The north face of the Eiger has held a lingering fascination for me from the moment I finished reading Heinrich Harrer’s seminal book The White Spider at the age of 14. This gripping account of the early ascents gave me nightmares. Only a week earlier I had been taken rock climbing on a small limestone crag on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors: when I closed the book, my head filled with grim black and white images of men fighting for survival in a ferociously steep and unrelentingly dangerous landscape, I should have been put off mountaineering for ever.

I could not imagine any more frightening way to die. Avalanches, rock fall crashing past like gunshots, lightning blasting through storm-lashed days, men pinned down unable to escape - why would anyone want to place themselves in such a nightmarish arena? I had no idea.

I knew one thing: I wanted to find out. Despite the terrible hardship and awful deaths, I was forcibly struck by the fact that these men had chosen to be there. They couldn’t all be idiots, could they? There must be something very special about mountaineering for these people to think that such risks are worth it. I became a mountaineer inspired by the most compelling and horrific mountaineering book I have ever read.

One story in particular haunted me. It recounted the harrowing predicament of Toni Kurz, a young German mountaineer, whose efforts to conquer the Eiger left him twisting in space between the dead body of his friend above and the swinging corpse of another companion below.

Eleven years after reading The White Spider I found myself hanging helplessly from a rope, battered by avalanches and storm winds, badly injured, and about to plunge into a nightmare every bit as bad as Kurz’s. In Touching the Void I described how, in 1985, I was descending a mountain in Peru with Simon Yates when I broke my leg in a fall. In an attempt to save my life Simon was lowering me on a rope when I dropped over an ice cliff and began to drag Simon to his death. He cut the rope and I fell to certain oblivion, but managed to survive by crawling back to base camp 3½ days later and 4Ç stones lighter.

I know what it feels like to die alone, and although my story had a happy ending, I feel that Kurz’s outcome should have been mine. At 23 he was two years younger than me. In truth, I should have died on that rope in Peru. I feel a special empathy for him that inspired me earlier this year to take part in a film reconstruction of that ill-fated expedition.

Even when being lowered by helicopter in the comparative safety of a harness the sombre north wall of the Eiger presents an intimidating menace. Few climbers approach the foot of the face without an aching sense of dread. The intricate line of the classic first ascent route involves 13,000ft of climbing – almost two miles uphill on hands and knees – over some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable. The north face has a well-earned reputation as a killer.

In July 1936 Kurz, a newly qualified mountain guide from Bavaria, was a member of an expedition making the second attempt to conquer the north face. His three companions were his friend and fellow guide Andreas Hinterstoisser and the Austrians Edi Rainer and Willy Angerer.

They succeeded in reaching the “Death Bivouac”, the high point attained the previous year by Max Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer - so called because it was here they had frozen to death. On the first day of their climb Hinterstoisser discovered the key to the climb and brilliantly unlocked this rock barrier that gave them access to the heart of the face.

When his three companions safely followed him across the glistening shield of rock they retrieved the traversing rope that Hinterstoisser had so expertly fixed in place. It was an action that would seal their fate: from that point onwards the door back to safety was now locked behind them.

Days later they were forced to retreat, nursing Angerer who had suffered head injuries. Despite desperate efforts, Hinterstoisser couldn’t climb back across the traverse. He spent hours in exhausting attempts to scrabble sideways across the glassy shield of rock that was now coated with a hard sheen of ice. The men were trapped. They began to abseil directly down the great rock barrier that lay between them and the easier ground of the lower face. Somewhere down on the icy rock wall lay the sanctuary of the railway gallery windows, pierced through the mountain wall. They almost made it.

As Hinterstoisser and his three companions slid down through the tumult of avalanches and whistling stones, Von Allmen, the sector guard stationed at the gallery windows, opened the huge wooden doors and looked out into the storm, searching for any sign of the retreating party. He was delighted to hear a cheery yodel.

Two hours later, when no one had arrived, he looked out of the window again. Conditions were more ghastly than ever, with mists rising from the abyss below as stones and slides of snow rushed down from the black emptiness above. This time there was no carefree acknowledgment to his call, only the despairing cries of one man – Kurz – shouting for his life.

His companions were dead and he was hanging helplessly on the rope, spinning in space. Swept off by an avalanche, Hinterstoisser had fallen the entire length of the face. Rainer had been pulled tight against his anchors and had died asphyxiated by the pressure of the rope crushing his diaphragm. Below Kurz, the lifeless body of Angerer swayed in the wind.

I have hung helpless in a long, dark night and I remember being overwhelmed by the loneliness that Kurz must have felt. You are pierced by the sense of being abandoned, while tentacles of cold creep through you.

The thought of just going to sleep and letting go is very seductive. Yet he endured as he swayed on a slender rope, swinging backwards and forwards as the stones sang by and the icy gale lashed at him. Above him the rope played across the frozen corpse of his friend while beneath him the cord trembled as the wind swung Angerer’s corpse back and forth.

Kurz displayed phenomenal endurance, strength and mental stamina in his struggle to live. That was all it had become – a lone figure fighting for his life, able to draw on nothing but his willpower. A frantic attempt to rescue him ended in failure. He died almost within arm’s reach of the guides. The photograph of his hanging corpse will remain in my mind for ever.

Ironically I really began to fall out of love with mountaineering while halfway up the north face of the Eiger in 2000. In six attempts I have always been driven back by weather, and this was no exception. Forced to take shelter during a storm, Ray Delaney and I became mute witnesses to a tragedy when two young climbers whistled over our heads to fall 3,000ft to their deaths.

I’ve had some close scrapes but the pitiful sight of their bodies far below us almost unmanned me. Five friends have died in avalanches. Osteoarthri-tis in my badly fractured right knee, ankle, heel and a smashed left ankle with the added problems of lower back and neck injuries didn’t help matters much.

To me the essence of climbing was a mixture of excitement and apprehension – the attraction and repulsion that come when you stand by the beckoning silence of great height. I realised there were other things I had to do with my life – the books I wanted to write, the cottage I was doing up in Ireland, rivers to fish.

I had not climbed for three years when I returned to the Eiger to film The Beckoning Silence, my film about Kurz. It is not simply a mountaineering narrative: it is an everyman story. It speaks of the enduring qualities of humanity – determination and steadfastness in extremis, loyalty and selflessness among friends, the most extraordinary display of raw courage and a nobility of valour that seems sometimes very distant today.

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