A New Look at Death on the Matterhorn

A new book has revived the 125-year-old dispute about whether four members of the first party to climb the Matterhorn died by accident or design.

Rumors and suspicions have lingered since the rope connecting them to the three other climbers broke on the Matterhorn’s north face less than two hours after the team conquered the 14,700-foot peak on July 14, 1865.

They fell 4,000 feet to their deaths.

The victims were French guide Michel Croz and three Englishmen: the Rev. Charles Hudson, 36; Douglas Hadow, 19, and Lord Francis Douglas, 20, whose body was never found. The survivors were British writer-artist Edward Whymper, who initiated the expedition; a local guide, Peter Taugwalder, and the guide’s son.

An investigation found no evidence of foul play, but police kept the results secret, and it became known only 55 years later, through an article published in Britain’s Alpine Journal.

Early rumors, first mentioned in a Vienna newspaper, alleged that Whymper cut the rope to enhance his own fame. He said in a letter to The Times of London in August, 1865 that none of the three survivors could be blamed for the deaths but did not refer to the rumors.

Six years later, a graphic account of the climb in Whymper’s “Scrambles Amongst The Alps” added fuel to the controversy. It said suggestions that the Swiss guide, Taugwalder, cut the rope were “infamous.” Whymper said such rumors persisted in the guide’s native Zermatt, at the foot of the Matterhorn.

Whymper’s book also referred, however, to “grave suspicion” falling on the Swiss guide because the rope between Taugwalder and the nearest of the four others, Lord Douglas, “was the thinnest and the weakest one we had.”

This was “suspicious because it is unlikely that the four men in front would have selected an old and weak rope when there was abundance of new, and much stronger rope to spare,” Whymper wrote.

If Taugwalder “thought that an accident was likely to happen, it was to his interest to have the weaker rope where it was placed,” he said, implying this would protect Taugwalder from being dragged along.

More than a century later, that comment by Whymper caused Swiss writer Hannes Taugwalder, a distant relation of the guide, to begin two decades of research. The result, “Closer to the Truth,” was published just before the 125th anniversary.

Taugwalder portrays Whymper as an “ice-cold,” fiercely ambitious man whose education and intelligence easily allowed him to dominate the two Swiss survivors.

“Of course, there were others in Zermatt who envied Peter Taugwalder, but the rumors about him started only after Whymper’s book came out,” the writer said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press.

His book contends that the guide had to use the weak rope because Whymper cut the better one shortly before reaching the summit so he could race up the last few yards.

Whymper’s account does not mention any cutting but says he and the French guide, Croz, “dashing away, ran a neck-and-neck race, which ended in a dead heat.”

Citing the works of Sir Arnold Lunn, the late British author of mountaineering and skiing books, Taugwalder wrote that Whymper once told a dinner companion he vaguely remembered cutting the rope to free him for the race with Croz.

“There were two strong Manila hemp ropes, each 30 meters long,” the book says. “One linked the first four descending. The other, being cut, was not long enough to tie it to the last of the four.”

“And Whymper insinuated that Taugwalder, who had actually no alternative, chose the weak rope because it would have saved his life in case of an accident,” he said. “This was malevolent slander.”

Hannes Taugwalder, who has scaled the Matterhorn twice, concedes that the full story may never be known. “That’s why I titled the book ‘Closer to the Truth,’ ” he said.