Description: The north wall of the Eiger, 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. 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. What followed was a maelstrom of accusations and confusion about what really happened on the world's most dangerous mountain. Here is the whole fascinating story.