The Climb Up to Hell

A Harrowing True Story of Survival on the Eiger’s Deadly North Face

The Germans call it the Mordwand. The Murder Wall. The north face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps is a vertical mile of unstable limestone, perpetual avalanches, and weather that can turn lethal without warning. Eighteen climbers had already died attempting it. In August 1957, four more went up.

They started as two separate teams. Claudio Corti and Stefano Longhi were Italians from Lecco, relying on strength and endurance. Günther Nothdurft and Franz Mayer were among Europe’s finest mountaineers, so confident they began the climb almost casually, in the middle of a vacation. The teams met on the face and joined forces. None of them would make it back the same way they went up.

On the ninth day, after a series of catastrophes that left the climbers battered, frostbitten, and running out of options, Longhi fell thirty meters and was left dangling from a rope on a tiny ledge, unable to climb up or down. Rescuers could communicate with him but could not reach him in time. He died of exposure while the world watched through telescopes from the valley below.

The two Germans pushed for the summit, apparently succeeded, and then vanished. Their bodies would not be found for four years.

Corti alone was rescued, pulled up the sheer face on a steel cable by a German guide strapped to his back, in what became one of the most celebrated rescue operations in mountaineering history. Then the accusations began.

As one reviewer wrote: “To experience the Eiger one can climb the mountain, stand in the graveyard near the base of the North Wall, or read The Climb Up to Hell.”

Jack Olsen, two-time Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling author, brings the same precision and humanity he brought to his celebrated true crime work to one of the most gripping true adventure stories ever written.