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Facing the Mountain that Killed My Father
Simon and Schuster
March 2007
On Sale: March 6, 2007
304 pages
ISBN: 0743296907
EAN: 9780743296908
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
In the 1960s an American named John Harlin II changed the
face of Alpine climbing. Gutsy and gorgeous -- he was known
as "the blond god" -- Harlin successfully summitted some of
the most treacherous mountains in Europe. But it was the
north face of the Eiger that became Harlin's obsession.
Living with his wife and two children in Leysin,
Switzerland, he spent countless hours planning to climb,
waiting to climb, and attempting to climb the massive
vertical face. It was the Eiger direct -- the direttissima
-- with which John Harlin was particularly obsessed. He
wanted to be the first to complete it, and everyone in the
Alpine world knew it. John Harlin III was nine years old when his father made
another attempt on a direct ascent of the notorious Eiger.
Harlin had put together a terrific team, and, despite
unending storms, he was poised for the summit dash. It was
the moment he had long waited for. When Harlin's rope broke,
2,000 feet from the summit, he plummeted 4,000 feet to his
death. In the shadow of tragedy, young John Harlin III came
of age possessed with the very same passion for risk that
drove his father. But he had also promised his mother, a
beautiful and brilliant young widow, that he would not be an
Alpine climber. Harlin moved from Europe to America, and, with an insatiable
sense of wanderlust, he reveled in downhill skiing and
rock-climbing. For years he successfully denied the clarion
call of the mountain that killed his father. But in 2005,
John Harlin could resist no longer. With his nine-year-old
daughter, Siena -- his very age at the time of his father's
death -- and with an IMAX Theatre filmmaking crew watching,
Harlin set off to slay the Eiger. This is an unforgettable
story about fathers and sons, climbers and mountains, and
dreamers who dare to challenge the earth.
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