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The six great north faces of the Alps are a group of vertical
faces in the Swiss, French, and Italian
Alps known in
mountaineering for their difficulty, danger, and great height. The "Trilogy" is the three hardest of these north faces, being the
Eiger, the
Grandes Jorasses, and the
Matterhorn.
List
The six great north faces are (sorted by the date of the
first ascent of the north face):
Three of the six great north faces — the Eiger, the Matterhorn, and the Grandes Jorasses – are considered by climbers to be much harder to climb and are known as 'the Trilogy' (or the "North Face trilogy").
Milestones and records
The first climber to have ascended all six north faces was
Gaston Rébuffat, a French alpinist and mountain guide, who chronicled his feat in his 1954 work, Etoiles et Tempêtes (Starlight and Storm).[1]
The first climber to ascend all six north faces in a single year was the Austrian
Leo Schlömmer, from the summer of 1961 to the summer of 1962.
Ivano Ghirardini was the first person to climb the "Trilogy" in winter, solo (1977–78), and
Catherine Destivelle was the first woman (1992-93-94) to complete the solo winter trilogy.[2]
With the introduction of the concept of
enchainment, the next challenge was to climb all three faces in one outing, a race eventually won by
Tomo Česen in 1986 at the age of 26, although nobody witnessed his feat;[3] after that
Christophe Profit [
fr], who achieved the feat between 11–12 March 1987 in a time of 24 hours.[3]
From December 2014 to March 2015, during a project known as "Starlight and Storms",
Tom Ballard climbed these six north faces solo, being the first person to complete this feat in a single winter season without a support team.[4] A film chronicling this project, Tom, won several awards at international film festivals.[5][6]
On 15 August 2021, with his ascent of the
Petit Dru in 1 hour 43 minutes, the Swiss climber
Dani Arnold completed a ten-year project to make the fastest solo speed climb of all six faces. He had previously set speed records on the other five faces, with
Ueli Steck's 2015 solo of the Eiger north face the only current faster ascent (when Arnold climbed the Eiger north face in 2011 in two hours and 28 minutes it was the fastest at that date).[7][8]