Climber who sprinted up the North Face of the Eiger
Ueli Steck, who has died
aged 40, was probably the
greatest mountaineer of his generation. He was known for his solo ascents, without bottled oxygen, of the great Himalayan peaks, including Everest, but was most closely associated with the North Face of the Eiger: having first climbed it aged 18, he returned, again and again, repeatedly beating his own speed record. The first climbers to complete the perilous route, in 1938, took four days. In 2015, Steck sprinted up the 5,500ft “Wall of Death” in two hours and 22 minutes.
Unlike many Swiss climbers, Steck did not grow up in the mountains. He was born, in 1976, in a town in the Emmental Valley, the son of a coppersmith. As a boy, he played ice hockey with his brothers, and went on ski tours with his father; it was a family friend who first took him climbing, aged 12. It “took over his life”, said The Guardian, and by 16, “he was climbing at almost the hardest standard of the day”. Two years later, he ascended the Eiger’s North Face – a wall of rock that jangles the nerves of even experienced alpinists. At 28, he made his first solo ascent, in ten hours. The record then was four hours and 40 minutes. Steck tried again, dispensing with ropes for most of the way up: this time, he did it in three hours and 54 minutes, winning instant fame in climbing circles. Then, he figured that if he could do that without any specialist training, he could surely cut his time further if he set his mind to it. Hiring a coach and a physical therapist from the Swiss Olympic team, he began an intensive regime with up to 30 hours a week of climbing, running, cross-country skiing and strength training. He became known as the Swiss Machine (a nickname that belied his warm personality).
In total, Steck climbed the North Face more than 35 times: in 2007, he spent his honeymoon on the mountain, but on that occasion he went at a more leisurely pace; it took him and his wife, Nicole, two days. (He would joke that after marrying, he had to climb fast, because Nicole worried when he was away.) In 2004, he and Stephan Siegrist climbed the north faces of the Mönch, the Eiger and the Jungfrau in one 25-hour push. In 2015, Steck climbed all 82 of the peaks in the Alps that are 4,000 metres (13,123ft) or higher in just 62 days – including the time spent bicycling and paragliding between them. Many of his speed ascents were filmed and posted online, said The New York Times. Audiences discovered that alpinism could be as exciting to watch as tennis and football.
In 2007, Steck was nearly killed while trying to climb Annapurna, in the Himalaya: a rockfall knocked him unconscious, and he fell 1,000ft. But in 2013, he returned, to make a solo ascent of the 26,545ft South Face in a record 28 hours. “I was at the limits of my physical and mental ability,” he said. “If I climb anything harder than that, I think I will kill myself.” Around that time, he was also involved, with other climbers, in a violent confrontation with a crowd of Sherpas on Everest (which he’d first ascended without oxygen in 2012), the details of which were not clear. Forced to beat a hasty retreat – and to abandon a plan to climb the world’s highest peak, and Lhotse, the fourth highest, in one “marathon” expedition – Steck warned that the incident reflected growing tensions between Sherpas and climbers on Everest.
Last year, Steck and his German climbing partner, David Göttler, found the bodies of Alex Lowe and David Bridges on Mount Shishapangma in Tibet. They’d been killed in an avalanche in 1999. Steck was climbing alone on a mountain in Nepal last month, in preparation for another ascent of Everest, when he apparently slipped, and fell 3,280ft down a crevasse. Nicole survives him. “Mountaineering is a transient experience,” he once said. “I need to continuously repeat it to live it.”
There was no sign this year of “the antifracking and fuel poverty protesters” who “traditionally gather” outside Centrica’s annual general meeting, said Emily Gosden in The Times. Small comfort for the firm’s boss, Iain Conn, who is facing “turbulent times”, thanks to troublesome Theresa May and her ministers. Shares in the British Gas owner and its largest peer, SSE, slid again this week as the Tories confirmed they will indeed impose a price cap on standard variable tariffs (the “default” deal for some two-thirds of British households) if re-elected. Centrica’s shares have now fallen by 15% since the start of the year.
The move to cap bills, which the PM reckons will save 17 million households around £100 each annually, could inflict a “massive hit” on the industry, said Neil Wilson of ETX Capital on Proactiveinvestors.co.uk. “It might cost Centrica something like £200m”, making it “much tougher” for the company “to reintroduce its progressive dividend policy” – bad news for Britain’s pension funds. Still, the move to rein in the Big Six was welcomed by smaller suppliers, such as Ovo Energy, and some consumer groups – even if they accuse the Tories of “hypocrisy” for stealing a Labour plan they’d previously debunked as economically illiterate.
A backlash is in full swing among refusenik Tories and business groups, who warn of the consequences of May’s “political meddling”, said City AM. Not only does the cap jeopardise investment in the industry, but it could also mean bigger bills for some customers. Indeed, several large suppliers “have already withdrawn their cheapest deals in response to the government threat”, said the FT. The comparison website uswitch notes that the average price of the cheapest tariffs jumped by 20%, to about £1,000, since the policy was first aired last October.