So vast was it, so steep, so mighty, that it seemed more than a mere mass of rock and ice. More than a mere mountain. It seemed a new world rising up out of the old world that was its mother; a world with a life and meaning of its own; beautiful and menacing, beckoning.

So stood the Citadel, the greatest mountain in Switzerland, and below in the village of Kurtal, men looked at it and shook their heads. For the Citadel, they knew, was unclimbable. Not only was it higher than man had ever reached, but it was guarded by evil spirits—spirits that had taken the life of Kurtal's greatest guide, Josef Matt, fifteen years before. Only sixteen-year-old Rudi, Josef Matt's son, washing dishes in the hotel, dared dream of challenging the Citadel, and he could tell no one of his dream, for he knew how men would mock, and that his mother would despair. Teo Zurbriggen himself crippled on the Citadel and now chef in the hotel, alone understood and tried to help.

Then, in a fateful encounter on the Blue Glacier, Rudi met the Englishman, Captain Winter, who also believed that the Citadel could be conquered. Rudi knew that he must join the Englishman's expedition, and plant on the summit the red shirt his father had worn on his last climb. He must go in spite of his mother, in spite of his uncle, in spite of the jeers of the hated guide Emil Saxo from the rival town of Broli.

Inevitably, the day came when Rudi joined the party making the great assault. Then, foot by foot, by rope, ax, and handhold, the reader follows the party upward over rock, ice and snow to a climax as magnificent and terrifying as the sight of the Citadel's peak piercing the sky.

From the dust jacket