* A collection of vivid, intimate essays and prose poetry on the universal themes of life, love, friendship, personal empowerment, and more, told through a career in climbing * 40 percent of these pieces debut here for the first time * Davis has been profiled in publications including Outside, Men's Journal, W Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. Throughout her life, Steph Davis has chosen to take risks, to trust her impulses, to make decisions based on what feels right inside -- and never look back. Studying to be a concert pianist, she quit music the day she was introduced to rock climbing. Later, she abandoned the respectability of university life and pursuit of a law degree to become a "dirtbag climber," living out of her grandmother's hand-me-down Oldsmobile sedan with Fletcher, a heeler mix dog. Today, through courage and perseverance, Davis is a high-profile athlete whose sponsors have included Patagonia, Mammut, Clif Bar, Five Ten and Cascade Designs. In High Infatuation, Davis writes on the universal themes of life, love, friendship, personal empowerment, and more, told through a career in climbing. We wait with her in the tent through weeks of rain, wind, snow, and sleet, hoping for the weather to improve in the mountains of Patagonia, then race with her up a towering rock wall of Yosemite's El Capitan in a single day. More than adventure stories, these pieces reveal Davis' soul. They draw us into her struggles with safety, independence, ambition, and compassion. By following the journey of this remarkable woman, we learn what it means to live a truly adventurous life.

In the towering mountains of northern India, a chilling chapter was written in the history of international espionage.

After the Chinese detonated their first nuclear test in 1964, America and India, which had just fought a border war with its northern neighbor, were both justifiably concerned. The CIA knew it needed more information on China's growing nuclear capability but had few ways of peeking behind the Bamboo Curtain. Because of the extreme remoteness of Chinese testing grounds, conventional surveillance in this pre-satellite era was next to impossible.

The solution to this intelligence dilemma was a joint American-Indian effort to plant a nuclear-powered sensing device on a high Himalayan peak in order to listen into China and monitor its missile launches. It was not a job that could be carried out by career spies, requiring instead the special skills possessed only by accomplished
mountaineers. For this mission, cloaks and daggers were to be replaced by crampons and ice axes.

"Spies in the Himalayas" chronicles for the first time the details of these death-defying expeditions sanctioned by U.S. and Indian intelligence, telling the story of clandestine climbs and hair-raising exploits. Led by legendary Indian mountaineer Mohan S. Kohli, conqueror of Everest, the mission was beset by hazardous climbs, weather delays, aborted attempts, and even missing radioactive materials that may or may not still pose a contamination threat to Indian rivers.

Kept under wraps for over a decade, these operations came to light in 1978 and have been long rumored among mountaineers, but here are finally given book-length treatment. Spies in the Himalayas provides an inside look at a CIA mission from participants who weren't agency employees, drawing on diaries from several of the climbers to offer impressions not usually recorded in covert operations. A host of photos and maps puts readers on the slopes as the team attempts repeatedly to plant the sensor on a Himalayan summit.

An adventure story as well as a new chapter in the history of espionage, this book should appeal to readers who enjoyed Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" and to anyone who enjoys a great spy story.

Devil's Lake State Park in Wisconsin is the most popular rock-climbing area in the Midwest. It features spectacular cliffs and other rock formations where the Ice Age glacier's terminal moraine meets an ancient landscape of rock.This third edition of the popular ""Climber's Guide to Devil's Lake"" has been thoroughly updated for twenty-first-century climbers and hikers and includes information for use with GPS receivers. It provides information for climbers of all abilities and preferences, offering precise directions to help them navigate and climb within the park.The features include: an updated introduction by George J. Pokorny and new photographs by Eric Andre; a summary of the geologic and natural history of the Baraboo hills by Patricia K. Armstrong; locations and updated descriptions of nearly 1,800 climbs; landmark photographs from most major climbing areas; GPS waypoints, map coordinates, altimeter readings, and approach information; detailed diagrams locating climbing routes at most major climbing areas; and, 6 new diagrams, 5 new climbing areas, and 120 new routes.

On the night of 10-11 May 1996, eight climbers perished in what remains the worst disaster in Everest's history. Following the tragedy, numerous accounts were published, with Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air becoming an international bestseller. But has the whole story been told? A Day to Die For reveals the full, startling facts that led to the tragedy. Graham Ratcliffe, the first British climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest twice, was a first-hand witness, having spent the night on Everest's South Col at 26,000 ft, sheltering from the deadly storm. For years, he has shouldered a burden of guilt, feeling that he and his teammates could have saved lives that fateful night. His quest for answers has led to discoveries so important to an understanding of the disaster that he now questions why these facts were not made public sooner. History is dotted with high-profile disasters that both horrify and capture the attention of the public, but very rarely is our view of them revised to such devastating effect.

As humans we have evolved over millions of years to live with uncertainty and danger. Indeed, it has been our ability to change and adapt to differing circumstances that has made us so successful. In the past most people's lives were hazardous; it was an adventure to survive. Then, as wealth increased, European adventurers set out to explore the world. It was this exploration, and the trade that resulted from it, which started the rapid economic development we continue to enjoy to this day. In this sense, the very foundations of our modern society were laid by adventurers. In the developed world we are wealthier than ever. This wealth allows us to do many amazing things and gives us increasing control of our own lives and the environment around us. Yet often people feel their lives lack real excitement. Having grown accustomed to the comfort and security our increased wealth provides, have we lost some of our identity in the process? Are we now neglecting our ability to change and adapt, our ability as adventurers?

Simon Yates explores these and other questions in an autobiographical narrative following numerous mountaineering expeditions and looks at the role adventure plays in our lives and the effect it has on them. Mountaineer Simon Yates is very familiar with the subject of this, his second book. He has devoted much of his adult life to pursuing adventures through mountaineering and travel, living at times on the margins of physical and material existence. These experiences have provided what he hopes is a unique view of adventure and the role it plays in all our lives.

Following the seasonal migratory journey of rock climbers across the stunning and diverse landscapes of North America, this gorgeous photographic monograph will transport readers into a different world. The reader is invited to follow one cycle of climbing life, dictated by optimal climate conditions, beginning in the Spring and ending in the Winter. Climbing Rock celebrates 30 of North America s legendary rock climbing areas covering a full spectrum of climbing styles including: hard big wall free climbing in Yosemite Valley, desert trad climbing at Red Rocks, Nevada and Indian Creek, Utah; classic sport climbing in Rumney, NH and Red River Gorge, Kentucky; oceanside cragging in California, and even city park bouldering in New York City. Francois Lebeau s artful photographs uniquely capture the stark beauty of the walls, amazing moments of athletes on the stone, and the humanity of the adventurous people who journey upwards. Climbing Rock is the perfect book for anyone interested in climbing, from athletes of all abilities to readers who appreciate breathtaking photography of improbable physical feats across stunning North American landscapes.

Told with the immediacy of a diary, which is where the book began, Patrick takes us on a journey to the highest mountain in the world, where one of the greatest tragedies in climbing history was about to unfold. Filled with photographs and sketches from his notebooks we become part of the Radio 702 team sent to cover the South African Everest Expedition of 1996. It would turn out to be the deadliest climbing seasons in the peak’s history.

Twenty years later the controversy around what truly happened on the mountain continues to rage. Conroy kept a meticulous diary and recorded many hours of radio communications between the climbers. Now, two decades later, his memoirs reveal a remarkable and untold story of what happened on the mountain that fateful year. Everest Untold includes hidden insights and never before revealed transcripts that shed new light on the 1996 disaster, including the mysterious disappearance of one of the South African team members in the death zone.

Conroy’s hidden story reopens the debate on the risks of high-altitude mountaineering and what it meant to a young democratic South Africa unaware of the dangers that lay ahead.

In the 1960s a handsome young American named John Harlin II changed the face of Alpine climbing, scaling some of Europe's most treacherous peaks. But it was the vertical north face of the Eiger that became his obsession. Living with his wife and two children in Switzerland, he spent countless hours planning, waiting, and attempting to climb the notorious "direttissima," the Eiger direct. He wanted to be the first, and everyone in the Alpine world knew it--including John Harlin III, who was nine years old when, in the attempt, his father plummeted 4,000 feet to his death. In the shadow of tragedy, John Harlin III came of age possessed with the same passion for risk that drove his father. Although he reveled in downhill skiing and rock-climbing, for years he honored a promise to his mother not to be an Alpine climber. But in 2005, he could resist no longer. With his nine-year-old daughter and an IMAX Theatre film crew, Harlin set off on his quest. In "The Eiger Obsession," he tells the unforgettable story--a story about fathers and sons, climbers and mountains, and dreamers who dare.

Lincoln Hall's breathtaking account of surviving a night in Everest's "death zone."
Lincoln Hall likes to say that on the evening of May 25, 2006, he died on Everest. Indeed, Hall attempted to climb the mountain during a deadly season in which eleven people perished. And he was, in fact, pronounced dead, after collapsing from altitude sickness. Two Sherpas spent hours trying to revive him, but as darkness fell, word came via radio from the expedition's leader that they should descend in order to save themselves. The news of Hall's death traveled rapidly from mountaineering websites to news media around the world, and ultimately to his family back in Australia. Early the next morning, however, an American guide, climbing with two clients and a Sherpa, was startled to find Hall sitting cross-legged on a sharp crest of the summit ridge.
In this page-turning account of survival against all odds, Hall chronicles in fascinating detail the days and nights that led up to his fateful night in Mount Everest's "death zone." His story is all the more miraculous given his climbing history. Hall had been part of Australia's first attempt to reach the top of Everest in 1984 but had not done any major climbing for many years, having set aside his passion in order to support his family. While others in the team achieved their dream during this 1984 expedition, Hall was forced to turn back due to illness. Thus, his triumph in reaching the summit at the age of fifty is a story unto itself. So, too, is Hall's description of his family's experience back in Australia, as sudden grief turned to relief and joy in a matter of hours. Rarely has there been such a thrilling narrative of one man's encounter with the world's tallest mountain.

In August, 2005, Tomaz Humar was trapped on a narrow ledge at 5900 metres on the formidable Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat. He had been attempting a new route, directly up the middle of the highest mountain face in the world - solo. After six days he was out of food, almost out of fuel and frequently buried by avalanches. Three helicopters were poised for a brief break in the weather to pluck him off the mountain. Because of the audacity of the climb, the fame of the climber, the high risk associated with the rescue, and the hourly reports posted on his base-camp website, the world was watching. Would this be the most spectacular rescue in climbing history? Or a tragic - and very public - death in the mountains? Years before, as communism was collapsing and the Balkans slid into chaos, Humar was unceremoniously conscripted into a dirty war that he despised, where he observed brutal and inhumane atrocities that disgusted him. Finally he did the unthinkable: he left and finally arrived home in what had become a new country - Slovenia. He returned to climbing, and within very few years, he was among the best in the world. Reinhold Messner, among others, called him the most remarkable mountain climber of his generation. His routes are seldom repeated; most consider them to be suicidal; yet he often climbs them solo. As this book was being written, he achieved the first-ever solo ascent of the east summit of Annapurna. Tomaz Humar has cooperated with Bernadette McDonald, the distinguished former director of the Banff Festival and author of several books on mountaineering, to tell his utterly remarkable story.

No one sees clearer than an individual whose life is hanging by the finger tips on the edge of an abyss. Probing the furthest reaches of human daring and endurance, here are 28 of the great first-hand accounts of extreme mountaineering, from legendary names. Featuring: *Heinrich Harrer - first conqueror of the notorious Eigerwand. *Robert Bates - the classic account of the ill-fated American 1953 expedition to K2. *Maurice Herzog - his unstoppable ascent of Annapurna at the cost of frostbite. *Walter Bonatti - tragedy on the Central Pillar of Freney on Mont Blanc. *George Leigh Mallory - surviving an avalanche on the 1922 Everest expedition. *Rene Desmaison - his epic story of 14 days stuck on The Grandes Jorasses in winter. *Jon Krakauer - recalling his solo ascent of The Devil's Thumb in Alaska. The price of the summit is often measured in human suffering, yet for those who succeed the rewards can be incalculable. Nerve-wracking and unputdownable.

This comprehensive guide describes more than 50 of the best day and overnight hikes across the state of Washington. The author has organized the book by region and has handpicked hikes from the shores of the Olympic Peninsula to the Columbia Basin of eastern Washington that highlight the varied terrain, ecosystems, and flora and fauna Washington has to offer. He also includes interesting insights into the geography and history of each place that only 15-plus years of firsthand experience can provide. Hike to a high mountain pass in the Northern Cascades or trace the landscape of a volcano at Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument; discover why they call it the Evergreen State as you roam through fabled groves of mammoth Douglas firs and wildflower-filled fields in Mount Rainier National Park. Let this book be your guide to experiencing all the beauty and breathtaking imagery of Washington State.

When poet Andrew Greig was asked by the near-legendary Scottish mountaineer Mal Duff to join his ascent of the Mustagh Tower in the Karakoram Himalayas, he had a poor head for heights and no climbing experience whatsoever. The result is this unique book. Short-listed for the Boardman-Tasker Prize and already something of a classic in adventure literature, Summit Fever has been loved by climbers and literary critics alike for its refreshing candour, wit and insight, and the haunting beauty of its writing. It is for every armchair adventurer who ever wondered what it would be like to climb in the Himalayas. Much more than a book about climbing, it celebrates the risk, joy and adventure of being alive.

Using unpublished diaries, Jim Perrin, the acclaimed author of The Villain and Menlove, tells the story of the greatest exploring partnership in British history. In the 1930s Tilman and the younger Shipton pioneered many routes in Africa and the Himalayas and found the key to unlocking Everest. They crossed Africa by bicycle, explored China with Spender and Auden, journeyed down the Oxus River to its source and, with no support, opened up much of the Nepalese Himalaya. In the words of Jim Perrin, 'The journeys of discovery undertaken through two decades by this pair of venturesome ragamuffins are unparallelled in the annals of mountain exploration.' Jim Perrin writes of his source-material: 'These unpublished diaries, journals, and extensive correspondence have not previously been used to present a portrait of the most productive friendship in the history of mountain exploration. What they reveal is, in Shipton's phrase, "a random harvest of delight" gathered by two uniquely bold and engaging characters from the great mountain ranges of the world during the golden era of their first western exploration. Between geographical excitement, the nature of arduous travel in difficult and uncharted terrain throughout a lost epoch, and the quirkiest and most stimulating of friendships, the theme is a gift, and one that has long been waiting for adequate treatment'.

It seemed like any other season on Everest.

Ten expeditions from around the world were preparing for their summit push, gathered together to try for mountaineering's ultimate prize. Twenty-four hours later, eight of those climbers were dead, victims ofthe most devastating storm ever to hit Everest. On the North face of the mountain, a British expedition found itself in the thick of the drama. Against all odds, film-maker Matt Dickinson and professional climber Alan Hinkes managed to battle through hurricane-force winds toreach the summit. In Death Zone, Matt Dickinson describes the extraordinary event that put the disaster on the front cover of Time and Newsweek. The desperate attempts of teams on the southern side of the mountain... fatal errors that led to the deaths of three Indian climbers on the North Ridge...and the moving story of Rob Hall, the New Zealand guide who stayed with his stricken client, and paid with his life. Based on interviews with the surviving climbers and the first-hand experience of having lived through the killer storm, this book tacklesissues at the very heart of mountaineering.

Death Zone is an extra- ordinary story of human triumph, folly and disaster.

When Trish Herr became pregnant with her first daughter, Alex, she and her husband, Hugh, vowed to instill a bond with nature in their children. By the time Alex was five, her over-the-top energy levels led Trish to believe that her very young daughter might be capable of hiking adult-sized mountains.
In" Up, " Trish recounts their always exhilarating--and sometimes harrowing--adventures climbing all forty-eight of New Hampshire's highest mountains. Readers will delight in the expansive views and fresh air that only peakbaggers are afforded, and will laugh out loud as Trish urges herself to "mother up" when she and Alex meet an ornery--and alarmingly bold--spruce grouse on the trail. This is, at heart, a resonant, emotionally honest account of a mother's determination to foster independence and fearlessness in her daughter, to teach her "that small doesn't necessarily mean weak; that girls can be strong; and that big, bold things are possible."

Everest was, to George Mallory, 'the wildest dream'. This gentleman adventurer was obsessed with taming the unconquered peak. But in 1924 he and climbing partner Sandy Irvine disappeared forever into the clouds encircling the peak. Might they have reached the summit before their tragedy? It is mountaineering's greatest mystery. Seventy-five years later, Conrad Anker made an extraordinary discovery. He spotted 'a patch of white' on Everest's North Face. It was Mallory's frozen body. Artefacts found on Mallory's body implied that he might have made it to the top. But that route had never since been climbed without modern equipment. Was it possible? To find out Anker returned to Everest, with death-defying young 'rock star' of climbing Leo Houlding as his partner. Kitted out in period clothing, they set off to replicate the unaided climb. Mallory's fate was a chilling reminder of the mountain's might. But they knew that to solve Everest's greatest mystery they must push their very limits.

In 1989, while attempting a new route on a difficult overhanging rock face, climber Dan Osman fell. Again and again, protected by the rope, he fell. He decided then that it would not be in climbing but in falling that he would embrace his fear--bathe in it, as he says, and move beyond it.

A captivating exploration of the daredevil world of rock climbing, as well as a thoughtful meditation on the role of risk and fear in the author's own life.

In the tradition of the wildly popular man-versus-nature genre that has launched several bestsellers, Andrew Todhunter follows the lives of world-class climber Dan Osman and his coterie of friends as he explores the extremes of risk on the unyielding surface of the rock.

Climbing sheer rock faces of hundreds or thousands of feet is more a religion than a sport, demanding dedication, patience, mental and physical strength, grace, and a kind of obsession with detail that is crucial just to survive. Its artists are modern-day ascetics who often sacrifice nine-to-five jobs, material goods, and the safety of everyday life to pit themselves and their moral resoluteness against an utterly unforgiving opponent.

In the course of the two years chronicled in Fall of the Phantom Lord, the author also undertakes a journey of his own as he begins to weigh the relative value of extreme sports and the risk of sudden death. By the end of the book, as he ponders joining Osman on a dangerous fall from a high bridge to feel what Osman experiences, Todhunter comes to a new understanding of risk taking and the role it has in his life, and in the lives of these climbers.

Beautifully written, Fall of the Phantom Lord offers a fascinating look at a world few people know. It will surely take its place alongside Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm as a classic of adventure literature.


From the Hardcover edition.

A legendary Alpine guide tells of his ascent of the treacherous north faces of six of Europe's greatest peaks: the Grand Jorasses, the Piz Badile, the Drus, the Matterhorn, the Cima Grande di Lavaredo, and the Eiger.

A sequel to the award-winning "Touching the Void", in which Simpson described a fall in the Himalayas which crippled and almost broke him. This is a memoir of the signposts that have directed him since childhood to measure fear and embrace the unknown.