Fritz Stammberger

C62 Fritz Stammberger on Commentary with David Chamberlain
Fritz Stammberger [00:00:02] I swear that I could move, but she couldn’t. And the first sound that came was one of the Coolies shouting, you know, constantly “Sahib sorry, Sahib sorry.” And since he only spoke five words of English, I didn’t know what he meant by “sorry,” you know? Whether they were sorry for the avalanche, in a way. However, there were many some help, but it sounded as if it was washed down, the slope, and not just crawling up, you know, more or less, to dig us out. And my Sherpa thought the same thing because he said, “Ah, Sahib, it’s okay, it’s okay. Coolie coming, Coolie coming.” And I said, “Yeah, it’s true. He sounds as if he was crawling up. But I just finished thinking that when the Coolie broke through the snow and touched me with his hand, and he was just maybe three feet away from me in the sun, like two feet away in the snow. But the water in the snow must be such a good ice insulator of sound that it sounded if it was 100 yards away. So he’s one of the Coolies was truly in panic, you know. He kept pulling on my arm and pulling me to him like a drowning person, but at least he was talking and shouting. I knew that he was bleeding, but the fourth person.
David Chamberlain [00:01:09] He also Indicated to you that you had no help on the outside.
Fritz Stammberger [00:01:11] That’s exactly true. That broke that hope instantly. There was still the fourth person, which was still unaccounted for, and I tried to find him by feeling because I still couldn’t see it. I was still, only in the meantime, only a minute has passed, you know. I mean, not much had passed. Time has passed and we couldn’t find the fourth person. And, you know, I went all over the snow, as much as I could reach with my arms. And then after about maybe another half minute or a minute, we started to hear him, you know, kind of a gurgling sound. And I kind of followed the gurgling sounds with my hand. And there I did find his head, and I looked for his mouth, and I thought he had some snow in his mouth, and I put my finger in his mouth to take out the snow, but there was no snow in it. But this is only a sidelight to the fact that I put my finger in his mouth, you know, maybe a little roughly or a little to, you know, fast. Later on, he told the people in the village that I tried to suffocate or kill him, but that’s only I heard.
David Chamberlain [00:02:10] People deal with that and they give it any credence.
Fritz Stammberger [00:02:12] No, no. They are still pretty much respect kind of the Sahibs more. And particularly since the Sherpa, which is also greatly respected in those circles. I mean, he was with me, you know, and he said “It’s nonsense, and he just helped you.” Anyway, in the meantime, we were still, you know, we knew that everybody was breathing, but we knew we needed air. So I tried to start digging for air and kind of carving out the snow and giving, passing the snow on to the Sherpa, who would put it into all the cracks or the open spaces, you know?
David Chamberlain [00:02:50] Well, now, it was your assumption at this time that the only air you had was that created by your own body? Inside internal air.
Fritz Stammberger [00:02:56] Yeah. Well, actually, the fact that the rock was… the rock had protected us from being crushed by the snow masses because the snow was very heavy, you know? That much snow really would have done it.
David Chamberlain [00:03:08] And now, essentially, you’ve got all four of you in the same pocket, the same cavity.
Fritz Stammberger [00:03:13] Yeah. They slipped in… as soon as I started to move out of my sleeping bag, they kind of, you know, they kind of slipped into that air pocket by where my feet were and where my shoulders were. But they were kind of both psyched out so much, and they kind of slipped out, they moved like a, you know, they were like in a cast, you know? As soon as they had cleaned out their shoulders, which is the larger part of the body, they slipped out of their cast into the space which was vacated by me because I was starting to dig myself towards where I knew… thank God, there was no problem for orientation. I knew that this was… I had to go diagonally from my sleeping bag. That’s where the opening was.
David Chamberlain [00:03:53] Well, now that we’ve got all four of you situated here, why don’t we take a break and we’ll continue with your narrative right after this message.
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Male Announcer [00:04:22] Now back to David Chamberlain.
David Chamberlain [00:04:24] My guest today on “Commentary” is Aspen mountaineer Fritz Stammberger, and we interrupted for a commercial there, a very gripping narrative, I think, about his recent reconnaissance trip to Makalu in the Himalayas. Fritz hopes to climb Makalu in 1974 and make it the highest peak ever climbed without the use of artificial oxygen. He and three companions were trapped in an avalanche there for three hours. Fritz, before we broke for the commercial, you had described where everyone was essentially in the same snow cavity there, and that you had started to dig for air. Now, uh, what… You started talking about the direction you were going. Where did you know where to go to get the air?
Fritz Stammberger [00:05:07] Well, I knew I had to go out in the same kind of a corridor, which we came in, you know? It was kind of a, maybe a 30 degree angle before I was out from underneath the rock. Because a part of me was on a rock, that was very clear. So after going about, uh, maybe nine feet at a 30 degree angle, I could then… The first time I would have had a choice to go either vertically up or dig up in the same direction. So I first had to go out from underneath the rock. So I started to dig. And I agree, although I think I was not, not, not panicky at all, but I was also not as cool as maybe I should have been. So I dug a little too hastily and particularly with one hand, which was very foolish, you know? I mean…
David Chamberlain [00:05:50] You speak of one hand here. Maybe there’s something we have to clear up before you go any further. The story in The Aspen Times says that you dug out with ice axes. Now that’s not true, is it?
Fritz Stammberger [00:05:57] No, that becomes… the news story of such a very accurate in those days. You know, it was well transmitted, except for the ice axes. We had no, nothing of metal with us. All that was washed on the outside down. It was all lost. We had no… the closest things to dig anything would have been down at a cache where we had cached my snowshoes, but they were out of it, you know? Even that would have been inadequate. There was not enough room. We couldn’t have used an ice axe for a while, except, you know, scraping, you know, very painstakingly. No. That’s incorrect.
David Chamberlain [00:06:28] So you were digging with your hands?
Fritz Stammberger [00:06:30] Yeah.
David Chamberlain [00:06:30] How do you dig with your hands in concrete snow?
Fritz Stammberger [00:06:33] Well, first, you know, you try to do it. Move it. The very first move. If you move it one move, then you have a chance. But if you… the second time already, it is solid, then you have to really more or less with your fingernails or with the end of the fingers, you know? You cannot take, you know, handfuls on the palms like you can do when the snow is a little colder. So you have to just truly with your, with the ends of your hands, with the fingers. So as I said, I was digging kind of with one hand and impatience because I thought I wanted to puncture and finally get the air hole and then, you know, slowly work on a larger hole where we all can get all out. And because I was too hastily, there was one point, and I did really think they would think it, and I thought it was a little funny. I was stuck in there like the Statue of Liberty, you know, with the one hand stretched out. And the other one down. And I couldn’t go any further anymore because my shoulder was in the way. So it had to retract again, and I had to open up the space where my arm was and to make it enough room for two arms and kind of get a little more systematic. So, you know, put the push the snow past me and push it in towards a Namgyal, my Sherpa, who would hopefully put it into wherever there was space. And so we just kept, you know, scratching and digging. And after about maybe two hours or so, you know, I finally broke through and I felt the draft and I got a little air hole.
David Chamberlain [00:08:05] How much distance did you cover in getting the air hole?
Fritz Stammberger [00:08:08] Oh, from a sleeping bag. It was about three times my length, my size. So it’s about 18 times or 15, 18ft.
David Chamberlain [00:08:17] And then when you felt the draft in there, did you feel at that time that you had been saved and that all of the.
Fritz Stammberger [00:08:23] Yeah.
Fritz Stammberger [00:08:24] Yeah. At that time, I knew we had it made, but I didn’t know everything yet because the night wasn’t over yet and the expedition wasn’t over yet. After that, it was after I got the air hole and had a little more time, you know, to relax and dig a larger hole where I could go through. And I finally crawled on the outside, starting to really dig to get my friends out. I was reaching down with a hand and they didn’t want to come out.
David Chamberlain [00:08:50] They didn’t?
Fritz Stammberger [00:08:51] No. That was the funniest aspect of the whole thing. It did not want to come out.
David Chamberlain [00:08:55] Did they already committed themselves to dying?
Fritz Stammberger [00:08:57] No no no no no no. Namgyal for a while was so calm that I thought either he has just tremendous nerves, or he just has resigned himself to what’s going to happen. Of course, he’s a Buddhist and Buddhists one Buddhists virtures are is acceptance, which I consider a great virtue, which I do not mean to acquire. But uh.
David Chamberlain [00:09:17] Not much help in a circumstance like this, perhaps.
Fritz Stammberger [00:09:20] Well, no. That’s right. I think about the matter of of of of helping yourself, you know.
David Chamberlain [00:09:26] Is there any reason why you did all the digging? Was that simply a matter of efficiency, or was it because the Sherpa’s, uh, did not want to take part in it?
Fritz Stammberger [00:09:35] Oh, no. This actually, it turned out the he dug himself out first, you know, and then since they were behind me. If it had been much longer, we would have taken turns, you know. But, uh, you know, I was just doing it, while in the middle of the work, and I don’t think I could have gone down and turned around and somebody else gone into the tunnel. Uh, so that’s how it worked out.
David Chamberlain [00:10:00] Well, how did you feel physically after three hours of this kind of exertion, this kind of exertion that was directed towards survival? Did you feel completely exhausted?
Fritz Stammberger [00:10:10] No. No, I was not until I was still much too high. Much too, too nervous, you know, and intense because things weren’t over yet. You know, it was out there at 9:00, and there was one of the most intense electrical storms I’ve ever experienced, from 9:00 at night to the next morning at 6:00, almost constant thunder and lightning. I believe that the avalanche was started by lightning because the the more rain you know, you show a picture of one of these days. I mean, it’s just really ridiculous that an avalanche would start. You know, anybody looks at it and say, I’ve seen avalanches in my life, but not here. So I went out, there was nine hours, and the storm was so close around me that my hair, although it was wet, would stand up, you know, like sucked away from a vacuum cleaner.
Fritz Stammberger [00:10:57] And then, although it was snowing, you know, it was very, very picturesquely snowing. When it lightened, when it flashed up, you would see the mountains. So I believe that that maybe the mountains were out of the clouds, about 15 above 20,000ft or 25,000ft. And maybe the people that my friends didn’t want to go out because of the electrical storm, or just because they do have that strange thing about the night. But I did think it was necessary about the electrical storm after that. I thought that would be funny. You know, after digging yourself out of a snow cave, kind of to be struck by lightning, that would be just unreal.
David Chamberlain [00:11:35] So you were in no mood after having dug yourself out to assume a more relaxed and relieved position? You really… the ordeal wasn’t over as far as you were concerned?
Fritz Stammberger [00:11:43] No I just I had to stand guard because if another avalanche comes down, it’s just the smallest slides on the side. Actually, the whole thing was an avalanche. You know, an avalanche is gigantic. Things that come down in Switzerland and destroy whole villages. That’s an avalanche. That’s a snow slide, you know, more or less, you know, but another slide would have come down and would have covered up that little corridor, and maybe there would have been it would have been it. So I had to wait out there till, you know, till the next morning. Then we all crawled out. I was sitting on a, you know, on my poncho and just looking at my watch, you know, waiting for morning.
David Chamberlain [00:12:19] Fritz, when you’re in a position like that, buried under snow. You spoke about the fear of dying in a prolonged way over a prolonged period of time, and having no particular taste for that. Was this fear immediately transformed into some kind of, uh, immediate action to get your extricate yourself from the situation? Was it fear that motivated you throughout? What kind of things did you feel throughout the whole thing?
Fritz Stammberger [00:12:43] Yeah, I think it was rather the fear of dying than the hope for living that that was the motivation in our dying that way, particularly, as I said before, you know, if it would have been any other way, I might have resigned, you know. And, you know, I might have not tried that long that hard to get out.
David Chamberlain [00:13:03] While you were digging, did you feel a constant sense of fear and trepidation, or did that disappear because of the urgency of the task?
Fritz Stammberger [00:13:10] No. If fear clinically is is indicated by the pulse rate, which they say it is often, then I was I was afraid to the hole digging, you know, I mean I felt the heart pound all the time there because I thought, you know, if you know, the Himalayas and a large avalanche can be, can be, you know, hundreds of tons, you know.
David Chamberlain [00:13:33] How would you compare what you felt during this avalanche with other close calls, other dangerous situations you’ve been in while mountain climbing and you have been in several. Is it the worst one you’ve experienced? It’s sobering?
Fritz Stammberger [00:13:45] There’s a world of difference between a close call that is delayed and dragged out like this, then a quick close call, like in almost any traffic accident or in a near fall, and so on. A world of difference. This one really lingers on, you know, in your in your heart and you flash flashbacks all the time. You know, even now, it’s already almost, I think two, three weeks ago, it’s still just it’s there as if it hadn’t, you know, a day ago.
David Chamberlain [00:14:15] Do you think this particular kind of incident would have any effect on your future desires to do serious climbing?
Fritz Stammberger [00:14:20] No, I don’t think that the same thing will ever happen again. I mean, it’s just too unlikely, you know? No, no, I don’t worry about another thing covered up by an avalanche in that manner.
David Chamberlain [00:14:31] Do you think you’ll ever be able to approach climbing again with the same, same particular attitude that you’ve always had before? Or is this experience sobering to the degree that it alters your attitude a little bit?
Fritz Stammberger [00:14:41] No, no it hasn’t. I must say, the first few days I went out, I walked out and I turned around and I said, I’m not going to come back to this mountain. That mountain has had it for me. And then on the fourth day, I turned around and saw those beautiful, sharp faces. And in Richardson I thought, oh God, no, that wasn’t that bad. I’m going to come back.
David Chamberlain [00:15:01] Okay. We’ve been talking today on commentary with Fritz Stammberger from Aspen and Mountaineer. Fritz is planning to climb Makalu in the Himalayas in 1974. That will be the highest climb ever done without the use of artificial oxygen when Fritz undertakes it. We’ve been talking today about the third of his reconnaissance missions to Makalu, in preparation for that final trip, and how he got caught in an avalanche for some three
hours before being able to dig himself out of that. This is David Chamberlain, and that’s commentary for today.
Male Announcer [00:15:34] Commentary, an in-depth interview program of personal opinion and information.