Mountain Climbing History

What does it take to be one of the world's best high-altitude mountain climbers? A lot of fundraising; traveling in some of the world's most dangerous countries; enduring cold bivouacs, searing lungs, and a cloudy mind when you can least afford one. It means learning the hard lessons the...

A Russian Drama best seller now in its second edition! In February, 1959 nine young hikers on a cross country ski trip mysteriously died under horrific circumstances. It is one of the great mysteries of our times. They would be found with missing eyes, even a missing tongue, crushed bones, and stripped of their clothes (later found radioactive) in minus 50 degree temperatures. Theories range from their being murdered by the CIA to space aliens, to even "Abominable Snowmen". This book explores this famous incident using a technique known as "Higher criticism" to explain their terrifying ...

A thrilling chronicle of the tragedy-ridden history of climbing K2, the world's most difficult and unpredictable mountain, by the bestselling authors of No Shortcuts to the Top At 28,251 feet, the world's second-tallest mountain, K2 thrusts skyward out of the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan...

Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own forays into wild, high landscapes, Robert Macfarlane reveals how the mystery of the world's highest places has come to grip the Western imagination - and perennially draws legions of adventurers up the most perilous slopes. His story begins three centuries ago, when mountains were feared as the forbidding abodes of dragons and other mysterious beasts.

No one writes about mountaineering and its attendant victories and hardships more brilliantly than Jon Krakauer. . In this collection of thirteen of his finest essays and reporting – including the essay, “Is Yosemite Going To The Dogs” – Krakauer writes of mountains from the memorable...

In 1967, seven young men, members of a twelve-man expedition led by twenty-four-year-old Joe Wilcox, were stranded at 20,000 feet on Alaska's Mount McKinley in a vicious Arctic storm. Ten days passed while the storm raged, yet no rescue was mounted. All seven perished in what remains the most tragic expedition in American climbing history.

A masterpiece of compelling narrative history, The White Ladder describes the epic rise of mountaineering's world altitude record, a story of ever higher climbs by figures great and small of mountaineering. Daniel Light describes how climbers used revolutionary techniques to launch themselves into the most forbidding conditions. The expeditions illustrate evolutionary changes in climbing style, the advancement of high-altitude science, and the development of mountain climbing as an industry.

On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Mount Everest’s North Col. George Mallory, thirty-seven, was Britain’s finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a young Oxford scholar of twenty-two with little previous mountaineering...

New York Times bestselling author Mark Synnott has climbed with Alex Honnold. He’s scaled Mount Everest. He's pioneered big-wall first ascents, including the north-west face of the mile-high Great Trango Tower, and skied monster first descents. But in 2022, he realized there was a dream he’d...

Travel thirty miles north, south, or east of San Francisco city hall and you'll be engulfed in a landscape of thick traffic, fast enterprise, and six-dollar cappuccinos. Venture thirty miles due west, however, and you will find yourself on what is virtually another planet: a spooky cluster of...

Entertaining, thought provoking, and moving, these four essays by spiritual author and teacher Eknath Easwaran offer an hour of inspiration for listeners of any faith, philosophy, or lifestyle. Through anecdotes, stories of the saints, surprising analogies, and wise insights, Easwaran encourages us to explore what spiritual living can mean today.

2024 National Outdoor Book Award Silver Medal Winner “A masterfully curated collection...You don’t have to be a sailor to be blown away by this fascinating, bighearted book.” —Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea, Travels with George, and Second Wind A story as vast and...

“The climbers swept up in the events of August 2000 are people little different from the rest of us. Though their climbing skills taught them a thing or two about survival, it was their individual characters and their compassion for one another that kept them alive. Like anyone who has...

Climbing the Rough Side of the Mountain is the remarkable story of a couple who came together during the Civil Rights Movement and made fighting for equality and civil and workers’ rights their purpose for more than sixty years, overcoming adversity—with the strength of their love and commitment—to bring about meaningful change.

A stunningly illustrated portrait of life and death in a hostile, high-altitude environment where no human can survive for long, Everest invites you to join Breashears, his climbers, and his crew as they make photographic history. Author Broughton Coburn traces each step of the team's progress toward a rendezvous with history - and suddenly you're on the scene of a disaster that riveted the world's attention.

"A high-spirited, comic ramble into the savage Outback populated by irreverent, beer-guzzling frontiersmen." --Chicago Tribune Swept off to live in Sydney by his Australian bride, American writer Tony Horwitz longs to explore the exotic reaches of his adopted land. So one day, armed only with a...

Travel thirty miles north, south, or east of San Francisco city hall and you'll be engulfed in a landscape of thick traffic, fast enterprise, and six-dollar cappuccinos. Venture thirty miles due west, however, and you will find yourself on what is virtually another planet: a spooky cluster of...

Using an infamous deception about a fake mountain range in British Columbia as her jumping-off point, Katie Ives explores the lure of blank spaces on the map and the value of the imagination. In Imaginary Peaks she details the cartographical mystery of the Riesenstein Hoax within the larger context of climbing history and the seemingly endless quest for newly discovered peaks and claims of first ascents. Imaginary Peaks is an evocative, thought-provoking tale, immersed in the literature of exploration, study of maps, and basic human desire.

The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-la is a breathtaking account of the ill-fated October 1998 expedition of an American whitewater kayaking team who traveled deep into the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet to run the Yarlung Tsangpo, known in paddling circles as the "Everest of rivers." For Wick...

A dazzling plunge into the four strangest landscapes scattered across Europe. In Outlandish, acclaimed travel writer Nick Hunt takes us across landscapes that should not be there, wildernesses found in Europe yet seemingly belonging to far-off continents: a patch of Arctic tundra in Scotland...