Anderl Heckmair, a German mountain guide who led the first team to conquer the notorious north face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, has died, his publisher said Wednesday. He was 98.

Heckmair died Tuesday at a hospital in Oberstdorf, Germany, publisher AS Verlag announced.

Born in 1906, Heckmair already had tackled a series of demanding peaks – such as the northwest face of Italy’s Civetta and France’s Grandes Jorasses – before he teamed up with Heinrich Harrer, Fritz Kasparek, and Ludwig Voerg for the attempt on the Eiger in 1938.

The north face, which towers over the resort of Grindelwald, has been dubbed “The Ogre” by climbers. The sheer 6,000-foot wall of crumbling limestone, with the summit at 13,000 feet above sea level, is considered one of Europe’s greatest challenges to mountaineers.

Heckmair’s team reached the summit on July 24, 1938, after a 3 1/2 -day climb, propelling him to fame at home. The Nazi regime held up the group’s feat as “proof of German superiority.”

Heckmair took a job as a mountain guide at a Nazi elite school in Sonthofen, but he did not join the party. According to biographers, he was classed as politically unreliable by the regime in 1940 and was later sent to the eastern front.

Heckmair later credited the “sharpened senses” he developed through climbing for helping him survive.

After World War II, Heckmair worked as a mountain guide and youth hostel manager in the Bavarian Alpine resort of Oberstdorf. Germany’s professional mountain and ski guides’ association was founded at his initiative in 1968.

Heckmair wrote “The Three Outstanding Problems in the Alps” (1949), and “My Life as a Mountaineer” (1972).

More than 700 people have climbed the Eiger’s north face since Heckmair’s ascent, but 50 others have been killed attempting it.