1930

In the 1930s, the finest mountaineers in Europe set their sights on what were called the six great north faces of the Alps. One by one they succumbed, not without large doses of failure and tragedy. The north face of the Matterhorn was climbed in 1931 by a pair of German brothers who bicycled to the mountain from Munich. In 1933, the overhanging north face of the Cima Grande in the Dolomites fell as the crowning achievement of the visionary Italian, Emilio Comici. Two years later, the north face of the Aiguille du Dru, near Chamonix, was climbed by a French team that finished a bold line pioneered by the Swiss. Nineteen thirty-seven saw another Italian, Ricardo Cassin, spearhead the first ascent of the northeast face of the Piz Badile, in an epic storm-plagued push that cost the lives of two of the victors, who died of exhaustion on the descent.

By 1938, only the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses, also near Chamonix, and the north face of the Eiger in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland remained unsolved. That August, Cassin would lead a pair of friends up the Walker, in a dogged assault that took 82 hours of climbing in frigid conditions. The first ascent of the Eiger Nordwand, only a few weeks earlier, remains one of the great landmarks in climbing history, culminating a campaign more deadly than mountaineering had ever before seen.