The Mammoth Book Of Climbing Adventures

Readers will scale the oxygen-scarce zones of extreme mountaineering in these 20 eyewitness accounts of triumph and tragedy on the world's greatest mountains.

In the spirit of Jon Krakauers Into Thin Air and Anatoli Boukreevs The Climb, The Mammoth Book of Climbing Adventures takes the reader into the oxygen-scarce zones of extreme mountaineering. Presenting twenty firsthand accounts of climbs on the great peaks and big walls of five continents, from the new alpinism of the 1930s to the present, this collection explores the furthest reaches of human daring and endurance. Prolific editor Jon E. Lewis assembles a whos who of mountaineerings most intrepid heroes, including Sir Edmund Hillary, Fritz Bechtold, and Ed Drummond, among others. There are the examples of Sebastian Snow, who scaled the twin summits of Ecuadors remotest mountain range, and Eric Shipton, who lived out his old age climbing Patagonias peaks. There are also such accounts of courage and catastrophe as Reinhold Messners successful scaling of Nana Parbat and the loss of his brother in an avalanche on the descent, Walter Bonattis tragic attempt on Mont Blanc that forced him to leave half his party dead in the snow, and Jack Longlands terrifying ordeal of being trapped in a blizzard on Everest. And in one of climbings epics of perseverance and peril, Maurice Herzog describes his unstoppable ascent of Annapurna and the ordeal of his disaster-plagued returnin a testament he had to dictate after frostbite had claimed his fingers.