Life Or Death On A Mountain
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| Author | : Ed Viesturs |
| Publisher | : Crown |
| Total Pages | : 354 |
| Release | : 2010-08-03 |
| Genre | : Sports & Recreation |
| ISBN | : 0767932609 |
A thrilling chronicle of the tragedy-ridden history of climbing the world's most difficult and unpredictable mountain, by the bestselling authors of The Mountain and No Shortcuts to the Top “Gripping . . . reveals a good deal about the rarefied noble-gonzo world of high-altitude mountaineering.”—The New York Times Ed Viesturs, one of the world's premier high-altitude mountaineers, explores the remarkable history of K2 and of those who have attempted to conquer it. At the same time, he probes the mountain's most memorable sagas in order to illustrate lessons about the fundamental questions mountaineering raises—questions of risk, ambition, loyalty to one's teammates, self-sacrifice, and the price of glory. Viesturs knows the mountain firsthand. He and renowned alpinist Scott Fischer climbed it in 1992 and got caught in an avalanche that sent them sliding to almost certain death before Ed managed to get into a self-arrest position with his ice ax and stop both his fall and Scott's. Focusing on seven of the mountain's most dramatic campaigns, from his own troubled ascent to the 2008 tragedy, Viesturs crafts an edge-of-your-seat narrative that climbers and armchair travelers alike will find unforgettably compelling. With photographs from Viesturs's personal collection and from historical sources, this is the definitive account of the world's ultimate mountain, and of the lessons that can be gleaned from struggling toward its elusive summit.
| Author | : Sherry B. Ortner |
| Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
| Total Pages | : 396 |
| Release | : 2020-03-31 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 0691211779 |
The Sherpas were dead, two more victims of an attempt to scale Mt. Everest. Members of a French climbing expedition, sensitive perhaps about leaving the bodies where they could not be recovered, rolled them off a steep mountain face. One body, however, crashed to a stop near Sherpas on a separate expedition far below. They stared at the frozen corpse, stunned. They said nothing, but an American climber observing the scene interpreted their thoughts: Nobody would throw the body of a white climber off Mt. Everest. For more than a century, climbers from around the world have journ-eyed to test themselves on Everest's treacherous slopes, enlisting the expert aid of the Sherpas who live in the area. Drawing on years of field research in the Himalayas, renowned anthropologist Sherry Ortner presents a compelling account of the evolving relationship between the mountaineers and the Sherpas, a relationship of mutual dependence and cultural conflict played out in an environment of mortal risk. Ortner explores this relationship partly through gripping accounts of expeditions--often in the climbers' own words--ranging from nineteenth-century forays by the British through the historic ascent of Hillary and Tenzing to the disasters described in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. She reveals the climbers, or "sahibs," to use the Sherpas' phrase, as countercultural romantics, seeking to transcend the vulgarity and materialism of modernity through the rigor and beauty of mountaineering. She shows how climbers' behavior toward the Sherpas has ranged from kindness to cruelty, from cultural sensitivity to derision. Ortner traces the political and economic factors that led the Sherpas to join expeditions and examines the impact of climbing on their traditional culture, religion, and identity. She examines Sherpas' attitude toward death, the implications of the shared masculinity of Sherpas and sahibs, and the relationship between Sherpas and the increasing number of women climbers. Ortner also tackles debates about whether the Sherpas have been "spoiled" by mountaineering and whether climbing itself has been spoiled by commercialism.
| Author | : Graham Bowley |
| Publisher | : Harper Collins |
| Total Pages | : 292 |
| Release | : 2010-06-29 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 0062002902 |
New York Times Bestseller “A refreshingly unadorned account of the true brutality of climbing K2, where heroes emerge and egos are stripped down, and the only thing achieving immortality is the cold ruthless mountain.” — Norman Ollestad, author of Crazy for the Storm In this riveting work of narrative nonfiction, New York Times journalist Graham Bowley re-creates one of the most dramatic tales of death and survival in mountaineering history—the 2008 K2 ascent that claimed the lives of eleven climbers In the tradition of Into Thin Air and Touching the Void, No Way Down is the harrowing account of the worst mountain climbing disaster on K2, second to Everest in height. . . but second to no peak in terms of danger. On August 1, 2008, no fewer than eight international teams of mountain climbers—some experienced, others less prepared—ascended K2, the world's second-highest mountain, with the last group reaching the summit at 8 p.m. Then disaster struck. A huge ice chunk came loose above a deadly three-hundred-foot avalanche-prone gully, destroying the fixed guide ropes. More than a dozen climbers—many without oxygen and some with no headlamps—faced the nearly impossible task of descending in the blackness with no guideline and no protection. Over the course of the chaotic night, some would miraculously make it back. Others would not. From tragic deaths to unbelievable stories of heroism and survival, No Way Down is an amazing feat of storytelling and adventure writing, and, in the words of explorer and author Sir Ranulph Fiennes, “the closest you can come to being on the summit of K2 on that fateful day.”
| Author | : Bryce Andrews |
| Publisher | : Mariner Books |
| Total Pages | : 293 |
| Release | : 2019 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 1328972453 |
"Andrews' wonderful Down from the Mountain is deeply informed by personal experience and made all the stronger by his compassion and measured thoughts... Welcome and impressive work." --Barry Lopez Winner of the Banff Mountain Book Competition's Mountain Environment & Natural History Award The story of a grizzly bear named Millie: her life, death, and cubs, and what they reveal about the changing character of the American West The grizzly is one of North America's few remaining large predators. Their range is diminished, but they're spreading across the West again. Descending into valleys where once they were king, bears find the landscape they'd known for eons utterly changed by the new most dominant animal: humans. As the grizzlies approach, the people of the region are wary, at best, of their return. In searing detail, award-winning writer, Montana rancher, and conservationist Bryce Andrews tells us about one such grizzly. Millie is a typical mother: strong, cunning, fiercely protective of her cubs. But raising those cubs--a challenging task in the best of times--becomes ever harder as the mountains change, the climate warms and people crowd the valleys. There are obvious dangers, like poachers, and subtle ones as well, like the corn field that draws her out of the foothills and sets her on a path toward trouble and ruin. That trouble is where Bryce's story intersects with Millie's. It is the heart of Down from the Mountain, a singular drama evoking a much larger one: an entangled, bloody collision between two species in the modern-day West, where the shrinking wilds force man and bear into ever closer proximity.
| Author | : David Roberts |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 182 |
| Release | : 1968 |
| Genre | : Huntington, Mount |
| ISBN | : |
Account of first ascent of west face of Mt. Huntington, Alaska, in 1965.
| Author | : Johanna Garton |
| Publisher | : Mountaineers Books |
| Total Pages | : 269 |
| Release | : 2020-04-01 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 1680512897 |
Edge of the Map is equal parts inspiring, dramatic, and heartbreaking. One of America’s greatest high altitude mountaineers, Christine Boskoff was at the top of her career when she and her partner died in an avalanche in 2006. Charismatic, principled, and humble, Boskoff was also a deeply loved role model to her climbing partners and the Sherpa community. Edge of the Map traces the sharp twists and turns in Boskoff’s life, from her early years as a Lockheed engineer, through her first successes in the climbing world, to her purchase of Seattle-based Mountain Madness after owner and climber Scott Fischer died in the 1996 Everest disaster. Her life was one of constant achievement mixed with personal tragedy. The story follows Boskoff as she perseveres and moves on to even bigger peaks, earning acclaim as a world-class mountaineer, then later as she finds an alpine partnership with legendary Colorado climber Charlie Fowler.
| Author | : Jennifer Jordan |
| Publisher | : W. W. Norton & Company |
| Total Pages | : 321 |
| Release | : 2011-08 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 0393339971 |
| Author | : Ed Viesturs |
| Publisher | : Simon and Schuster |
| Total Pages | : 352 |
| Release | : 2013-10-08 |
| Genre | : Sports & Recreation |
| ISBN | : 145169475X |
In national bestseller The Mountain, world-renowned climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs and cowriter David Roberts paint a vivid portrait of obsession, dedication, and human achievement in a true love letter to the world’s highest peak. In The Mountain, veteran world-class climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs—the only American to have climbed all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks—trains his sights on Mount Everest in richly detailed accounts of expeditions that are by turns personal, harrowing, deadly, and inspiring. The highest mountain on earth, Everest remains the ultimate goal for serious high-altitude climbers. Viesturs has gone on eleven expeditions to Everest, spending more than two years of his life on the mountain and reaching the summit seven times. No climber today is better poised to survey Everest’s various ascents—both personal and historic. Viesturs sheds light on the fate of Mallory and Irvine, whose 1924 disappearance just 800 feet from the summit remains one of mountaineering’s greatest mysteries, as well as the multiply tragic last days of Rob Hall and Scott Fischer in 1996, the stuff of which Into Thin Air was made. Informed by the experience of one who has truly been there, The Mountain affords a rare glimpse into that place on earth where Heraclitus’s maxim—“Character is destiny”—is proved time and again.
| Author | : Scott Carney |
| Publisher | : Penguin |
| Total Pages | : 307 |
| Release | : 2015-03-17 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 069818629X |
An investigative reporter explores an infamous case where an obsessive and unorthodox search for enlightenment went terribly wrong. When thirty-eight-year-old Ian Thorson died from dehydration and dysentery on a remote Arizona mountaintop in 2012, The New York Times reported the story under the headline: "Mysterious Buddhist Retreat in the Desert Ends in a Grisly Death." Scott Carney, a journalist and anthropologist who lived in India for six years, was struck by how Thorson’s death echoed other incidents that reflected the little-talked-about connection between intensive meditation and mental instability. Using these tragedies as a springboard, Carney explores how those who go to extremes to achieve divine revelations—and undertake it in illusory ways—can tangle with madness. He also delves into the unorthodox interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism that attracted Thorson and the bizarre teachings of its chief evangelists: Thorson’s wife, Lama Christie McNally, and her previous husband, Geshe Michael Roach, the supreme spiritual leader of Diamond Mountain University, where Thorson died. Carney unravels how the cultlike practices of McNally and Roach and the questionable circumstances surrounding Thorson’s death illuminate a uniquely American tendency to mix and match eastern religious traditions like LEGO pieces in a quest to reach an enlightened, perfected state, no matter the cost. Aided by Thorson’s private papers, along with cutting-edge neurological research that reveals the profound impact of intensive meditation on the brain and stories of miracles and black magic, sexualized rituals, and tantric rites from former Diamond Mountain acolytes, A Death on Diamond Mountain is a gripping work of investigative journalism that reveals how the path to enlightenment can be riddled with danger.
| Author | : Robert Marshall |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 232 |
| Release | : 2009-03-20 |
| Genre | : Mountaineering |
| ISBN | : 9780953863174 |
K2, the second highest mountain in the world, is widely recognised as the most difficult of the fourteen 8,000 metre peaks; its first ascent by the 1954 Italian expedition was therefore much admired by the entire mountaineering world. But in Italy there was pandemonium, and the victorious team was greeted in Genoa by a wildly cheering crowd 40,000 strong. After the humiliation of crushing defeat in World War 2, the conquest of K2 (following the dramatic American failure of the previous year) restored to the Italian public a renewed sense of national pride. The two victorious climbers, Compagnoni and Lacedelli, were feted as supermen, particularly since they had ultimately reached the summit without the use of oxygen -- which had run out well below the summit according to the official account of the climb. But behind the façade of national rejoicing and hero-worship all was not as it seemed. The team was later embroiled in accusations, counter-accusations and even court cases revolving around the events of the final climb to the summit. The two climbers who had carried up the oxygen to the highest Camp, Walter Bonatti and the porter Mahdi, had been abandoned on the summit eve and compelled to bivouac in the open with no protection whatever. Fortunately they survived, but worse was to follow: ten years later Bonatti was accused of betraying Compagnoni and Lacedelli and of using some of their oxygen during his night in the open so that the cylinders became exhausted 400 metres below the peak. He fought and won a libel case in 1966, but despite this there was never any retraction of the various sordid versions of the affair that emerged over the next four decades. Bonatti's story was finally vindicated only recently when the Italian Alpine Club in 2007 published K2 -- Una Storia Finita, a revised official account that accepted his version of events as completely accurate. This book is the story of Bonatti's battle and how he challenged and finally changed forever the official record of the first ascent of K2.
