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Dark, cold, forbidding, steep: the Alpine north faces are the epitome of extreme mountaineering. This is particularly true of the north faces of the Eiger, Matterhorn, Grandes Jorasses, Piz Badile, Grosser Zinne and Aiguille du Dru - in the 20th century they embodied the goals that a mountaineer had to have achieved in order to be considered part of the elite. To this day, these faces form a popular and at the same time extremely dangerous arena for extremes.