![]() Some of the boys were making their way down the hill, and Schweizer stumbled across two lying motionless in the snow. Some of those who had collapsed were almost completely covered in snow. By now the trekking group was strewn across a wide stretch of terrain. They put on skis and headed out towards the road. Schweizer summoned a party of rescuers, hammering on the window of the Gasthaus zum Hof, the village inn where he had seen that lanterns were burning and people were playing cards. Like most villagers, Eugen Schweizer had spent the day at home, and was bracing himself to go out to meet the weekly bread delivery when two boys, bareheaded and dressed in short trousers, knocked on the door, and spluttered in broken German: “ Zwei Mann, krank am Berg” (Two men sick on the mountain). It took about an hour for the two boys to reach a farmstead on the outskirts of Hofsgrund. Keast sent two of the older boys to follow the direction of the bells down the hill, leaving most of the others on the slopes trying desperately to revive those who had collapsed. On that bleak April evening, the 7pm chimes of Hofsgrund’s church bells were carried on the wind. Hofsgrund was a typical Black Forest village of just 300 inhabitants, consisting of one inn, a church and a scattering of farmhouses with steeply pitched slate roofs, where animals and humans shared living quarters over the long winters. Three more boys were in great difficulty. By now Eaton and two of the youngest boys had to be carried. Instead they were pushed westwards and they quickly became disoriented. Had they moved eastwards into the wind, they would have arrived at the safety of the summit station within less than a mile. When they left the protection of the rock and came out on to the ridge, the bedraggled group was exposed to the force of the wind. He was given an orange and a piece of cake and told to “buck up”. The first boy to collapse was Jack Alexander Eaton, the school’s 14-year-old boxing champion. The boys, now weary, cold and wet, took a gruelling route up the Kappler Wand, a 600-metre, 70% gradient face As a result the boys, now weary, cold and wet, took a gruelling route up the Kappler Wand, a 600-metre, 70% gradient face. This meant he failed to realise that between them and the village rose the steepest and most dramatic ridge of the Schauinsland. Unfortunately, the map Keast had received from the School Travel Service in London, which had organised the trip, had a scale of 1:100,000, meaning major routes were shown, but not the gradients or the small pathways. ![]() But Keast decided that to go back would be more perilous than continuing towards the nearby village of Hofsgrund, where he hoped to find shelter in a hotel or peasant’s house. He had not yet started to panic, but the slippery, slow-going conditions prompted the teacher to stop and question each boy as to how he felt. Steiert offered to help the party return to Freiburg, or to bring them to the shelter of the miners’ hostel, where they would have found beds and food. ![]() At around 3.15pm, they passed the local postman, Otto Steiert, who urgently warned Keast against continuing the ascent. They advised Keast to take a path to the left of the valley. On an open hillside, they met two woodcutters heading home because they could not continue their work. The landlady advised him that the paths and signposts would be buried in snow, at which the schoolmaster shrugged and said they would “brush it off”.īy now they were forced to kick their way through the snow. Keast stopped at an inn to ask for directions. With snow now falling heavily, and having lost the path and circled back on themselves, they were soon behind schedule.
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