Word: eigerly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...years, tourists poured into the little Swiss Alpine town of Kleine Scheidegg to gawk at a grisly spectacle. Hanging by a rope high up on the north wall of the Eiger (Ogre) was the body of a man, swinging free in summer, frozen to the wall in winter. It was the grim finale to a disastrous assault on the Eiger made by two Germans and two Italians in 1957. The retelling of their ordeal by Jack Olsen, a senior editor of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, is an engrossing study of the dark drives that make men climb...
...Claudio Corti, 29, the Eiger was an obsession. An Italian truck driver who had had many brushes with death on mountains, he was "Ahab-like" in his determination to scale the Eiger's north wall, a 6,000-ft.-high slab of rock raked by avalanches and lashed by storms. The Eiger can be scaled with only moderate difficulty from the west or south. But mountaineers, with typically contrary bravado, are inevitably lured to its north wall, where more than 100 people have managed to make it to the top and 25 others have been killed in the attempt...
...Prayer for a Miracle. A zealot who scorned careful preparation, Corti could find no experienced climber to go with him up the Eiger. He had to settle for a good-natured, 44-year-old factory worker, Stefano Longhi, who had never made a strenuous climb. Without so much as glancing at a map of the route, Corti and Longhi impetuously started climbing. Part way up they met two Germans also making the climb and joined forces. Trouble began. One of the Germans developed stomach cramps, and Longhi ran out of breath...
...boots armored with three layers of outer leather; he bought special plastic helmets and tough, extra-thin ropes. Keeping their plans a tight secret, the men practiced all winter on rocky, ice-coated walls. A fortnight ago the four slipped out of their hotel before dawn and tackled der Eiger...
...climbers were still a long way from their goal. The next night, with temperatures down to 12° below zero, Hiebeler dozed with his feet dangling in space. As daylight came, skiers gathered far down below to stare through telescopes at the four specks crawling upwards on der Eiger. With surprising ease, the four surmounted "the spider," a notorious, four-pronged glacier that caused the death of Italy's Stefano Longhi...