Claudio Corti

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Claudio Corti was a mountain climber from Olginate, Italy. He is most famous for his 1957 effort to climb the Eiger's Nordwand during which his party was stranded and a massive rescue operation was organized. Corti was successfully rescued, but his partner, Stephano Longhi, was not. The German team of Gunther Nothdurft and Franz Meyer, who met the Italian team on the face, successfully summited but died on the way down.

Corti, who spent over a week on the face, became the center of a lot of controversy. He could not produce a coherent story about what happened on the face and he did not express a lot of feelings for the dead German climbers. People naturally became suspicious of him, but he was cleared later on when the dead Germans' bodies were found.

The rescue operation itself is known as one of the greatest of all time. The operation crossed international boundaries and included many men. The local Swiss guides got a lot of criticism for not responding. However, it was their policy not to respond to parties trapped on the face because they generally thought it foolish to climb the face and that a rescue would risk the lives of the rescuers.

Jack Olsen investigated the rescue and interviewed Corti in the early 60's. He felt that "death followed Corti like a faithful puppy dog" and that Corti was not a bad man but "a simple man who made the mountains the mode of his existence".