The white spider
The White Spider dramatically recreates not only the harrowing, successful ascent made by Harrer and his comrades in 1938, but also the previous, tragic attempts at a wall of rock that was recently enshrined in mountaineer Jon Krakauer's first work, Eiger Dreams. For a generation of American climbers, The White Spider has been a formative book--yet it has long been out-of-print in America. This edition awaits discovery by Harrer's new legion of readers.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
4mentions
4people
2015–2025years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Wade Davis was a speaker at the 2012 American Alpine Club meeting at the Ford Assembly Plant in Richmond, CA. He had a line that stuck with me: death is the price we pay for living. Side note, Davis is mentioned in at least one episode of the X-Files, owing to his work on zombies in Haiti.
These aren't Everest specific recs, but if any of you are looking for mountaineering reading:
_The White Spider_ by Heinrich Harrer
_The Beckoning Silence_ and _Into the Void_ by Joe Simpson
_Eiger Obsession_ by John Harlin. Part of my enjoyment came from my familiarity with the geography of the book.
_Solo Faces_ by James Salter, fiction, loosely based on Gary Hemmings and Royal Robbins.
- Great suggestions. I've read "The White Spider" multiple times. Every time I imagine climbing the Eiger in hobnail books, my palms sweat. A lot.
"K2: Triumph and Tragedy" by Jim Curran is an excellent book about the 1986 disaster.
I can also highly recommend the recent film "Broad Peak" directed by Leszek Dawid about the Polish mountaineer Maciej Berbeka.
- If you liked "Into Thin Air" you should read "The White Spider" about Heinreich Harrer (who was the inspiration for Brat Pitt's character in "Seven Years in Tibet")
- The spider is a particularly subtle joke: The White Spider is the name given to a snowfield high on the N Face of the Eiger, crossed by the original (1938) Heckmair Harrer route up the face. Heinrich Harrer's book about the first ascent is called "The White Spider"
