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A legend among mountaineers, Doug Scott's expeditions, undertaken
over a period of four decades, are unparalleled achievements. This
book describes the extraordinary drama of them all, from the
Himalayas to New Zealand, Patagonia, Yosemite and Alaska. It
includes his famous 'epic' on The Ogre, one of the hardest peaks in
the world to climb, his ascent of Kangchenjunga without
supplementary oxygen and his ascent, with Doug Haston, of Everest
in 1975. Catherine Moorehead also uncovers the elusive man behind
the obsessive mountaineer. From his rumbustious youth in Nottingham
through two tempestuous marriages to a secure third marriage, she
shows how Scott matured in thought and action as his formidable
global reputation increased. In doing so she reveals him to be a
clash of opposites, an infuriating monomaniac who took
extraordinary risks yet who developed a deep interest in Buddhism
and inspired widesperad affection. Scott spent almost as long as
his climbing career in founding and developing Community Action
Nepal, providing schools and health posts in remote parts of Nepal,
where he is still much revered after his death in 2020. The book
also tells how this self-help charity was started, how it survived
the Civil War and the devasting 2015 earthquake.
'The mountains are crystal under the blue sky, as we climb up our
untouched peak. This is why we climb.' In this fast-paced,
refreshingly honest account, Stephen Venables invites you on an
adventure like no other. Delving deeply into the unknown, the
unclimbed and the undiscovered, Painted Mountains details the
stories of two very different expeditions: the first ascent of
6,000-metre Kishtwar-Shivling in the Indian Himalaya alongside Dick
Renshaw, before embarking on an Indo-British Expedition led by
Harish Kapadia to Rimo: the Painted Mountain. 'Most of us are
content to settle for some sort of compromise between the desire to
survive and the desire to retain an element of uncertainty.'
Venables - the first Briton to climb Everest without oxygen - does
not shy away from the obvious challenges that come hand-in-hand
with tackling expeditions such as these; this account details the
highs and the lows, the dropped equipment, the toll of extreme
conditions and the shining successes of reaching a summit - all
while retaining a sense of humour and an unwavering enthusiasm for
the thrill of the climb. Venables' get-up-and-go attitude makes
this a delightful read; he is never one to shy away from an
opportunity, be it arisen from a year-long dream or a spontaneous
invite. Painted Mountains is an invaluable education for anyone who
is interested in the greater mountain ranges explored in this book,
as well as an inspirational tale of the commitment to a dream, the
birth of new friendships and the innumerable rewards of time spent
in the mountains.
Shortlisted - Cross British Sports Book Awards 2015. Grand Prize
Winner - 2014 Banff Mountain Book Festival. 'The wall was the
ambition, the style became the obsession.' In the autumn of 1982, a
single stone fell from high on the south face of Annapurna and
struck Alex MacIntyre on the head, killing him instantly and
robbing the climbing world of one of its greatest talents. Although
only twenty-eight years old, Alex was already one of the leading
figures of British mountaineering's most successful era. His
ascents included hard new routes on Himalayan giants like
Dhaulagiri and Changabang and a glittering record of firsts in the
Alps and Andes. Yet how Alex climbed was as important as what he
climbed. He was a mountaineering prophet, sharing with a handful of
contemporaries - including his climbing partner Voytek Kurtyka -
the vision of a purer form of alpinism on the world's highest
peaks. One Day As A Tiger, John Porter's revelatory and poignant
memoir of his friend Alex MacIntyre, shows mountaineering at its
extraordinary best and tragic worst - and draws an unforgettable
picture of a dazzling, argumentative and exuberant legend.
Upon that Mountain is the first autobiography of the mountaineer
and explorer Eric Shipton. In it, he describes all his pre-war
climbing, including his Everest bids of the 1930s, and his second
Karakoram survey in 1939, when he returned to Snow Lake to complete
the mapping of the ranges flanking the Hispar and Choktoi glacier
systems around the Ogre. Crossing great swathes of the Himalaya,
the book, like so many of Shipton's works, is both entertaining and
an important addition to the mountain literature genre. It captures
an important period in mountaineering history - that just before
the Second World War - an ends on an elegiac note as Shipton
describes his last evening at the starkly-beautiful snow lake,
before he returns to a 'civilisation' about to embark on a
cataclysmic war.
'When a man is conscious of the urge to explore, not all the
arduous journeyings, the troubles that will beset him and the lack
of material gains from his investigations will stop him.' Nanda
Devi is one of the most inaccessible mountains in the Himalaya. It
is surrounded by a huge ring of peaks, among them some of the
highest mountains in the Indian Himalaya. For fifty years the
finest mountaineers of the early twentieth century had repeatedly
tried and failed to reach the foot of the mountain. Then, in 1934,
Eric Shipton and H. W. Tilman found a way in. Their 1934 expedition
is regarded as the epitome of adventurous mountain exploration.
With their three tough and enthusiastic Sherpa companions
Angtharkay, Kusang and Pasang, they solved the problem of access to
the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. They crossed difficult cols, made first
ascents and explored remote, uninhabited valleys, all of which is
recounted in Shipton's wonderfully vivid Nanda Devi - a true
evocation of Shipton's enduring spirit of adventure and one of the
most inspirational travel books ever written.
In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of
Mount Everest. They climbed from the south, from Nepal, via the
Khumbu Glacier - a route first pioneered in 1951 by a
reconnaissance expedition led by Eric Shipton. Everest 1951 is the
account of this expedition. It was the first to approach the
mountain from the south side, it pioneered a route through the
Khumbu icefall and it was the expedition on which Hillary set foot
on Everest for the first time. Everest 1951 is a short but vitally
important read for anybody with any interest in mountaineering or
in Everest. The 1951 Everest Expedition marked the public highpoint
of Shipton's mountaineering fame. Key information was discovered
and the foundations laid for future success. Despite this,
Shipton's critics felt he had a 'lack of trust' and thus failed to
match the urgent mood of the period. Despite having been on more
Everest expeditions than any man alive, he was 'eased' out of the
crucial leadership role in 1953 and so missed the huge public
acclaim given to Hillary, Tenzing Norgay and John Hunt after their
historic success.
Stephen Venables and three companions made the first ascent of
Panchu Chuli V--a remote Himalayan peak on the borders of India,
Nepal and Tibet. A rappel anchor failed on the descent, pitching
Venables into a 300-foot fall. Crashing through the black night,
flung from rock to rock, he assumed that he was plunging to his
death. Against all odds he survived, but was left stranded 19,000
feet above a labyrinth of glaciers and snow slopes with two broken
legs, the threat of gangrene, and scant food or medical supplies.
If he was to return to his wife and son waiting at home some 5000
miles away, Venables knew he had to draw on his reserve of courage
and determination. The third Adrenaline Classic, A Slender Thread
is a spellbinding account of Venables' survival--and his intense
personal struggle to understand the risks he takes for the sake of
his insatiable passion for climbing. He comes as close to anyone to
answering the unanswerable question: Why do they do it?
Every day, the path up the South Col route to the summit of Everest
becomes a little more worn by the tread of dozens of package-tour
climbers, but few dare to try the East, or Kangshung, Face, a
sheer, avalanche-swept wall of snow and ice only first conquered in
1983. Five years later, Stephen Venables intensified the challenge
by leading three unknown American climbers up the East Face - this
time without oxygen. The question to most climbing experts wasn't
whether they would summit, but whether they would live. They nearly
didn't Everest: Alone at the Summit is Venables' rousing account of
one of the greatest feats of twentieth century mountaineering, a
triumph over doubt, the elements and the limits of human endurance
that has never been repeated. "Climbers or not, all will be
interested in this mountaineering thriller of a tiny band pulling
off an incredible victory-an account so stirring it will be put
down only to obtain a moment's breather." -- American Alpine
Journal
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