parties. We caught up with the team in front of us which definitely gave us a moral boost indicating we where moving fast. Until we found out there was a que on the difficult crack and there was 10 people in front of us. 2 teams bailed, abseiling off at this point. Not in the slightest bit undeterred we carried on. The difficult crack was to be our first major hurdle but short lived and not as hard as expected. Every time I unclipped a piton it made me think if it was an original, put in place all those decades ago.
Hinterstoisser traverse was next, I took the lead, trying carefully to place my crampons on crimps as thick as a coin, until I kept on slipping off and I went for the brutish approach of hauling myself across on the fixed ropes, trying to smear with crampons adding to the scarred rock. James came after hooking his axes around his neck to get a grip on the rope, his axe fell, you would think this is the beauty of leashes. His leash manage to un clip, the axe falling to his feet and now trapped between the rock and his boot. Carefully retrieving it with this spare hand, his trust in leashes now diminished!
We where both now feeling the effects of going all day, worn out,
both looking forward to the idea of a flat ledge to rest, though worried at the same time. Death bivvy which can normally sleep 4 might be full. Though we needn’t of worried about that, the snow build up had buried the ledge and left enough room for 2 to sit there with our legs hanging over the edge.
Making sure everything was tied down we started to cook, boiling 
water for our hot choc, dehydrated meal and water for the next day. My lighter didn’t work and we had 5 spare matches, this could go wrong real fast. First one lit the stove, as it sat roaring I contently crossed my arms satisfied with myself without realizing the windproof match was still slowly burning and putting a hole in my new down jacket. Stodgy muesli for breakfast and we reversed the process until we where good to set off again.
The ice chimney was bear from ice, an overhung dihedral with tat swinging in a few places, James fought hard over this one, feeling drained from the day before. I seconded it struggling and awestruck by the people who did this with the old gear, no insitue gear and without the knowledge that its actually doable, real commitment.
The quartz crack was short lived and actually enjoyable, though at this time all we could think of was finishing, the sun setting and still the exit cracks and exit slopes to go. I had taken my headtorch off earlier and now needed it to climb the iced up chimney. Thank god they where iced up. It would have been a scary finish to do in the dark if they weren’t. Taking a screw out without light I fumbled and dropped it. Hearing it clank into the abyss, we now had 3 screws to lead the next 50m of ice, one of which I would need to belay from as James had not found a anchor. So there I was hanging from one screw my feet in bits after 2 days of kicking my toes into an ice wall, in the dark waiting for James last pitch before we simul-climbed to the summit ridge.
The ridge seemed to go on forever, false summit after false summit, we past a bivi spot dug into the knife edge ridge. The fact that James was happy to sleep there I knew he was tired and desperate to sleep. We cracked on to the summit where we found a flat spot to dig in for the night. It was a weird finish, it didn’t feel like we had finished, there was still the decent in the morning, maybe we where just glad it was over.
We woke up to some keen skiers coming up from the west flank, our decent down. All I wanted now was food and drink, why does Grindelwald not have a poco loco!