White Spider History Eigers North

The North Face of the Eiger mountain in Switzerland is synonymous with extremity, hardship and danger. Nicknamed Mordwand (‘Murder Face’ in German) it witnessed the death of over 50 climbers who attempted it is towering 1,800 metre face since 1935. The Eiger’s North Face is considered one of the uttermost challenges in alpine mountaineering.

The basi successful assent was achieved by a quartet of climbers from Austria and Germany. Among them was Heinrich Harrer, the unparallelled Austrian skier, climber and explorer who is known by most from his book Seven Years in Tibet. Despite of being amazed by an avalanche near the summit, the four managed to brace themselves and came out unhurt. The assent took them four days and three nights, for the duration of which they bivouacked on the fearsome face by hanging suspended from ropes or crouching on little rock ledges. In his magnificent book The White Spider Harrer describes this miraculous original ascent, as well as giving gripping reports of all the Eiger attempts from 1935 until 1963.

Despite of that initial victory and a good deal of subsequent ones, the shadow of death was never far from the mighty face. The firstborn pair to badly try the assent froze to death at 3000 metres altitude. A year later in 1936 a party of four perished while attempting to descend down the face after bad weather conditions marred their traveling upward. Three of them fell to their deaths, while the fourth tragically and dramatically passed away mere inches away from his rescuers. A knot in the rescuing rope did not fit through his snap-link and his last frantic attempts proved fatal: he passed away of sheer exhaustion. Countless tragedies followed, yet the Eiger’s fearsome reputation kept calling on the bravest of souls to pit their accomplishments versus it.

Not only it is dreadful steepness and it is tremendously difficult pitches, but likewise and peculiarly the ceaseless bombardment by stone and rock breaking off from the face and it is unpredictable avalanches higher up near the summit have made the Eiger into the supreme test for the world’s most qualified climbers. The weather poses another formidable and ever-unpredictable foe. Many have had to beat a retreat when one of the Eiger’s illfamed storms set in. That climbing the Eiger’s North Face is no summer picnick shows clearest in the shared vow by all those who reached it is summit that they would never climb it a second time. It is considered a once in a lifetime experience.

One must read Harrer’s book to get a true and first-hand glimpse of the arduous and frightening, yet life-changing and illumining experience of mountain climbing. Overcoming the obstacles and challenges came across on the face brings courage, obligation and wisdom and make the mountaineer into a more finish and competent humane being. As Harrer himself writes,

“My memory of the Eiger’s face has many times given me the strength, the forbearance and the selfassurance to cope with apparently hopeless and dangerous situations, and helped me to believe in life at times when all the circumstances seemed most hostile to life itself.” Heinrich Harrer