I happened to miss this programme on the TV last night, but thanks to the joys of BBC iPlayer, I managed to just watch it this afternoon, whilst the rain is coming down in Llanberis. Now as a devout cragrat, and non-mountaineer, I was worried that a progamme on the North Face of a Mountain that I am very unlikely to ever be bothered to climb because it doesn’t even rank in my list of rotues to climb before I get too old, would be uninteresting.
However, as a piece of TV it was a very engaging piece of a modern perspective on the mountain put into the context of the history of teh wall. At christmas time I watched the Nordwand, a kind of german version of what may or may not of happened on the face on one of the main tradegy’s, but because it was a film it had a massive chunk of ‘artistic licence’, in fact it was almost all make believe except a few key facts and the names of the climbers.
What Eiger – Wall of death did was take that history, and tell it through the words of very important british mountaineers, who have so absorbed the stories and accounts from books, first hand encounters with the wall and meeting the great and the good of Eiger ascentionist, that the story almost came alive.
It was in my mind a shame that they missed one trick which was the inclusion of the story of the Eiger Solo, a great film that was made about the Eric Jones solo ascent. Despite this ommission, the programme was entertaining, and it was great to see Kenton Cool and Neil Brodie getting paid our licence fee to sit around below the Eiger and say, “No, weather too bad for us to go otu there!”
A real must for any climber who wants to know a littel more about the hstory of our great game!