The challenge was formidable by any standard: a winter ascent of the Eiger's storied North Face, a crumbling, concave, 6,000-foot limestone wall cloaked in black ice. When Sue Knott set out to climb the 13,025-foot Eiger, the 11th-highest peak in Switzerland's Bernese Alps, she would also enter history as the first woman to climb the route in winter.

"We began at 2 a.m., scrambling up with our loaded packs," Nott says of the successful 2003 ascent with climbing partner John Varco. "The weather was stable, and the first pitch past the Ice House brought us to the bottom of the second ice field, a point slightly more than halfway up the wall. We then made an 1,800-foot rising traverse across the second ice field, before ascending a few hundred feet of mixed terrain to the top of a buttress called the Flatiron. Then it was onto the Death Bivouac, the first protected place to spend the night—the same ledge where Max Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer had expired in a storm during the first attempt on the Nordward. We dug out a small ledge to sleep on and anchored in for the night."

The following day, Varco and Nott rose early and negotiated a number of exciting pitches before bivying out on the Brittle Ledge, where they spent an uncomfortable night. "We were cold and strung out and I shivered all night—just part of the alpine climbing experience."

"Next morning we pulled it together and turned the corner to a full view of the Traverse of the Gods, a series of bands covered with very loose rock fragments clinging to the vertical face, but not quite solid enough to trust."

Progress over the next couple of days was hampered by worsening weather, poor ice conditions, and the falling debris from a team of climbers causing problems on the lower sections of the mountain. Eventually Nott and Varco were forced to burrow into an exposed ridge, where they spent a nerve-wracking night waiting out another raging storm.

"At 4 a.m. we decided to get going or we'd freeze to death," remembers Nott. "The weather eased a bit, and we slowly started working our way up Mittellegi Ridge, kicking steps and plunging tools into the deep snow. The conditions were terrible: unconsolidated snow that barely bonded to the rock. We struggled to stay connected to the mountain."

In a decidedly surreal encounter the next day, Nott's steely determination came to the fore when she was left eyeballing a rescue helicopter sent to pluck climbers off the mountain.

"We worked our way across the ridge when we heard the unmistakable sound of a large chopper. I turned around and there it was, loaded with a full rescue crew and hovering about 20 feet away. The pilot made eye contact, and I waved and smiled. Even though I was extremely worked, I knew I could finish the climb. When we realized how close we were, our engines became pumped with new energy, our muscles went back to work, and we climbed the final steep ridge to the summit. Then, there we were, standing on the sharp edge of the Mittellegi Ridge and the Eiger summit. Yippee, we did it."

An understatement if ever there was one.