"There is no life at the top" - Heights and depths with Hilda Sterczer, wife of Zsolt Erőss mountaineer
It has been more than eight years since the mountaineer Zsolt Erőss, known as the Hópárduc (Snow Leopard), failed to return from Kangchenjunga, one of the Himalayan peaks. His wife, Hilda Sterczer, with whom he climbed to over 8,000 metres three times, was left alone with their two young children and experienced the depths after the heights. Their adventures together and Hilda's process of grief will be brought to the screen in spring 2022 by director Sándor Csoma, who has also been filming in the Austrian Alps for six months with his crew. Following the steps of the movie Heights and Depths, we had a conversation with Hilda Sterczer, mountaineer and director of the Hópárduc Foundation (The ‘Snow Leopard’ Foundation), about these two inseparable perspectives.
I was approached by several people who wanted to make a film about Zsolt's life, but luckily none of them materialised. I didn’t like the earlier concepts, but we resonate with director Sándor Csoma and think along similar lines. We both feel it a fateful encounter, the way God brought us together. There are no surprises in the film, everything was agreed with me. It is important for both of us that the story is of value to others.
How does it feel to see the actors in your own clothes, with your personal pieces of equipment?
It’s been eight and a half years since Zsolt's death, I have come to terms with his loss. What's most interesting is that Zsolt Trill, who plays my husband, looks very much like him, and there's another woman in my dress next to him (laughs). It's strange to look at a situation we were in, but it adds to the authenticity of the film.
I admire your selflessness in cheering on the mountaineers. Most recently, Csaba Varga returned from Kancsendzönga. Isn't life unfair to give others the joy of returning home, something that you could not have?
It is a complex issue. Climbers essentially do not compete. It doesn't matter who reached the top first. They reached it, and that's all that counts. On the other hand, everything changes, and it's great if others can do it, can experience it. I met Csaba Varga at Zsolt's climbing camp, where he spent only two days. We found out later that he became a climber because we had such an impact on him. These are experiences, impulses that make the sympathy even stronger. It's especially good if a person for whom Zsolt is a role model reaches the top. It’s a kind of continuation.
Life is like that, every moment something passes and something is reborn. For those of us who are here, our goal is to work on the continuation.
Three times you could scan the world from eight thousand meters. What is it like to experience heights and depths as a climber and in life?
Mountaineering is like getting a cancer diagnosis. You have a chance to survive, and you have a chance to die. It makes you think about what life is worth. Normally, it's the person who gets the diagnosis who thinks about it. The mountaineer is running into it voluntarily. On a mountain, especially an 8,000m mountain, we feel the fragility of life, the value of a human being. Among the highest mountains in the world, we are surrounded by enormous natural forces. We experience how great the Creator must be if the created world is so vast. Both depth and height are present, at the same time in the life of the climber. I am vulnerable, and as a believer, I feel I must rely on God because there is no other. Just as the horizon narrows in a valley between mountains, so too in life there are situations like this. For me, I was able to come to terms with the loss of Zsolt when I buried him. Usually, the funeral is the beginning of grief, but for me it was the end of letting go. It was like coming out of the water. I experienced everything opening up and having perspective again.
What was your perspective when everything was falling apart?
When news came that he was missing, reporters asked me how I was cheering for my husband. It was my task, as the wife, to pronounce that he had died. It was not only that they did not understand me, I also had to hold up.
When Zsolt lost his leg, I experienced what the media is like. It loves two things: blood and tears. Zsolt did not give the media the pleasure of seeing blood, and I did not give it the pleasure of seeing tears.
I put a wall around myself and didn't let the feelings in. I worked on this with my psychologist for a year, and it took another year before I could allow myself the pain. Unfortunately, there is no getting away from it; there is no recovery until there is facing the pain. Then the healing can begin. The perspective was the foundation we started. I had to mold myself and Zsolt together, and it was good to see that we were united by the shared set of values.
You have heroic strength for difficult moments. Did you inherit it or did you consciously work on it?
I think I might have inherited it. I've experienced in my life before that there are difficult moments. I have always known exactly that I do what I must in the present and later I would look back and see how difficult it was. Somehow I can't allow myself to fall apart, I persevere. That's probably why I became a mountaineer. A mountaineer can never fall apart in a critical situation. Once we arrive at the safe base camp, we can stress and talk it out there, but for now, we have to do it and that's it. Somehow it's an internal thing. I suspect that my Swabian ancestors who left the Swabian homeland went with that mentality.
So you didn't even take the time to ask yourself the why and the excruciating "what if..." questions?
Oh, of course, I did. Going through the events in your head, as if it was a movie, is very typical of a mourning process. I went through it eight hundred times, but I couldn't find a version in which Zsolt could have survived. It's important to go through it, but you need a psychologist who will say once, 'OK, you've been dealing with this for weeks now, dear Hilda, you should stop. The problem is that this film always has the same ending'. And that was enough for me.
If you don't have one person to stop you, you can spend a lifetime listing the whys. For me, there were no more whys. Some things don't get answered, but you have to be able to accept that.
As a mother, you not only had to come to terms with yourself, but you also had to help your children do the same. How could you help them in doing so?
My daughter was four years old at the time, she was also seeing a psychologist. I tried not to change our lives; I played with her as I had done before. It was important that she would not be treated as the poor little orphan girl in kindergarten. She still lives with his absence but my one-and-a-half-year-old son didn't even notice it, there seems to be no trace of it in him. For him, his mother was there both before and after. Because we talked about it and managed to come to terms with it, there is no taboo in the family. For years my daughter has asked me what daddy would do if he was here.
Are they also attracted to the mountain, or do they think about it with fear?
They are poor "underprivileged" children because I always loved being in the mountains, even after Zsolt's death. In the summer of 2013, I promised myself to go camping in the Alps. I took my four-year-old and one and a half-year-old and took them camping and hiking. For me, it was always a way to relax. To this day, on holidays we go to Austria and the Tatras, and my son goes uphill so fast that I can't keep up with him. I'm taking him to wall climbing training today because he loves to climb walls.
Do you consider yourself a contented, happy person?
Very much so. The problem is that we can't appreciate what we have until we lose it. That's how it works for some reason. I am very grateful to God for bringing me out of the depth and teaching me to see the world differently. My fiancé and I have been together for four years and I see his positive qualities much better. I can appreciate my children and life more.
You had to experience the depth to appreciate what is really important. We always seem to reach the heights from below.
When I get to the top, I look around and think I want to climb that and that, too. When I reach something with the foundation, I'm already thinking of new plans. I'll get excited again and again, and then it all comes crashing down on me.
I realized that I need peace, and that I can only see the depths when there is peace. I was looking for that peace in mountaineering.
On the mountain, there is peace and self-reflection. This is something that is sorely lacking in the world. Everyone wants to reach high, but the truth is that there is no life at the top. Life is not really there, it is in the base camps.
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