The Eiger: Wall of Death

It’s home to Europe’s largest glacier, the world’s highest railway and its most famous rock face, known ominously as the ‘Death Wall’. This is the story of one of the world’s most challenging mountains. In 1858, three men stood on the peak of the Swiss mountain Eiger, the first people to conquer it. If the Eiger were any ordinary mountain, then this might have been the summit of its fame. But since that climb the reputation of the Eiger has only grown. The setting of the mountain is in itself central to any ideas of tourism; at its feet is Interlaken, where the package tour and skiing holiday was born. On the neighbouring peak is Europe’s highest railway station, an epic feat of engineering and a monument to an alpine tourism craze. But it’s the Eiger’s North Face, the Nordwand, that has assured it legendary status. Because while the summit was conquered in 1858, the North Face was not – and wouldn’t be for another eighty years. As other mountains such as Everest become ever more accessible, the Eiger becomes harder each season. As the climate warms and the permafrost melts, the North Face is becoming increasingly lethal to climb. Here, countless climbers have fallen to their icy graves, defeated by the vertical mile of shattered limestone rock and polished ice fields. The names on the face speak of its grizzly and heroic history – the Death Bivouac, the Difficult Crack, Brittle Ledges and the Traverse of the Gods. Yet despite its grim reputation, the Eiger remains ‘The Big One’, the one all mountaineers want to tame. The first nine people to make the attempt in the 1930s died trying and the Alpine Journal called it ‘an obsession for the mentally deranged’. And yet once it had finally been conquered in 1938 by two Germans and two Austrians, the race was on to pioneer new routes or simply get to the top faster. It’s a race which has seen brilliant feats of climbing – times of under three hours to the summit – but which has cost over 60 lives. In this dazzling film, the rich history of the North Face is told through interviews with mountaineering greats such as Chris Bonington, Ueli Steck, Stephen Venables, and Andy Cave, combined with a contemporary journey up the North Face by top British climber Kenton Cool. Drawing on rich archive footage, amazing time-lapse photography, stunning cinematography and dramatic narrative, it captures the very essence of the Eiger, its unique personality and its impact on the people who climb it and live in its awesome shadow.