The White Spider: The Classic Account of the Ascent of the Eiger

"This is another big contrast, it’s closer to Bonatti than to Shepherd. Harrer was German. The book centres on the north face of the Eiger, and the history of climbing that iconic face. In a way, I guess you could compare it to The Living Mountain in that it focuses on a particular mountain place. Given the histories of these Eiger ascents, this is a compelling book, it’s thrilling. There’s a whole sub-genre in mountaineering literature: the disaster narrative. You know, where things have gone wrong? Exactly. Into Thin Air . There’s also Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void . But I really love The White Spider because it captures a particular moment in climbing history as well, when they were pioneering these routes, using old equipment, and generally doing things that were so unknown—something that Bonatti writes so beautifully about as well. I think that is one of the big changes in recent mountaineering: the element of going out into the unknown isn’t so present. Our equipment and technology and knowledge has progressed so much that there aren’t anything like as many uncertainties to handle now compared to what they were doing. Yes. This book is such a page turner. I mean, the north face of the Eiger has a train that runs right next to it, that will take you all the way up. When a rope failed, the climber was next to the railway and the people in the train could see this climber but they couldn’t get to him to save him. It’s an amazing story and it’s sometimes truly horrifying. You’re going out into something that has such a fine edge, you know? It’s an extreme environment you’re going into. It’s high risk—although you always work to manage the risks and to minimise them as much as possible. It’s high consequence. Making a mistake is not like making a mistake at home on flat ground. I mean, definitely, yes, there’s something in you that makes you want to go out and meet that edge and work with it—for whatever reason. I don’t know. It feels real in a way that other parts of life sometimes don’t."