The Shining Mountain

De: Peter Boardman

Narrado por: Stewart Crank

"It’s a preposterous plan. Still, if you do get up it, it’ll be the hardest thing that’s been done in the Himalayas."

Thus spoke Chris Bonington when Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker presented him with their plan to tackle the unscaled West Wall of Changabang - the Shining Mountain - in 1976.

Bonington’s was one of the more positive responses; most felt the climb impossibly hard, especially for a two-man, lightweight expedition. This was, after all, perhaps the most fearsome and technically challenging granite wall in the Garhwal Himalaya, and an ascent - particularly one in a lightweight style - would be more significant than anything done on the Everest at the time.

The idea had been Joe Tasker’s. He had photographed the sheer, shining white granite sweep of Changabang’s west wall on a previous expedition and asked Pete to return with him the following year. Tasker contributes a second voice throughout Boardman’s story, which starts with acclimatization, sleeping in a Salford frozen food store, and progresses through three nights of hell, marooned in hammocks during a storm, to moments of exultation at the variety and intricacy of the superb, if punishingly difficult, climbing.

It is a story of how climbing a mountain can become an all-consuming goal, of the tensions inevitable in 40 days of isolation on a two-man expedition, as well as a record of the moment of joy upon reaching the summit ridge against all odds.

First published in 1978, The Shining Mountain is Peter Boardman’s first book. It is a very personal and honest story that is also amusing, lucidly descriptive, very exciting, and never anything but immensely listenable. It was awarded the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize for literature in 1979, winning wide acclaim. His second book Sacred Summits was published shortly after his death in 1982.

©1978 Peter Boardman (P)2020 Vertebrate Digital

Great story, great reader.

I have read this book about once per decade since the 70s. One of the ones that got me started climbing mountains. Part of a wave of very good mountaineering books that did not continue for very long afterwards.

An absolute classic

One of the finest books ever written about mountaineering. It is the rare climbing book that surpasses the genre due to its literary quality. Great Narration as well.

Simple and consistently engaging

Too bad this era of mountaineers didn't know how to be friends with each other. They could have had a more pleasant time of it. The French team that did the north face in 2017, documented in the film Changabang and the Mirrors of a Repetition, have a much better rapport with each other than Boardman and Tasker.

Another time and place

Their bravery and fortitude were evident in this sparely written account. I am an armchair mountaineer and I enjoyed spending this time on Changabang with Pete and Joe.