Throughout the book of White Spider, I felt a sense of politeness and humbleness that possessed each climber that in one way or another, had made a successful climb whether big, small, or losing their lives in pursuit of this ascent. These feelings of respect to past climbers and past explorers who had dared to…

The combination of skill, luck, and determination can propel a person to accomplish incredible feats. It can be the first ascent of the north face of the Mont Blanc or building the first airplane and test flying it. In either situation, the luck of having good weather never hurts. Yet, these would not have been…

“That’s a question that baffles me. It perplexes me. I can’t justify it. I can’t say its for a good cause. All I can say is, look at the history of exploration; it’s full of vainglorious pursuits” was said to a reporter by Jon Krakauer (Barcott). With this in mind and this semesters themes, “vainglorious…

It is interesting to think of the many different dramatic accounts of mountaineering there really are out there. Really, there is no lack of abundance. People have ample opportunities to read these accounts of climbing mountains that are so extreme, that for some reason or another speak to people on another level because of the…

Drama on the Eiger The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer depicts many tails, both failures and achievements, as climbers over the last century attempted to climb the north face of the Eiger. As Harrer is one of the men to climb this route successfully and have lived to tell the tale, he writes to commemorate…

For this week we had to read White Spider – a mountaineering classic and it has been rather helpful to me at least in decoding the enigmatic question we have all been asking since seminar began: why climb? White Spider does not hold all of the possible answers to this question. No, it is a…