Eiger Accident Reports Distorted

National press reports of an accident which killed two climbers on the Eiger Nordwand last week are depressingly, as usual, riddled with inaccuracies.

Mountaineering author and OUTDOORSmagic contributor Joe Simpson was on the face at the time with his climbing partner Ray Delaney when the pair - a New Zealander and a Briton, both based in the south of England - fell to their deaths from the second ice field where they appear to have been moving without runners or a secure belay in poor conditions.

Press reports have centred on the presence of a Channel 4 film team who captured the accident on film, while collecting footage for a documentary about the Eiger. According to Simpson, the crew had their cameras trained on the unfortunate pair because the climbers they were filming were invisible at the time. No-one was looking through the camera when the incident happened.

Later the film team handed a copy of the footage to the Swiss authorities and, at the time, there was no suggestion that they had been anything other than helpful. Simpson was, therefore, surprised to read in the Telegraph that 'the leader' of the rescue team was apparently 'furious' that the original film hadn't been handed over and that he reportedly claimed: "They kept the original and I'm sure they are going to use this and make money out of this shocking footage."

It's actually highly unusual for any film company to surrender original film and Channel 4 has also been widely reported as saying that they do not intend to broadcast the footage, so at best the comment was wild conjecture.

The article later states that Simpson 'survived an accident on the north face 15 years ago', when in reality, this was the first time he's been on the mountain. The level of accuracy was even lower in London's Evening Standard. Here it claimed that the accident was 'filmed by documentary makers Joe Simpson and Ray Delaney, 42, who were sheltering below' and that the film crew was 'led by Simpson'.

In fact the film was taken by a Channel 4 team in the valley below the face, although other cameramen with two guides were on the mountain at the time. Simpson and Delaney were climbing independently and had only met the Channel 4 team led by Simon Wells, who Simpson knows, by chance on the train.

None of this, of course, changes the sad basic facts of the matter, but this sort of sloppy, badly researched journalism erodes the credibility of the national press generally and raises the question of how much else you read is just plain wrong.

Simpson has since talked to the mountaineer and writer Stephen Venables for a piece due to be published in the Times newspaper tomorrow, Wednesday, and will also be writing about the incident for OUTDOORSmagic in the next few days.