BURSTOver 13 days this summer, Roger Schaeli and Fay Manners established Solar Eclipse, a 900-metre 33-pitch line up the north face of the Eiger. Schaeli noted that while the route is complete from bottom to top that they’ll return in the spring to work on freeing it.
Schaeli’s has climbed several new routes on the Eiger. In 2008, Christoph Hainz and Schali opened Magic Mushroom, a 20-pitch 5.12d up the “stone mushroom” feature. In 2015, Schaeli, Simon Gietl and Robert Jasper made the first ascent of the 1,400-metre Odysee at 5.13c. Jasper said after: “It was an indescribable moment when we reached the top in the midst of fog and darkness. Our climb through this even for us incredible huge face, our Odyssee, had come to a good end!”
Over several years, Schaeli completed Airplane Mode, a 300-metre 5.13c with Dimitri Vogt, Bernd Rathmayr and Mayan Smith-Gobat near the famous climb Deep Blue Sea. Schaeli said it has “a good mix of trad and bolts… with the 40m crux pitch sports only two bolts, all the rest on relatively thin gear.” In 2019, Schaeli, along with Nina Caprez, Sean Villanueva, opened the 300-metre Merci la Vie. Villanueva said after, “It’s more adventurous than I thought it would be. There’s some really good rock, but there’s also some bad rock and some big run outs. It’s got a special feel to it.”
Manners said in a story about Solar Eclipse on UK Climbing: “Over 18 days, including 13 living on the wall, Roger and I established Solar Eclipse: 33 pitches of previously unclimbed terrain, combining traditional and bolted climbing. We slept on portaledges, carried food and water, drilled, climbed, cleaned, and hauled. A couple of times we descended for supplies and to charge the drill batteries, and strangely, those were the days I most wanted to be back on the wall. And then there was the eclipse. High on the face, Roger and I watched the light disappear from our portaledge, suspended above the valley. For a few moments, the Eiger fell into darkness before the light slowly returned.”
The first ascent of the Eiger was by Anderl Heckmair, Ludwig Vörg, Fritz Kasparek, and Heinrich Harrer on July 24, 1938. The route has become one of the most famous and classic alpine lines in the world.
British guidebook author A. W. Moore wrote in his 1864 book about the Eiger: “Of the thousands who pass yearly beneath the shadow of this grand wall, which in height and steepness surpasses that of the Wetterhorn, all are deeply impressed by its wild precipice. But overwhelming as the sight of these rockfalls may be from below, no one can truly gauge them without looking down from above. Not even in the Dauphiné have I seen such a sheer, smooth drop. A stone breaking from the ridge crest falls hundreds of meters without striking anything. It is almost astonishing that the west side of this massive rock mountain is relatively easy to climb, while the north face plunges so steeply, as if the entire mountain were cut away. Smooth and utterly unclimbable…”
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