The Icarus Ascent

Seven Men. Seven Stories. One Mountain.

The Icarus Ascent: Ghosts of the Matterhorn is a haunting reimagining of one of history’s most infamous mountaineering tragedies. On July 14, 1865, seven men reached the summit of the Matterhorn—only three returned. In Mike Lewis’s powerful novel, each member of the ill-fated expedition is given a voice, revealing personal struggles, buried secrets, and conflicting truths behind the broken rope that sent four men to their deaths.

From the embittered Edward Whymper in his final years, to the tormented guides haunted by ghosts, and the naïve young climber who became the scapegoat of history, The Icarus Ascent takes readers inside the minds of those bound together by ambition, pride, and fate. As timelines shift between 1865 and the decades that follow, a deeper, more human story unfolds—one that questions what really happened on the mountain, and why.

Experience a gripping historical novel where memory, guilt, and myth collide on the slopes of the Matterhorn.

Available now in print and digital. Step onto the rope—if you dare.

Excerpt from the book

Chamonix, September 1911

Damn and blast it! I stand before you, yet you appear somewhat askance. Do you wish to catch flies? Let me surmise that I am not, perhaps, the hale and hearty fellow you envisaged, not the erstwhile boy conquistador of the sixties Alps, framed within this hotel room doorway? Not the grand old man of the Golden Age of Mountaineering who, I daresay, knocked off more virgin Alpine peaks than newspaper columns you yourself have mustered?

Ha! Though a mite befuddled with drink, I see you had the good sense to bring with you a bottle; but pray tell me, why just the one? Is this all the miserly expenses account of a newspaper scribe such as yourself can stretch to? And after your lords and masters have dispatched you all this blessed way from dear old London town at not inconsiderable cost, I'd wager?

My dear young fellow, if you do indeed wish to hear the true and unabridged story of the conquest of the Matterhorn, then I fear it will take considerably more champagne to liberally loosen the Whymper tongue. And let me surmise: for all my past deeds, written works and lectures and extensive explorations in the Andes, Greenland and Canada, ‘tis the fall on the Matterhorn, the deaths of Michel Croz, the Reverend Charles Hudson, Lord Francis Douglas and Douglas Hadow, that you wish to enquire about, is it not?

By all means bring yourself in, though it might be advisable not to discard your jacket for the moment. I need to appraise you more closely before deciding whether I like the cut of your jib. So many others who have come knocking on my door have duly found themselves sent packing with their tails between their legs. I suppose I shouldn't be greatly surprised that the fall on the Matterhorn remains the subject of much lurid interest and wild speculation after all this time …

So, now we are settled, let me be quite frank for a moment and explain why such discourse may prove a welcome respite from my current travails. I left England in August for my annual round on the Zermatt-Chamonix circuit to promote and update my guidebooks and collect revenue from their sales – a wearisome trip that at least afforded me the opportunity to escape the attentions of Mrs Edith Whymper who has been doing her utmost to enrage and distress me these past few months.

My estranged wife's sole aim is the acquisition of money, it pains me to say, and I have already lost £2,000 over the wretched woman. Marry in haste, repent at leisure, what? I was two days short of my sixty-sixth birthday at the time of our nuptials five years ago; Mrs E Whymper just twenty-one. What on earth can have possessed one to have formed a romantic attachment to such a young filly, I keep enquiring of myself. What in heaven's name was I thinking? Did the fear of entering old age alone and unloved blind one to all reason? Never was the saying, there is no fool like an old fool, more apt. And there cannot have been many as foolish as I.