The Tower Audiobook By Kelly Cordes cover art

The Tower

A Chronicle of Climbing and Controversy on Cerro Torre

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The Tower

By: Kelly Cordes
Narrated by: Bernardo de Paula
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Patagonia's Cerro Torre, considered by many the most beautiful peak in the world, draws the finest and most devoted technical alpinists to its climbing challenges. But controversy has swirled around this ice-capped peak since Cesare Maestri claimed first ascent in 1959. Since then a debate has raged, with world-class climbers attempting to retrace his route but finding only contradictions. This chronicle of hubris, heroism, controversies, and epic journeys offers a glimpse into the human condition, and why some pursue extreme endeavors that at face value have no worth.

©2014 Patagonia (P)2023 Tantor Outdoors & Nature Sports Writing Sports Extreme Sports
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Loved this book, the history, the research. It was obvious a lot of research went into this book. It was so well written & conclusions did not feel jumped to. I appreciated getting all sides of the stories. So interesting & so we’ll written. I couldn’t put it down once I started.

Interesting, exciting, insightful

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A good piece of climbing history, the author has in my opinion written a well researched and thorough book about a niche part of climbing history. You probably need some climbing background to fully appreciate the story but I think it would still be enjoyable to a layman willing to look up a few things.
Excellent narration as well.

Interesting, well written and narrated

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Great book, well written, well narrated with the caveat that if you’re a climber the continual mispronunciation of terms like piton and arête may drive you insane. (To be fair it’s possible it wasn’t those specific words, but there are a variety of climbing terms that are loan words from other languages and the narrator straight up mangles them). Anyway, great book, well worth a read or listen.

Great story and writing. Narrator doesn’t know how to pronounce climbing terms.

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come on dude. the mispronunciation is killing me, piton is pronouned pee-tahn. must be over 100 times

its pronounced pee-tahn

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Next time use a narrator that remotely understands the sport. Listening to this narrator was painful.

Pie-tons? Really?

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Awesome story and writing by Kelly Cordes. Unfortunately the narrator clearly did not do his diligence as he mispronounces numerous climbing terms such as piton and arete throughout the book.

Great book - struggling narration.

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Not sure how you can read a climbing book without any idea how to even pronounce the most basic of climbing terms correctly. A bit painful to listen to.

Its a pee ton NOT a pie ton!

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A great story. Enjoyable listening. Truths that can be applied to our current state of affairs. Patagonia what an amazing place brought to life in this great book of climbing history.

Fantastic

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don’t know much about mountaineering in that part of the world, this was a great intro

evidence presented well, unbiased approach.

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piton is pronounced pee-tawn! Dihedral is pronounced die-he-drawl..

Amazing story, and the narrator was great outside of the gaffs

Great story, narrator chuffed on climbing words..

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