steering away from the pure historical narrative of mountaineering and its implications of masculinity and imperialism, The White Spider provides us with a two in one punch of a book as it functions as a historical narrative of the Eiger and the many people that tragically died trying to climb this iconic mountain. It functions as a memoir as it tells the account of Heinrich Harrer and his first successful ascent of the North Face of the Eiger. Within the book he expresses his feelings of how mountaineering is more than just an attention-grabbing ego booster of a sport, but rather stresses the qualities of learning from people’s past mistakes, teamwork, respect for the mountain, as well as an ultimate test of character and prime human extinct of perseverance in the face of adversity. However unlike past books that we have read which romanticize and make mountain climbing a majestic and spiritual experience (which no doubt it is) Harrer almost writes this book as a cautionary warning to all of those who fancy themselves, climbers and mountaineers. He writes about how the negligence of the failed ascents could have been avoided in most cases, and that climbing and extreme mountaineering is not something to trifle with unless you are mentally, physically, and do your due diligence before heading out on a climbing expedition. Harrer does not write this book for glory but rather out of respect to future and past climbers.

Contrary to what Harrer’s book expresses, the Barcott article discredits those who seek to write about their climbing experiences thinking them as ego grabbing opportunist trying to fund their next big climb. He is not necessarily wrong as many if not most mountaineering books have some sort of great obstacle or setback, or tragic event to occur in order to provide a fantastic story of survival and perseverance in the eyes of death. But Harrer books is more of a cautionary historic tale about not only the first ascent of the Eiger but the amount of respect he has for the mountain due to its deadly

To wrap things up, I found that the White Spider also brought about an interesting question. Did the Eiger and the sheer accessibility of the mountain and its location right within the towns of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen start the controversy of extreme mountaineering? Throughout the book, Harrer recounts that the locals of the towns could see the climbers attempt to summit the north face from the safety of their homes, many of whom watched through their telescopes. The Public could see as the clouds swallowed up these climbers only to presume their fate was death. Of course this led to mass amounts of publicity which ultimately lead the Eiger to become off limits to climbers (this would only add to the lore of the mountain) but none the less its hard to compare the amount of publicity that the Eiger received for its climbing accidents until much farther into the future of the sport. Lastly, I think that Harrer unintentionally brings up this question in his book. But should young men and women be risking their lives in extreme mountaineering expeditions? This question seems to be a main focal point of our discussions throughout the last few weeks and again we see its relevancy here in the book the White Spider.