007 Book location: Hahnenkamm / Young Bond: By Royal Command (2008)

Bond book: Young Bond: By Royal Command (2008)
Place and location in the book: Hahnenkamm, Kitzbühel, Austria
What happens here in the book: Bond climbs aboard a gondola on the Hahnenkamm-Bahn for the 1,500 metre ascent to the summit and discuss with Hannes Oberhauser.
Visited by 007 Travelers: July 2024

“So it was that on Saturday morning James found himself climbing aboard a gondola on the Hahnenkamm-Bahn for the 1,500 metre ascent to the summit. He was with Hannes, a master called Mr Eastfield and a group of ten boys. They stood in the narrow gondola clutching their skis and chatting excitedly.

The car latched itself on to the moving cable and they jolted out of the lower station and lurched up the slope. They passed through the outskirts of town and up over the tops of the houses, their roofs covered with thick white snow. There was no sound apart from a low bass hum punctuated by the occasional rattle as they went over one of the supporting towers. Soon they were climbing much more steeply between impossibly tall pine trees that shot straight up towards the sky.
“Every year there is a famous race down the mountain.” Hannes told James. “The Hahnenkammrennen. Perhaps the most important skiing race in the world. It is a very tough course, and very dangerous, but don’t worry: it is not the course we will be taking today. It will be great fun.”

“James looked out to see that they were now so high they were above the tops of the pine trees, which clung to the almost sheer side of the mountain, sprouting from between the jagged rocks. Looking out through the rear windows it was easy to imagine that they were thousands of feet in the air, as if the gondola was airborne and flying up the slope like a glider. Below them Kitzbühel had become a toy town. Unfortunately the weather had changed this morning, though, and the sky was grey. It had the effect of turning the view into a black and white photograph. All colour seemed to have been drained from the scenery. The pretty doll’s houses of Kitzbühel looked gray, the snow was white and the pine trees a dense black.

A gust of wind whined through the windows and the steel cable zinged as they passed an empty gondola coming down the other way.

A few minutes later they cleared the top of the slope and left the trees behind. The land flattened out into rolling pillows of snow, criss-crossed by animal tracks, probably left by chamois, the mountain goat native to the Alps. And then they arrived at the top station and there was a flurry of activity as they clambered off and carried their skis out into the daylight. It was noticeably colder at this altitude. James felt the wind bite into him. He arranged his black cotton scarf in such a way that it partially covered his face, and tucked it carefully around his collar so that no icy fingers of draught could snake down his neck.”

It was another world up here. The top of the Hahnenkamm was flattened so that there was a panoramic view of mountains all around – the Kitzbühler Horn, Resterhohe, Pengelstein, Gaisberg. It was breathtaking. James stood for a moment just taking it all in. The scenery was perfect, and perfectly untouched. He felt like God on the first day of creation looking out over his handiwork.”

“The Oberhausers’ farm lay on the lower slopes of the Hahnenkamm. They had an orchard and twenty cows, which were laid up for the winter in a large barn underneath the back of the house. They were kept warm here, and in turn warmed the house. Hannes explained turn in the summer Helga looked after the cows while he made a good living as a mountain guide for the many walkers and climbers who came to the area.”

The farmhouse was built into the side of the mountain and had a raised veranda at the front reached by wooden steps. It was entirely built of pipe, stained almost black by preservatives, and cut into pretty shapes around the doors and windows and along the eaves. There was more wood for the fire neatly stacked along on side beneath the wide, pitched roof.”

“James sat in the sun on the top of the Hahnenkamm with his back against a rock. The clean air filled his lungs. The buildings in Kitzbühel were hidden from him. He might be the only person in the world, looking at a scene that had remained unchanged for millions of years. The petty squabbles of men meant nothing up here.

From his vantage point he could see the vast range of other mountains spread out around him. To the south, the more distant peaks of the higher Alps were dusted with snow, but here they were a vivid emerald studded with black rocks and the darker green of the pine trees. The sky that stretched over his head in a great endless sweep was deep, deep blue. As he had ridden up alone in the cable-car, and take control of it, like a child playing with toy houses and cars. From up in the gondola it had all looked so clean and simple and ordered. That must be how God saw things. From a distance all looked well with the world.”

Charlie Higson: “Young Bond: By Royal Command” (2008)

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