Rapid Transit

Inside the Swiss-watch world of alpinist Ueli Steck

In 2007, after several attempts, Ueli Steck finally broke the speed record on the original route up the Eiger north face, climbing solo and belaying himself only for three short sections. No one was really surprised. It is Steck’s backyard mountain (he lives only 30 minutes away), and he had been progressively inching closer to the record, soloing the face for the first time in 2004, in 10 hours, and cutting that time nearly in half by 2006. The Eiger speed record dates back to Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler’s famous 10-hour sprint in 1969, and such hotly contested records are usually broken by a few minutes, or even seconds. Steck, however, slashed 46 minutes off the previous record, set by the Italian Christoph Hainz in 2003, with a new time of 3 hours 54 minutes.

Yet the most remarkable detail of this remarkable achievement came to light after the climb, when Steck visited the Swiss Federal Institute of Sports Magglingen to test his physical fitness. Their finding: Steck was out of shape!

Steck had trained harder for the Eiger climb than he ever had in his life, and harder than most professional climbers ever do. He concluded that he—and elite alpine climbers in general—were mere amateurs when it comes to training. World-class cyclists, swimmers, and runners enhanced their training with everything that modern science had to offer. Climbing was stuck in the Stone Age.

Instead of being discouraged, Steck took the Institute’s finding as inspiration: It proved there was immense untapped potential in his body. He decided to dedicate an entire year solely to preparing for another Eiger attempt. Employing a team of experts, including a dietician, fitness trainer, and mental coach, Steck fashioned a state-of-the-art regimen precisely targeted at the various demands of the route. At almost 1,800 vertical meters, the Eiger north face is nearly twice as high as Yosemite’s El Capitan, and, due to its meandering nature, the classic 1938 route involves over a mile and a half of climbing. The terrain is tricky and variable, with 5.8ish rock, often rotten or covered by snow, interrupted by short ice fields.

It has become cliché to write that this or that climber trains like an Olympic athlete, but in the following year, Steck actually did. Working with his experts, Steck devised a step-by-step plan to optimize his fitness and mental readiness. The team calculated that Steck would need to trim down to exactly 141 pounds during the ascent week—a weight optimal for a high performance but not sustainable for more than a few days. Climbing for pure pleasure had to be put on hold. For endurance training, Steck ran the equivalent of the north face’s vertical gain almost daily—always at a carefully calculated heart rate. When he climbed, it was carefully monitored and geared toward a precise training goal. Each step and each day was logged and analyzed, and the plan adjusted accordingly. Day after day, for a year.

As a Swiss youth, Steck grew up fascinated by the Eiger north face, visible in the distance from his childhood home. His initial climbing exploits, at around age 12, were modest outings with a friend and the friend’s father at a local crag. The only notable detail of this otherwise common beginning is that Steck never toproped— his very first climbing experience was on the sharp end. Gym climbing came next. Steck soon abandoned his other childhood hobbies and gained a spot on the junior national climbing team.

However, he recalls, “I quickly got bored of gym climbing,” and soon sport climbing took a back seat to the lure of the high peaks. At 17, Steck climbed his first alpine testpiece: the east pillar of the Scheideggwetterhorn, considered by many to be as daunting as its better-known neighbor, the Eiger. Looking up from the bottom of the 30-plus-pitch, 5.10ish, thoroughly committing alpine route, Steck recalls thinking, “Now this is a real mountain.” He and his equally novice partner, Markus Iff, dispatched the route without the usual bivy, returning to the Grindelwald train station just five minutes after the last train departed. A cold night outside the station did not discourage Steck and Iff from setting their sights at the logical next step: the Eiger.