John Harlin

Who was John Harlin?

John Elvis Harlin II was an American mountaineer and US Air Force pilot who was killed while making an ascent of the north face of the Eiger. Harlin graduated from Sequoia High School and Stanford University, and after establishing himself as a top-rank mountaineer with the first American ascent of the Eiger North Face's Original Route in 1962 and the American Direct on the Dru, he conceived of climbing the Eiger by the direttissima route. Two thousand feet from the summit his rope broke and he fell to his death. The Scottish mountaineer Dougal Haston, climbing with Harlin, successfully reached the summit with a German party following the same route, which was named the "Harlin route" in his honor. The story of the climb was recounted in the book Direttissima: The Eiger Assault by British author Peter Gillman and Dougal Haston. Whilst working as a school teacher in the Swiss village of Leysin, John founded the "International School of Mountaineering" in 1964.

Harlin's son, John Harlin III, who was nine at the time of his father's death, is also a mountaineer and editor-in-chief of the American Alpine Club's American Alpine Journal.