Eiger Death Rate: the North Face “Murder Wall” and its real toll

The Eiger, at 3,967 m (13,015 ft), is not an especially high mountain, and it stands in the Bernese Alps above Grindelwald and Kleine Scheidegg. What sets it apart is its North Face: an 1,800-meter wall of loose limestone and ice, concave enough to gather every falling stone and passing storm, and long regarded as one of the hardest and most dangerous faces in the Alps. Roughly 64 climbers have died on it since serious attempts began in 1935. That figure is small next to the volume peaks, but it is not a per-climber rate in any comparable sense, because so few people ever set foot on the wall, and those who do are almost always expert alpinists. The Eiger’s toll is a story of concentrated difficulty and objective hazard, not of crowds.

The North Face is dangerous for reasons that skill can only partly offset. Its concave form funnels rockfall and icefall down onto climbers, and the limestone is notoriously loose. The wall faces north, so it stays cold, holds ice, and sees little sun to stabilize it. Above all, the Eiger makes its own weather: storms build with terrifying speed, and a climber high on the face can be trapped by whiteout, spindrift avalanches, and plunging temperatures within an hour. The route is long and committing, with famous obstacles like the Hinterstoisser Traverse and the White Spider ice field, and retreat can be as deadly as advance. These are objective hazards, the kind that have killed careful, world-class climbers, not only the unlucky or the unprepared.

It is worth being clear, because the reputation of the North Face colors the whole mountain: the standard way up the Eiger is the West Flank, a moderate alpine route that is far less dangerous than the Nordwand. It still demands mountaineering competence, and it carries the usual alpine risks of rockfall, exposure, and fast-changing weather, but it is not the wall that made the Eiger infamous, and it accounts for very few of the mountain’s deaths. When people speak of the Eiger’s death rate, they are almost always talking about the North Face. Anyone considering the mountain should be clear about which Eiger they mean, because the two could hardly be further apart in difficulty and danger.

The Eiger’s number sits near Nanga Parbat’s and Annapurna’s, but the meaning is different again. Those Himalayan giants kill a large share of the few who attempt them; the Eiger North Face kills a smaller share of an even smaller, more elite group, on terrain of extreme technical difficulty. It is a reminder that a death toll only makes sense alongside how many people climb, and how. See the full picture on our death rates by mountain hub, and the Alpine context in the great Alps peaks compared.

Published: July 18, 2026 · Last verified: July 18, 2026 · next scheduled review after the 2026 season. Part of the Global Summit Guide Death Rates by Mountain series.