The Secret Treble… day 2

Aug 10, 2025

Sunday morning. Our task for the day is to: pack for a 3 day/2-night stay in the mountains, take the Jungfrau Cable Car, then the train, and walk to the Mittellegi Hut, ready for the next day ascent. Easy “peas-y”. A light day in preparation for the big one. Except that access to our route is via a “hole” in the Eiger, which gives access to the glacier on the back of the mountain itself, and then there is a 2-hour traverse to the hut.

Extensive books have been written about the “windows” carved out from the tunnel/s inside the Eiger, and they open on both sides of the mountain. Kenton tells me they were created to eliminate the debris, mainly rocks, from the tunnel’s excavation. They just chucked it down the mountain. The most famous story about the windows relates to one of the first attempts to climb the Eiger via the North Face by a group of Austrian and German mountaineers in the 1930s. It was supposed to be a Nazi success. Needless to say, they encountered rock falls, avalanches and 3 out of the 4 climbers died. The last one, Tony Kurz, remained suspended in the air in front of one of the windows for four days. He was close but too far for the rescuers to be able to reach him from the tunnel window. By the time they organized themselves and built a rig to connect with him, it was too late. He had died a few hours earlier.

As everyone else before us, we also had to find our window and then follow a tunnel to our hole.

Our access to the Eiger’s tunnel/s was via the cable car and then the train. We had to board the Jungfrau cable car, also called the Eiger Express, exit at the Eigergletcher’s station, then board the train to the Jungfraujoch, but instead of going all the way we would stop at a midway stop inside the mountain called Eismeer. This is the place where most tourists stop to look at the stunning view of the Eiger glacier, from the safety of sealed up windows. The stop is only for 5 minutes, and all tourists are required to re-board the train and continue upwards to the Jungfraujoch -Top of Europe. We would be the only ones left in the station to find our door to the tunnel for our descent onto the glacier.

Eismeer stop, right inside the mountain

So here we were, bang at 11am boarding the cable car. Our cabin was full of Chinese tourists taking the same picture of grandma + children + mountains on 10 different mobile phones, but in 25 minutes we were at the Eigergletcher’s station. There is a monument to famous Eiger’s climbers just below the station which is also just below the main North wall. Kenton and I felt we had to make a pilgrimage there.

After our homage to Ueli Steck, the local hero, whose hand is imprinted on the Mordwall, we boarded the train, and we were inside the famous Eiger tunnel. The ticket controller on the train was a lovely lady whom, seeing us with all the gear started repeating “fünf minuten stunden, fenster vier!”; which we understood after various attempts as “next stop, 5 minutes; go to window 4!”

Eismeer came, and whilst everyone was taking pictures, we counted the windows as instructed and it was next to window 4 that we noticed a metal door, behind a security grid. With our torchlights on, we opened the door, locked it after us (as instructed) and started descending into the belly of the mountain. This tunnel was not nicely paved or cemented as the main one but full of grit, mud and stones like in a mine shaft. We could have been in the 1930’s; some side windows were letting light in, but access was barred off, and there was still a lot of discarded construction material. It took us a good 5-10 minutes before finding our opening, which when we got there, was the famous “hole” with a 10-meter drop onto the glacier.

The fixed rope on the side was pretty damaged, and it looked like it ended in what was the beginning of a large hole if not a crevasse. So, we decided to abseil onto the glacier.

Once on the glacier the snow was pretty solid and the path pretty well established. This until the snow stopped and we were now on a fairly steep incline of loose rocks where we had to navigate a zig-zag path upwards, not always very clear to find, and not very stable on the feet.

Nevertheless, the climb to the hut happened without major incidents. Except at one point, we noticed a climber behind us who had just come out of the tunnel and was literally running on the path where we had been very slow going. Once he overtook us, we started chatting to him to discover this was his 2nd climb of the day. He had just gone up the Eiger that morning; jumped down with his flying suit; and he was going up for a 2nd jump. Watch for him on the way down. Really?!!

The Mittellegi Hut is really perched on the lower part of the Eiger North Ridge and supported on stilts, which makes it look like it is really hanging by a miracle on the side of the mountain. It is very small: one kitchen come dining area and two bunk rooms for at most 30 people. If the main cabin is on the west side of the ridge, the toilet is on the east. If the west overlooks the Eiger Glacier, the east side is a direct jump straight down to Grindelwald thousands of meters below. And looking up is the North Ridge which is very pointy and steep. I think I had a bit of nausea looking up.

Anyway, we settled in for an afternoon of cards, tea and rest. Most climbers arrived by mid-afternoon, and it was clear this was not the Matterhorn with a crazy number of climbers but a smaller family affair of 20-25 people. Most of the climbers were either Swiss or Austrian. The exception a group of Spanish and Kenton and me.

An older guide with a papery suntan and arms’ muscles made of brick was introduced to us as a record holder for one of the faster ascents of the North Face. It had happened 30 years earlier and the record had held for just two weeks. We were told he now dabbles in farming and hunting in addition to climbing.

Everyone was very friendly. And everyone cheered when “flying man” passed by at 100km/hour and only 10-20 meters from the hut’s balcony, as announced, at around 4pm.

Dinner at 7pm, bed at 9pm; not before the Swiss guys agreed the timing for breakfast and for the different sets of climbers to start climbing. Our breakfast slot was 03:30am. The ascent planned to start at 4am.