The White Spider

The White Spider (1959; with chapters added in 1964; original title: Die Weisse Spinne) is a non-fiction book by Heinrich Harrer that describes the first successful ascent of the infamous north face (Nordwand) of the Eiger, a mountain in the Berner Oberland of the Swiss Alps, with sections devoted to the history of mountaineering in the area.

Well known for both its technical difficulty and its extreme hazards from avalanches, falling rock, and severe weather, the North Face is also notorious for the many accidents and tragedies that have befallen its climbers, for which it has been given the colloquial epithet Mordwand ("murder wall"), a play on Nordwand ("north wall").

Harrer describes in particular the tragedy of the 1936 attempt by Edi Rainer, Willy Angerer, Andreas Hinterstoisser, and Toni Kurz, all of whom died during the climb; Harrer's own climb, which was the first successful ascent of the North Face; the strenuous but successful climb of Hermann Buhl, Gaston Rébuffat, and their seven companions in 1952; and the catastrophe of 1957, when two Italians, Stefano Longhi and Claudio Corti, joined two Germans, Günther Nothdurft and Franz Mayer – which resulted in eight bivouac nights on the wall of the mountain for the Italians and the death of all but Corti.

[2] In the book, Harrer also describes the media frenzy that ensued after each of the tragedies because the whole of the mountain's Nordwand can be watched by telescope from nearby Kleine Scheidegg.

The title of the book is derived from a spider-shaped ice field high on the north face of the mountain, towering above the town of Grindelwald.

Nordwand (north face) of the Eiger , with a diagram showing the route established during the events written about in The White Spider . The Spider ice-field is located on the peak's upper left.
The eponymous "White Spider" on the Eiger's North Face