IT TOOK YEARS for all three to line up. In 1999, after warming up by traversing the Matterhorn, Mark and I arrived in Kleine Scheidegg with our eyes on the Eiger. But conditions on the mountain and in my head were all wrong. Mark and I were back in Switzerland in 2003, intending to climb the Eiger after putting up a new route on Mont Blanc. But a huge storm shut us down on Mont Blanc, and then rain blanketed Switzerland. The next year, a cold front put the Eiger out of commission yet again. I was visiting friends in Leysin, pretending I was despondent about the weather (while secretly being half relieved), when a call came in from an old friend, Stephen Venables, with whom I'd discussed the Eiger years before. He'd been hired to provide a storyline for a film about the Alps. Would I be willing, he asked, to climb the Eiger for an Imax movie?

The question floored me. I told him I didn't know. My goals on the Eiger were so personal that only a handful of people even knew I was thinking about it. Doing a movie was the last thing on my mind. One problem with a movie would be that I could no longer keep my intentions secret, especially from my mother. But the film would be a tribute to my father, and I knew he would appreciate it, if only he could know. And it would be a legacy for Siena, who was about the same age I'd been when Dad died. I would have to talk it over with Adele before deciding.

Mom had retired to Portland, just an hour from our home in Hood River. After Adele gave her concerned blessing, it was time to bring my secret dream into the open with Mom. She had suspicions already. While I had never brought up the Eiger with her, Mark had written about it. His Outside column about the Mont Blanc climb mentioned our follow-up plan, the prize we'd been warming up for: the Eiger. Mom had asked me about it, and I'd told her an even softer version of what I'd told Adele: "Ah, well, you know, if the conditions had been perfect on the Eiger, I suppose we might have had a look, but you know how Mark needs to tell a good story."

Mom was not amused to learn that I really did have my sights on the Eiger. And even less did she like fixing a date that she could worry toward. But neither she nor Adele ever tried to stop me, in part because I told them that my partners on the attempt would be the Germans Robert and Daniela Jasper, two of the best climbers in the world for such a route, and that we would climb it only under the safest conditions. It wouldn't do for me to die in a family film. In the end, I had their best wishes if I really felt I had to do it.

And I did. In the private recesses of my soul, immune from the pressures of responsibility, I'd always felt that of all the mountains in the world, there was only one I had to climb.

Finally, here I am.
It's September 2005. Robert and Daniela are on the rope in front of me. We've been waiting two weeks in Kleine Scheidegg for conditions to get right, and now they are. Above I can make out many of the named features of this, the 1938 Route: To my left, the Shattered Pillar reclines precariously against the wall; above, the Hinterstoisser Traverse; the three numbered icefields follow, famously peppered with falling rocks; then we'll reach Death Bivouac, where Dad spent most of the last two weeks of his life; the Ramp will try to block us with its notorious Waterfall Chimney and Ice Bulge pitches; the Traverse of the Gods, leading to the Spider, will allow me to look down on where Dad's rope broke; then, if all goes well, we'll climb the Exit Cracks to reach the summit.

The rope comes tight and my eyes return to the immediacy of climbing. Eiger rock feels cold to my bare hands. There is a long, long way to go.