The north wall of the Eiger Mountain, an awesome and storm-battered crag rising in the Bernese Alps, has long fascinated the world's best mountain climbers. Almost every attempt to conquer it has resulted in defeat or disaster: eighteen men have died in the twenty assaults that have been made on it. The Eiger's formidable history includes one of the strangest episodes in the annals of mountain climbing -- the 1957 expedition of the Italians, Corti and Longhi, and the Germans, Nothdurft and Mayer. One man alone, Claudio Corti, returned from that expedition, and he did so only with the help of some fifty of Europe's finest climbers, assembled virtually overnight in a spectacular rescue attempt. Corti and Stefano Longhi were climbers who depended more on strength and endurance than on skill and knowledge. Nothdurft and Mayer were among the best European mountaineers, but they attacked the Eiger north wall almost whimsically, in the midst of a vacation, with inadequate preparation or planning beforehand. Neither team knew the other was making the attempt.