The two position infantry battalions were tasked to man and hold the fixed positions of the Alpine Wall.

This Alpine wall is terrifying, and Mr. Krakauer considers it a matter of "luck" that the weather forced him down.

The orders went out immediately; fortress repositories would be built on any insurmountable rock, atop the cliffs of some great alpine wall, on the far banks of murderously swift rivers.

From it one could look west to the alpine wall of the Nemesis Range: jagged teeth backlighted by the fertile greens and blues of Crius, its northern lakes and southern plains curving up behind the mountains.

By 1984, when I went to Switzerland to climb a notoriously dangerous alpine wall called the Eiger Nordwand, Linda and I had advanced to within millimeters of splitting up, and my climbing lay at the core of our troubles.