The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer is a series of gripping tales about the successes and failures on the notorious North Face of the Eiger, from the first fatal attempt in August of 1935 through 1963. Harrer, author of Seven Years in Tibet, recounts his own success as part of the first team to climb the North Face. His descriptions are meticulously focused on accuracy and are a salute to climbers everywhere. His efforts to remain objective emphasize his intent to warn those who might come along to try the Eiger North Face. If I’d read this when I was twenty, he’d have warned me away in an instant. Reading it now tells me that I would have made the right decision. Despite or perhaps because of his measured approach, The White Spider makes for excellent reading.
Modern readers will likely cringe at the circa 1958 description of women climbers who nonetheless retain their “femininity,” and Harrer’s ubiquitous use of Man as a measure of strength and fortitude. Fortunately these are only brief stumbling blocks to prose that withstands the test of time, and a book that stands as an important historical description of what it was like to climb with nailed boots, frozen hemp rope, and cumbersome rucksacks. He writes about those who viewed climbers as having “diseased minds” for attempting the North Face and counters with the authority of a perfectly sane person who accomplished the task. Harrer writes with precision and brings alive the ungodly North face and those searing, otherworldly moments between life and death.
The rise and fall of fascist nationalism lurks in the in the background. While Harrer doesn’t write directly about the war, its influence is clearly felt with his denial that he was sent by “the state” to climb the Eiger, and his focus on the development of the “International Rope.” (Harrer himself was very briefly a Nazi, something he clearly was not proud of, but fortunately was apprehended two days before the war started, sending him on his Tibet journey.)
While clearly a book with appeal for climbers, anyone interested in courage, honor, foolishness, life and death struggles will enjoy The White Spider. Harrer’s writing is clear and timeless, and at times almost humorous. “When the fall of stones was over, Ludwig’s skull was undamaged.”
