The Making of a Rescuer: The Inspiring Life of Otto T. Trott, Md, Rescue Doctor and Mountaineer

By Nicholas Campbell Corff

This is a book about the making of a hero - a rescuer. There are few of us that can claim to be bigger-than-life heroes, but surely the story of Dr. Otto Trotts life is the story of one of these. Because of his existence many lives have been saved or improved, human suffering has been reduced, and the world is a better place. What greater statement can be made about a person?

A hiker sees the beautiful blue of a mountain gentian just off the trail and stops to capture the image through a snapshot, but in seeking a slightly wider angle steps back -- in a flash the hiker lies injured amid the rocks. A snowboarder searches for untouched powder snow, but finds a cliff instead. A small plane has engine trouble and glides steeply toward a mountain meadow. An early snowstorm catches two climbers exposed in the high alpine. An avalanche buries a foolish snowmobiler trying to make the highest mark on the side of snow-covered slope. An older gentleman has a heart attack far from his city hospital.

Its quite possible and even probable that what all of the above have in common is Dr. Otto Trott. He co-founded the search and rescue organization that seeks out the injured and carries them down from the mountains, he pioneered the medical treatments that will be used for hypothermia and frostbite, he introduced advanced European methods of climbing as well as the identification of avalanche danger areas and the systematic search for and rescue of accident victims. Most importantly, Otto taught generations of others to follow in his footsteps.

As Lou Whittaker, the renowned mountain guide states, This book is a must for anyone who seeks the mountains and their reward. Dee Molenaar the acclaimed mountaineer, artist and writer, says that this treatise is long overdue, while the legendary high altitude premier climber Jim Wickwire writes that Nicholas Corff has brought to life the fascinating story of Otto Trott There is no question that Dr. Otto Trott was one of those few men who was a legend in his own time, but he always remained a man of great empathy as well as skill who sought to relieve suffering, improve the safety of the outdoors and protect the mountain environment he so loved.

In his long and adventuresome life he overcame great loss with courage and perseverance, and ultimately was the recipient of many awards including the Jefferson Award. Along with the text there are over 250 full page photos and illustrations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466964624

Book preview

© Copyright 2012 Nicholas Corff.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-6462-4 (e)

Trafford rev. 11/14/2012

Image396.JPG www. trafford. com

North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

phone: [phone] ♦ fax: [phone]

THE MAKING OF A RESCUER

The Story of

OTTO T. TROTT, MD

A Father of Modern Mountaineering & Rescue

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOREWORD

SECTION I

EUROPE - LEARNING THE BASICS

CHAPTER 1 FRITZ A Lesson Taken to Heart

CHAPTER 2 YOUTH First Climbing Experiences

CHAPTER 3 MUSIC, SKIING & SCHOOL From Berlin to the Alps

CHAPTER 4 CLUB FOR THE AGREEABLE WAY OF LIVING

CHAPTER 5 STUDENT GUIDE

CHAPTER 6 CLIMBING & SKIING THE BERNINA GROUP

CHAPTER 7 MORE BERNINA

CHAPTER 8 ANOTHER ALPINE EXPERIENCE

CHAPTER 9 MILITARIZATION BEGINS

CHAPTER 10 1934 CLIMBS & FIRST HOUSE CALL

CHAPTER 11 INNSBRUCK AND MUNICH

CHAPTER 12 MISTAKES More Learning the Hard Way

CHAPTER 13 THE LAST PITON

CHAPTER 14 THE COMING STORM

CHAPTER 15 MEDICAL INTERNSHIP

CHAPTER 16 TROPICAL MEDICINE HOSPITAL A Slight Diversion From The Mountains

CHAPTER 17 FERDI’S MOTORCYCLE

CHAPTER 18 LANGKOFEL GROUP

CHAPTER 19 ON TO THE MADONNA & THE DRAGON

CHAPTER 20 HOP PICKING & LAYING ASPHALT A Very Different Learning Experience

CHAPTER 21 TRAINING WITH MOUNTAIN TROOPS AS WELL AS WEEKEND CLIMBS

CHAPTER 22 ENCOUNTERS WITH NAZIS & MULES

CHAPTER 23 MY LAST CHRISTMAS IN EUROPE December 1936, in the Alps with Friends

CHAPTER 24 LEAVING EUROPE & FAMILY FOR AMERICA

SECTION II

AMERICA - SHARING THE KNOWLEDGE

CHAPTER 25 ARRIVING IN THE USA IN 1937

CHAPTER 26 SYRACUSE

CHAPTER 27 THE FIRE A Rescue In A Burning Building

CHAPTER 28 CROSSING THE US of A IN A WILLYS COUPE

CHAPTER 29 CLIMBING LONGS PEAK With Walter Kiener

CHAPTER 30 YELLOWSTONE PARK & CLIMBING THE GRAND TETON

CHAPTER 31 MOUNTAINEERING & MEDICINE IN WASHINGTON STATE: 1939-1940 Teaching Proper Crampon Use to the Locals & First Ascent of the Mt. Shuksan Hanging Glacier

CHAPTER 32 ASCENTS OF MOUNT BAKER, MOUNT INDEX & MOUNT RAINIER: 1940

CHAPTER 33 PEARL HARBOR BOMBED, WAR STARTS Arrested As Not Yet An American Citizen

CHAPTER 34 INTERNED1942 & 1943, RELEASED, ALTA WITH GINNY

CHAPTER 35 BACK IN SEATTLE Attempts, Finally Successful, To Join The Military

CHAPTER 36 UP TO THE MOUNTAINS AFTER THE WAR

CHAPTER 37 FOUNDING MOUNTAIN RESCUE

CHAPTER 38 FAMILY, MOUNTAINS & BUGS, HORSES & PETS

CHAPTER 39 NATIONAL SKI PATROL & SQUAW VALLEY OLYMPICS

CHAPTER 40 MOUNT McKINLEY RESCUE Of Whittaker Twins, Pete Shoening & John Day

CHAPTER 41 TEACHING SURVIVAL & MOUNTAINEERING SKILLS ON THE JUNEAU ICE FIELDS OF ALASKA

CHAPTER 42 A CABIN IN THE MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER 43 THE EXPEDITION TO DETERMINE WHETHER COOK WAS THE FIRST TO SUMMIT MT. McKINLEY*

CHAPTER 44 RESEARCHING & TEACHING MOUNTAIN MEDICINE

CHAPTER 45 OTTO’S LAST CLIMB

ADDENDUMS

ADDENDUM I.

ADDENDUM II.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is only proper that the very first acknowledgement that is made for the creation of this book is to Dr. Otto Titus Trott himself. The book could not possibly have been constructed without the extensive memoirs, notes and voluminous archives of mountaineer, physician and classicist Dr. Otto Trott. Added to this hoard of a treasure trove are the many personal interviews I had with him over an eighteen year acquaintance, and the hundreds, if not thousands, of stories told of his many exploits, foibles and anecdotes by his family and friends. Every effort has been made to keep faith with both the intention of his recollections and the character of the person that he was.

Below is a partial and woefully incomplete list of some of the loved ones, awesomely skilled mountaineers, and other good friends that Otto would wish to honor and thank for their contributions to his amazing life:

His parents Walter and Daisy, and his two sisters, Renee and Maya Anne; all of his college friends that called themselves The Club for the Agreeable Way of Living; Virginia Hill and her parents for supporting him through his wartime Internment; his wife Ruth Trott and his five daughters: Marlies, Kaaren, Kristine, Roxanne, and Renate.

Ome Daiber, Wolf Bauer, and all the courageous members of the Mountain Rescue Council, later called the Mountain Rescue Association; Dwight Watson who shared and shot film of some of Otto’s early climbing experiences in the US; Bob and Ira Spring for their wonderful photos of the mountains; Matie Daiber and Ruth Trott for their continuing support of mountaineering and Seattle Mountain Rescue; fellow mountaineers Lou and Jim Whittaker, Fred Beckey, Dee Molenaar, Max Eckenburg, Hank Reasoner, Andy Hennig, Kurt Hoffman, Jim Wickwire, Willi Unsoeld, Pete Schoening, Hans Otto Geise, Otto Lang, Franz Gabl, Romeo Quinter, Walt Heintz, and so many others.

Otto’s notes toward a memoir included the mention of many of his colleagues in the medical community whom he clearly wished to thank, and in some cases reveal all. Unfortunately there were limits to how much I could include in this book, so to all those who are not specifically mentioned I apologize and take full responsibility for decisions on content. So, to Dr. Don Hall and his wife Noni, and the others who were at the University of Washington, Doctors Hospital, Swedish Hospital and the Chest Conference, rest assured he thought of you and did his very best to include everyone of you. Otto would have been amazed and grateful that the Swedish Medical Center has established the Otto Trott Memorial Fund that provides an annual award to a young doctor who shares Otto’s passion for medicine and healing, his ability to pose challenging questions, his high energy level, his enthusiasm for mountains and outdoor adventure, and has his ability to use humor in healing and in his daily life.

For my part I am forever grateful to Otto for his valiant attempt to write a memoir in his failing years, the Trott family for giving me full access to all of Otto’s records and photos, and his daughter Roxanne (my wife) for her encouragement and support during the long and difficult process of putting this book together.

A special thanks goes to Lou and Ingrid Whittaker for having read through an incomplete draft of the book and giving me encouragement to take it to completion; and to Lou Whittaker, Jim Wickwire and Dee Molenaar for their gracious words about this book and about Otto. Also I thank Lowell Skooges for providing a much needed criticism of an early draft of the book, to Seattle Mountain Rescue for inviting me to share with them a pre-release discussion and review of the book, to Beate Storlie for German translations, and to Dirk Houghton at FedEx Kinko’s for his skilled assistance on the many photos. Last, and with sincere apologies for the delay, to all those who have asked when Otto’s book would be coming out — I only wish he was here to sign it for you.

Nicholas Campbell Corff 6/25/08

THE MAKING OF A RESCUER

OTTO T. TROTT, MD

FOREWORD

This is a book about the making of a hero - a rescuer. There are few of us that can claim to be bigger-than-life heroes, but surely the story of Dr. Otto Titus Trott’s life is the story of one of these. Because of his existence many lives have been saved or improved, human suffering has been reduced, and the world is a better place. What greater statement can be made about a person?

A hiker sees the beautiful blue of a mountain gentian just off the trail and stops to capture the image through a snapshot, but in seeking a slightly wider angle steps back — in a flash the hiker lies injured amid the rocks. A snowboarder searches for untouched powder snow, but finds a cliff instead. A small plane has engine trouble and glides steeply toward a mountain meadow. An early snowstorm catches two climbers exposed in the high alpine. An avalanche buries a foolish snowmobiler trying to make the highest mark on the side of snow-covered slope. An older gentleman has a heart attack far from his city hospital.

It’s quite possible and even probable that what all of the above have in common is Dr. Otto Trott. He co-founded the search and rescue organization that seeks out the injured and carries them down from the mountains, he pioneered the medical treatments that will be used for hypothermia and frostbite, he introduced advanced European methods of climbing, the identification of avalanche danger areas, and the systematic search for and rescue of accident victims. Most importantly, Otto taught generations of others to follow in his steps.

There was a time back when Otto was a young medical student in Freiburg, Germany, that he would have predicted for himself an easy life of place and prestige, having been born into a well to-do and aristocratic family, with grandparents who were Counts and Countesses. But instead, it was loss and adversity that shaped his life, it was overcoming rejection and prejudice that gave him empathy, and it was the deep love of mountains and medicine that gave him focus. Mountains became less entities to conquer and more places to understand, revere and protect. Medical skills were not only for patients in a hospital but to be shared and used for the benefit of those that go up into the hills, forests and wild and high places. He became a rescuer, a teacher, an innovator and an organizer.

Perhaps the broadest way to look at the life of Dr.Otto Trott is to see it as a classic summation of the 20th Century. He was born in the old world in May of 1911 and died in the new in June of 1999; having lived through two world wars, depressions, booms and busts. He saw the nation of his childhood corrupted and despoiled and ruined, but rather than despairing he put his whole into building a new and better world by participating in the revolution in medicine and mountaineering in America. In fact, through his participation the very concept of rescue and survival changed from a haphazard question of luck to a highly organized and skilled team effort.

While Otto was intimately involved in the improvements in technology in mountaineering and medicine, the incredibly rapid growth in population in the last quarter of the 20th Century left him a bit lost and a bit sad. He loved the mountains and never could quite accept that we were in the process of taming them, if not overrunning them.

Otto finally sat down at the age of 83 to pen his memories, and, after several false starts, spent his last years producing autobiographical tidbits of a remarkable life. It has been my task to take what is basically train-of-thought ramblings covering some eight hundred and twenty-seven pages, with all the repeats, and jumpings back and forth and in and out that this implies, and unravel and supplement these into a readable narrative. The unraveling, I must say, has been a delight, for all of the frustrations and hair-pulling and innumerable cups of coffee that have gone with it.

Since this is not an entirely American story, Otto having immigrated to the US from Germany in 1937, you may note syntax, sentence structure and some words that might not be entirely familiar, and in this you will detect Otto’s voice, to which I have attempted to be faithful throughout the book. I once heard him decry the obvious accent of an acquaintance, saying to me after the man had left, That man has been in dis country for thurdy years and still he speaks with such a German accent. I do not understand vii he dos not yet speak like an American. His own accent remained a distinct part of him, even though, somewhere over the years he, himself, was no longer aware of it. To a significant extent this was true of his writing in English, although I understand that as a young man he was a fluent writer in his native tongue, and even something of a poet. This dissidence between inside perception and outside reality was in Otto’s life sometimes a difficulty and sometimes a delight, and for many immigrants like him it must at times border on tragedy.

In his eight hundred plus pages of memories Otto touched on almost everything that came into his mind as he sat before a primitive and obsolete word processor. This included an amazing recall of the seemingly thousands of acquaintances he had over the years - usually including their name, title and something about them. Although, in his heart of hearts, he would have liked all such details to be included in this book, I’m sure he will forgive the need to focus and tighten it into a readable length and format. Since this book limits itself primarily to Otto’s life as a mountaineer and as a rescuer, it may be that an additional volume, or two, is needed to cover his sixty years in medicine, his experiences as a internee in an American internment camp during the Second World War, and the remarkable story of tenacious survival by his family in Europe through the war years and thereafter.

Nicholas Campbell Corff, 2008

Why do men, and women also, climb mountains? I have asked myself this question many times, and certainly those times when I have gone on a rescue only to find the mortal remains of a climber or when this life of mine seemed to hang on a thread in some impossible high place. But always for me the answer was immediate and simple: I have a love for the mountains — to see them, to be on them, to feel a part of their great beauty.

Dr. Otto Titus Trott, 1999

Image404.JPGImage411.JPGImage419.JPGImage428.JPGImage435.JPGImage443.JPG

SECTION ONE

EUROPE - LEARNING THE BASICS

CHAPTER 1

FRITZ

A Lesson Taken to Heart

I remember that winter day very well, I had bicycled with my friend Fritz’s little sister to the upper end of the Wittenbach Valley to a little inn where we left the bicycles and hiked up a cow path past Riesterer’s farm and up to the last house. The Atzner farm home was near the steep forested slopes below the Stuebenwasen Plateau. By the time we got there it had become a stormy and snowy evening, though at times, when the wind blew a hole in the clouds, we could see the white crested ridge with its heavy cornices that runs from the top of the Feldberg, and hangs high over the upper end of the valley.

Fritz’s sister and I sat in the warm farmhouse living room visiting with the Atzners and their son and little daughter while we patiently waited for Fritz’s arrival. There was no doubt in my mind that he had left Freiburg to join us, but it was snowing fiercely now and as hour after hour went by an ominous fear settled over us. Finally, I decided to phone his home and learned from his parents that he had indeed left Freiburg, planning to park his car at the Feldberger Hof, a well known hotel, and then travel on his skis over the shoulder of the Feldberg, then to Stuebenwasen and down to the Wittenbach Valley where we waited. He had left at noon, his father reported, and should have arrived in the late afternoon or early evening, at the latest.

This was very bad news, and I began to picture in my mind the massive cornice formation along the Stuebenwasen ridge. I knew that Fritz was perhaps the one least familiar of our group with the dangers of the mountains, and feared that he had neglected to appreciate that the cornice had to be avoided when entering the valley from above after a heavy snowfall. The more I thought about it the more I became convinced that he had entered from above and then traversed underneath the huge cornice where he would cut across its support and thus start an avalanche that could engulf him. Up to this time I had never participated in an avalanche search, but I did have significant alpine climbing experience and good knowledge of alpine literature. In truth, I had practically memorized the alpine bible, The Dangers of the Alps, by Prof. Paulcke (mostly for its thoughts of adventure than for fear of mishap, I believe). In this book, the detailed procedure of avalanche search occupied a long chapter.

That chapter came to me clearly now, I knew what had to be done; but the sad conviction that there would be little probability of finding Fritz in the conditions outside, and with only a vague idea of the route he might have taken, was like a leaden weight on my mind. There was only the farmer, his wife and myself as adults to go out into the dark and the storm to look for Fritz, and without adequate lights or equipment, such a search would be not only futile but extremely dangerous. I thought of going up by myself, but realized that this would be foolhardy if not outright suicide, and two of us up there buried in the snow would solve nothing. I hated having to explain to his little sister why we had to call the police and then her parents. The parents wanted her brought back to Freiburg, and it became clear that I could do the most good by getting immediately back to town to help organize an avalanche search and rescue party to return.

We had only our bicycles, stowed back at the inn, so we dashed as best we could down the cow-path through the deepening snow, and somehow in a mad whirl of flakes and slippery pavement managed to pedal back to town. Word had gone out, but there was some confusion, so I managed to borrow 30 three meter long steel reinforcing rods from a construction site to use as probing poles, and other friends had found 15 wide snow shovels. Someone had been able to rent or borrow an auto, and in no time we were on our way back up in a car that must have looked very strange - with coats and boots and ropes and poles tied on, and heads and arms protruding from the windows of the overstuffed car. We drove as far up as the snow would allow, strapped on skis and began the climb up the narrow winding forest path that led to the steep slope beneath the Stuebenwasen. Far behind us we could hear and see another party on our heels, which proved to be a collection of county police and some soldiers led by a well known skier named Winterhalder.

My fear became a certainty when we found a huge avalanche under the massive cornice. The avalanche extended from one forest edge to the other, covering an area nearly 200 yards wide, and without any sign or evidence of where Fritz might be buried. By now even more helpers were arriving, so we spaced the searchers at 3 foot intervals right across the foot of the avalanche, from one edge of the forest across the naked slope to the other edge of trees - just as instructed in Prof. Paulche’s book. *[In consideration of newer knowledge about avalanches this would not be considered adequate today since an avalanche has the tendency to spread out as it descends and can push the engulfed victim to the side, where he or she could very well be buried among the trees.]

After the searchers were positioned, with each person having some sort of pole, we all slowly walked up the slope in the ragged semblance of a straight line, step by step, poking our poles down as far as we could, first in front and then to the left and then to the right so that a body underneath could not possibly be missed unless it was buried very deeply. We moved up the slope right to the base of the cornice, which we hoped had dropped enough of its load to make it for the moment harmless. We repeated this process a number of times through the day and searched the whole vicinity until everyone was exhausted; but found no evidence of Fritz.

Late in the evening the volunteer searchers began to return to Freiburg, knowing that any hope of finding him alive had faded. We were convinced that Fritz lay there beneath the snow, somewhere, but knew that if this was so then the hardness and the coldness of the ice that forms after the energy in an avalanche subsides had surely killed him over the hours that we had searched in vain.

The following Spring, in June, a letter arrived from one of the participants, and I quote (as translated), "…we received the news late but drove up by car to the Wittenbach farms immediately. Unfortunately we were unable to see Fritz, (he had been brought down).

He lay where the path from the west side of the Stuebenwasen leads down, he was hidden in underbrush, after he sustained a skull fracture when he was thrown against a thick beech tree. The place was still inside the area which we explored with about 50 men on that Sunday in February, he lay near the probing poles which we had left close by the smaller of the cornices. Farmer Riesterer found him. He was convinced that Fritz became immediately unconscious and did not ever wake up any more. One ski was still on his foot, the other lay separately 10 meters away, broken at the tip. The farmers brought him down on a sled, decorated with fir branches. And all the farmers with their wives considered it their duty to travel to Freiburg for the funeral. The president of the ski club of Freiburg spoke with conviction and in deeply emotional words…" This was the final answer that we had feared. He was a good friend.

CHAPTER 1 PHOTOS

1-1 Fritz (L), Willem, Otto (R).

1-2 Biking up to Atzner’s farm in the snow.

1-3 The Feldberg entrance and cornice.

1-4 Entry point at the top of the Feldberg cornice - Otto is last in line. 1-5 Searching for Fritz - the danger of avalanches made real .

Image451.JPGImage458.JPGImage468.JPGImage475.JPGImage482.JPG

CHAPTER 2

YOUTH

First Climbing Experiences

The mountains have been part of my life from a very early age. I was born in Germany in 1911, and as I was growing up vacation travel often brought my parents and us three children to the Alps. Somehow these experiences left me forever with an overwhelming love for the high mountains, quite in preference to the sea. I can remember crying every time we had to leave the mountains after one of our vacation stays. My first climbs began when I was five years old, up the Brocken in the Harz with my father, and then up to the Gotzenalm, and later to the Watzmann by Berchtesgaden. In fact, the walls of the building in Berlin where our flat was located seemed to me when I was seven or eight the perfect outlet for my even then climbing compulsion.

One time I tied onto my belt a strong manila rope and, knowing the basic principles of safe rock climbing as told to my father and me by one of the Alpine mountain guides - I can still hear in his deep voice, One of your four limbs only is allowed to search for and secure the next hold, and one does not cling to the wall but stays always vertical, except when the wall itself is vertical. So, of course, I began to climb the wall of our building.

Slowly I crept up the wall, which was as to be expected vertical, but with enough holds to make the task fairly easy for me. Soon I reached my friend, Joergen’s, open window on the third floor and swung myself in. Joergen was asleep on his bed, so I pulled up the rest of the rope and carefully tossed it across the bed. He did not awaken. I crawled under the bed, retrieved the end of the rope and repeated the process until Joergen was securely tied to his bed. I then climbed back out the window and returned to my own flat as though nothing was amiss.

Joergen would not tell me exactly what happened when he did wake up, but he did return my rope sometime later.

Berchtesgaden was always my family’s favorite vacation area. The lovely alpine resort near the Austrian border had moderately tall hotels but always avoided allowing buildings out of character with its mountainous setting. Also, the population did not display local arrogance over visitors as is quite often the case in other famous resorts. The locals were genuinely friendly and most tolerant, even with Berliners.

It was a magic place for a child, with the wondrous wood-carving artists, the zither playing musicians, the brown-marble craftsmen of the Kugelmuehle on the Almbach Klann, a water-driven stone mill that marvelously shaped the brown marble into perfectly round balls, and the strictly observed building codes that protected the town from losing its charm. The town is surrounded by towering mountains , including the marble rich Untersberg toward Austria’s border. These mountains are dominated by the Watzmann, next to the Zugspitze, which is famous both because it is easily accessible for climbers of limited experience or ability from the town of Berchtesgaden and also a considerable challenge for expert climbers ascending from St. Bartolomae.

In my eighth year of life we were on vacation in Berchtesgaden and my father took me to the Gotzenalm, a high meadow on the Eastside of the Koenigssee, ever the bluest and most beautiful of any lake that I have seen. The meadow was covered with an incredible variety of alpine flowers, it seemed to me, perhaps even exceeding the high meadows around Rainier. The European alpine flora is so rich in color, with many gentian varieties, alpine roses (a small type of Rhododendron), Arnika (like a daisy but with a long stem of deep yellow), and many types of bell shaped flowers that are mostly blue in color. There was also a long-stemmed gentian of a vibrant yellow. There seemed to be many red and white flowers too, whose names I do not know, or at least don’t now recall. I do of course know the most famous of all white alpine flowers, the Edelweiss, which had become the emblem of the German-Austrian Alpine Club. Today the Edelweiss and all gentians are protected in the Alps by very strict laws that impose a heavy fine on anyone who dares to pick them.

The view from the Gotzenalm down to the Koenigssee was my first thrill of actually being way up in the most awesome of nature’s creation. It was my dawning of the admiration and love of the high mountains that guided my life to an increasing degree from that point on. And it was on this ascent to the meadow that I learned a most important lesson.

I followed my father up the slope, becoming ever more frustrated in his steady but seemingly slow pace. Other parties passed us, until it seemed that every party was passing us on the long trail upwards. I was becoming embarrassed that my father seemed to have no competitive spirit, and just nodded politely to each passing group. Finally I could not help but say something. My father, continuing his measured steps, turned his head and stated calmly, Just wait, we will pass them all.

I could not understand this and stewed in my own juices as we continued slowly upward. However, it was not that long before we came to one of the groups that had earlier pushed past us so quickly. They sat on some rocks by the side of the trail, red faces perspiring and their chests rising and falling in deep huffs and puffs. They looked completely done in. I felt wonderfully exhilarated as we moved past them in our slow and steady way, and repeated this passing many times as we moved on up the trail. The even, slow, long step of my father that now impressed me so much I came to recognize as a sign of the Alpine Guides and other experienced and professional mountaineers. There are exceptions to this, those few nearly-superhuman mountaineers that have the ability to almost run up a mountain like the Whittaker twins. In any case, after this my father took on the dimensions of a giant to me.

Now days Berchtesgaden carries the historical stigma of being the place which Hitler selected for his mountain retreat, but there was of course no such association when I was a child. For me it was a fascinating heaven of white-walled chalets with their heavy wooden beams and overhanging roofs, some with large rocks scattered on top to hold them down in the sometimes-violent windstorms. There was the scaffold-like walkway through the wild Almbach Klamm, with its crashing stream below and narrow steep walls; a place some found frightening, but I adored. At one time I even witnessed the use of this stream to move logs down the mountain. It seems that local loggers would from time to time dam up the entrance to the Klamm; then, when enough logs had accumulated in the pond so formed, they would open the dam and let the logs, one by one, race down the channel. We were on the catwalk above when this happened, the big logs making a huge banging and clatter as they slammed back and forth on the rock walls of the Klamm

Another fascinating adventure for a child, or even an adult for that matter, was a visit to the salt mines. The whole area is one of the greatest salt producing regions in Europe, so that the major town is called Salzburg and the region itself is called Saltzkammergut (salt chamber area). So at 2 pm work in the salt mine will end and then tourists are allowed to visit there, my father explained. Sure enough, we were waiting with all of the other multitude of anxious visitors. First, they surprised me by dressing us all in black miner’s uniforms, with an added leather apron that I was told was for my bottom side and not the front. I was mystified by all of this, but could not help but notice the twinkle in my father’s eyes.

Suddenly an electrified mining train shot out from a tunnel and disgorged a laughing load of visitors. I watched as they unstraddled from the seats of the little train, where one person sat behind the next. We took their places and the Engineer called out, All on board! I was at the extreme of excitement as the train entered the tunnel, and, much to my surprise, went upwards inside the mountain and not down. The long trip through the tunnel finally ended when we entered a huge hall carved in what looked like absolutely pure salt. This hall is well illuminated by large floodlights, which brought out wondrous color variations in the salt.

Now the need for the leather seat aprons became clear as the Engineer invited his passengers over to two polished wooden rails that headed down into the cavern. A young woman was the first to be seated on her leather apron on the rail. The Engineer gave a shove and the woman disappeared out of sight with a long sustained scream. Of course, after this, everyone had to show his or her courage by not giving overt signs of mental anguish. I personally felt a bit of a veteran having gone down a three story fireman’s chute in Berlin, but I was very proud when my mother took on the slide and overcame a quite natural apprehension. Father was very amused, I think that he may have done this before. The slide was down a shaft maybe two hundred feet long, and I was amazed to end up at the bottom standing on the shore of a calm lake stretching out a hundred feet or more.

A boat was waiting to take us to the other side, but before we began getting aboard the Engineer, and now Guide, explained to us that these salt mines are harvested by first drilling out a central tunnel and then excavating parallel dead-end tunnels from each side of the central tunnel. Then they flood all of the tunnels until the salt is dissolved between them, turning into a brine which is then pumped to the town of Reichenhall some 14 kilometers northwest of the mines. The brine is evaporated in a factory there, and a crystal salt free of all impurities is produced.

We were now rowed across the lake to ascend a series of steps carved in the salt, and then pass down a tunnel flanked by sculptures carved from salt blocks, and finally to another slide. We went down a number of slides to other lakes deep inside this remarkable mountain, and then came to where our little train awaited us. The Guide once again became the Engineer and took us on a speedy journey back out a long tunnel until we shot from the exit into broad daylight.

Above Berchtesgadan there is a little hill called the Boschberg where sat a restaurant that was a wonderful treat. My parents took me there when I was about ten years old; I watched the zither players and was fascinated by the little hooks on their fingers that they use to play the instrument; the Bavarian dancers then began to dance about and slapped their leather pants and shoes exactly to the rhythm of the music. After dinner my parents and I started down the path which wound between wooden railed fences past farms and back to the village. It was a very pleasant evening. As we were walking and talking about the dancers and the zithers, and the twilight was coming on the mountains I noticed a sudden movement in the field of one of the farms we were passing. It was a huge pig running in our direction. It was clear that the open railings of the fence would not stop such an animal if it was determined to get on the path with us. My parents, being mostly of the city and not overly comfortable with large four-legged farm animals, decided it was best to rapidly retreat down the mountain path.

We took to our heels, but that great pig must have decided it wanted to know us more closely for it burst out on the path behind us and came running straight after us, with a particular concentration on my fleeing mother. It charged right past my father and me toward my mother, who let out a scream for help and ran faster than I could have ever imagined possible. My father was running at full speed now too, trying to catch the pig before it caught my mother, swinging his alpinestock toward the running and snorting beast. I ran as hard as I could, trying to