Frédéric Marmillod was born Christmas eve, 1909, in Naters, a small village in the canton of Valais situated on the Rhône river. When still a child, his Italian mother and French-Swiss father moved the family down the valley to Lausanne, returning to Vaud, the canton in which the Marmillod name had originated.

"Ever since earliest youth I have loved mountain climbing," Frédéric later wrote. "As a student I belonged to a small group of friends who were always ready, summer and winter, to go into the mountains. Of course we always went without guides, which allowed us to accumulate a great deal of experience. We climbed in every corner of the Alps, although as residents of Lausanne we naturally preferred the Valais, just as residents of Geneva prefer the Mont Blanc ranges." (A1)

One of these youthful excursions ended in tragedy. Having underestimated the length of the tour, the exhausted boys were descending, anxious to reach home before their parents began to worry. At a rest stop one of them fell asleep and slipped down a snowfield to his death. The accident left a deep impression on Frédéric. He believed it could have been avoided had the party been roped, and from then on he paid careful attention to safety in the mountains.

In those days the minimum age for entrance to the Swiss Alpine Club was eighteen. Frédéric badly wanted to join to receive discounts at the huts scattered throughout the Alps. He couldn't wait and was admitted shortly after his seventeenth birthday by writing on the application the year but not the month of his birth.

Frédy, as his friends called him, showed great enthusiasm for climbing during his compulsory military training, serving with the mountain troops, and he also earned an Instructor's Diploma from the Swiss Ski School.

Around 1930, Germaine, one of Frédy's two sisters, approached him with a request. A school friend of hers was falling behind in math class. Would he tutor her? Frédy obliged and was introduced to Dorly Eisenhut. Under his instruction Dorly soon graduated from math to mountaineering.

The youngest of four children, Doris Eisenhut was born November 9, 1914 in Trogen, canton Appenzell, in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Her father was a judge who died when she was nine, whereupon her mother moved the household to Montreux, and later Lausanne. Dorly grew up in an atmosphere of discipline and authority, as befitting a proper German-Swiss family named Eisenhut (the name means "iron hat").

Mrs. Eisenhut rented rooms to teachers and students who came to western Switzerland to study French. One of these borders was Marguerite Forster, an American cousin of Dorly's who recalls those times as "happy, carefree years that can never be recaptured."

"We had a large apartment with a beautiful view of the Savoy Alps across the lake in France and the Dent du Midi above the Rhône Valley at the eastern end of Lake Geneva. Dorly had a great many friends. We went hiking and skiing, played tennis, and swam in the lake. We did a tremendous amount of walking, mostly up and down hill. In the winter we would take a train to Les Avants and walk with skins on our skis for several hours, ski around all day and then ski down as far as the snow lasted. Sometimes we could ski to within a few miles of the house, take off the skis and carry them the rest of the way."

"Mrs. Eisenhut was quite strict and worried a lot about us. Looking back, I think it must have been hard for her to handle two teenaged girls who were always wanting to go somewhere!"

"Dorly was good at everything she did: sports, dancing, school work, piano playing. She had a wonderful, outgoing personality, full of enthusiasm and joie de vivre. She had many admirers, but never took any of them seriously until Frédy came along. She was an attractive girl, slim, athletic, wholesome looking. She was not vain about herself except that she was proud of her straight white teeth and strove to keep a slender figure, and she hated having to wear glasses. She would go without them whenever possible. Her greatest asset and most likable trait was her charm and the fact that she was always interested in 'you' and what you and your family were doing. Frédy was very sociable and liked a good time, too. They made a great pair and were truly made for each other."

"Dorly and Frédy were enthusiastic about the really steep, rockwall climbing and I can remember her exhilaration when she would return from one of those expeditions exclaiming: 'C'était fantastique!'" (A2)

As the world depression bore down on the Swiss economy, Frédy enrolled at the University of Lausanne to study chemical engineering. During his studies he applied for a job at Sandoz Laboratories, the chemical and pharmaceutical company in Basel. He was told to come back when he had his doctorate in hand, or in other words, there were no jobs, or perhaps the company simply wanted to test his interest.

Frédy received his doctorate in 1934, and by now he and Dorly were engaged and tired of waiting. Walking down a street in Lausanne they saw a house they liked, found a vacant apartment, told the landlady they had little money, got married and moved in. Now Frédy needed a job. He went back to Sandoz. Would he be willing to learn Spanish and move to South America? The answer was yes.

Sandoz Laboratories is a world leader in the manufacture of dyes and pharmaceuticals, although in 1935 when Frédy joined the company it was much smaller than today. Frédy's entire career was spent in the pharmaceutical division where he was engaged at various times as either a chemist or commercial representative. While training for the transfer overseas, he worked on a team carrying out research into medicinal drugs. As a matter of curiosity, 1935 was the same year that Albert Hofmann, a Sandoz chemist working on a totally unrelated project, initiated an investigation into ergot alkaloids that grow parasitically on rye and other grains. Years hence, Hofmann's research provided Sandoz with one of its best known products: lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD.

As husband and wife the Marmillods climbed for three years throughout the Alps, from the Meije to the Dolomites. They loved to sail, whether on Lake Geneva or the Mediterranean. On one occasion they combined sports and sailed to Corsica for a rock climbing holiday. Their boat was just large enough to hold them, two friends, and four rucksacks.

Blaise de Perrot, a friend of Frédy's from his military service, climbed with the Marmillods before they moved to South America, as well as various times over the years. He writes an admiring portrait of them.

"Among the great enthusiasts of alpinism, Frédy and Dorly formed, I believe, a pair unique to the genre of climbing couples. Mountains were an integral part of their lives. They could not live without them, as if their love for them were an unquenchable desire. If they accomplished a difficult ascent, an exploit if you will, they spoke little of it. Vanity and boasting were not their style. Only one thing counted: enjoyment of the outdoors and the beauty of the high mountains, to which they were so attuned."

"I don't believe I've ever met a couple so unified by the same passion. It was hardly thinkable that one would climb without the other. Together they experienced a kind of completeness in the mountains. They avoided crowds and, whenever possible, stayed away from a hut full of tourists on Saturday night; it was much nicer to spend the night alone in a hut, or to step onto a summit without encountering another living soul!"

"On occasion I joined Frédy and Dorly for a climb and did so with delight. What a privilege to follow in Frédy's footsteps, to watch him lead a difficult pitch, climbing with confidence and calmness, so precise and agile in his movements, and also so attentive to the progress of his companions, gracefully giving them a hand when he saw that they were having difficulty. And what a flair for finding the best way!"

"If we were overtaken by bad weather, or if technical difficulties turned out to be greater than foreseen, I never saw Frédy become impatient or upset. That's how he was. And besides that, what joie de vivre and humor!"

"Dorly had none of the air of a crack female climber. Quite to the contrary she was very feminine, almost frail, but beneath this appearance, what energy, tenacity and love for climbing the highest peaks at the side of her husband!" (A3)

La Paloma

Nevado Juncal

At Christmas they ascended Nevado Juncal (6110 meters, third ascent). Seen from the trans-Andean highway twenty kilometers to the north, Juncal forms a beautiful white curtain which ends at the right in the dark walls of Alto de los Leones. From certain places to the west it resembles a fireman's helmet, hence its popular name, Casco de Bombero. The Marmillod's ascent, while not technically difficult, was long and exhausting, requiring four days on the north glacier.

In the eyes of local climbers, Juncal established the Swiss couple as a pair of rising stars. The promise of this auspicious debut was soon fulfilled; the Marmillod's next climb catapulted them to the front rank of Andean mountaineers.