Mountain Survival Stories

In the thrilling sequel to the New York Times best-selling novel Minecraft: The Island, a stranded hero stumbles upon another castaway—and discovers that teamwork might just be the secret to survival.

Long the dominant icon embodying the spirit of America's frontier past, the image of the cowboy no longer stands alone as the ultimate symbol of independence and self-reliance. The great canvas of the Western landscape - in art, books, film - is today shared by the figures called "Mountain Men". Tales of the Mountain Men presents in one book many of the most engaging and revealing portraits of mountain men ever written.

Twelve-year-old Donn Fendler steps away from his Boy Scout troop for only a minute, but in the foggy mountains of Maine, a minute is all it takes. After hours of trying to find his way back, a nervous and tired Donn falls down an embankment, making it impossible for him to be found. One sleepless night goes by, followed by a second...and before Donn knows it, almost two weeks have passed, leaving him starving, scared, and delirious.

Year after year, climbers return to the world's most difficult mountains. At these places, even the most cautious climber is vulnerable to mistakes, bad weather, and bad luck, which often leads to death. This collection offers harrowing accounts of extreme mountaineering and its potentially fatal consequences.

Frightful, the peregrine falcon who first appeared in My Side of the Mountain, is back. Her amazing journey through life continues in the face of many rousing wildlife adventures. Will she survive the wilderness, even though she was raised by a human? When an old friend rescues her from captors, Frightful soars into the unfamiliar woodlands and searches for home. Before finding her mountain, she adopts a nest of motherless peregrine chicks.

Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods - all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, 40 dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever.

Whalen Vankin is the world's greatest wizard, and he has only ever personally trained two other wizards. One is Alexander Taylor, a young man who has earned a reputation as a brave adventurer, a warrior, and man of honor. The other is Jabez, Vankin's nephew and a man whose choices have led him down a different, darker path. Dark magic has covered Westland, and evil is stirring.

Kelton Fielding has always felt out of place, never sure what to say to his peers who, truth be told, only tolerate him. When a snowmobile race is announced at McCall’s annual Winter Festival, Kelton sees his chance to impress his classmates. He’ll fix up his old sled and get it running, and he’s planned out a risky shortcut through the wilderness that he’s sure will win him the prize. But when the popular Swann Siddiq and Kelton’s nemesis follow him into the backcountry, Kelton quickly runs into trouble and realizes that the competition is the least of his worries.

First a Canadian Rockies avalanche kills their parents. Then Children’s Services threatens to separate them. That’s when the three Gunnarsson kids decide to run away into the mountains and fend for themselves until the oldest turns 18 and becomes their legal guardian. Not many would dare. But Jon, Korka, and Aron’s parents ran a survival school. Turns out their plan is full of holes.

In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Mount Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceives his own crazy, beautiful plan: He will fly a plane from England to Everest, crash-land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit — completely alone.

When a bolt of lightning ignited a hilltop in the sleepy town of Yarnell, Arizona, in June of 2013, setting off a blaze that would grow into one of the deadliest fires in American history, the 20 men who made up the Granite Mountain Hotshots sprang into action. An elite crew trained to combat the most challenging wildfires, the Granite Mountain Hotshots were a ragtag family crisscrossing the American West and wherever else the fires took them. The Hotshots were loyal to one another and dedicated to the tough job they had.

Met Driscoll meets with the aliens again. This time the Earth is in peril. He learns that the Moon is an artificial creation of an ancient evil race. ----------- Excerpts ----------- As Met returned, the outer gear or space suits melted away from the aliens like some magic trick. The creatures were surprisingly human-like in their appearance but with scaled light green skin. *** A slowly rotating 3D hologram of the Moon hung in the air in front of the nearest alien. "This Moon of yours exposed your history. It should have been obvious to us from the beginning. The Moon's mass is only 1.2 ...

Virgil is making his older siblings trek to a mountain lake on a trip unlike any they have taken before. They carry precious cargo: the ashes of their beloved mother, who asked that her remains be scattered at her favorite spot. But when a forest fire is sparked by a bolt of lightning at the exact moment when their van breaks down, the journey quickly turns to disaster. Virgil finds himself separated from his sister and alone in the wilderness. He isn’t sure he can make it, but with the memory of his mother and her lessons to guide him, he learns that survival starts with letting go.

After a plane is forced to make an emergency landing in a remote area, the surviving crew and passengers must wait until a rescue team arrives. But they soon discover they are not alone in the wilderness, and the rescue team is not showing up anytime soon.

The adventure continues when Abby and Derick begin their second semester at Cragbridge Hall, the most prestigious secondary school in the world. But when Grandpa Cragbridge admits them to the Council of Keys - a secret group of people who have keys to travel back in time - strange things begin to happen. One by one, members are found unconscious and unable to wake, their keys stolen. Now Abby and Derick must scramble to figure out who is behind the attacks before they become the next victims, which would give their enemy the power to change the past forever.

Barney wasn't happy when his parents moved him from the swamps of Louisiana to the mountains of Tennessee, but that was before he met Silas and Billie. Now it's nothing but fun, sun, and mountain air, until a large boot print is found near the creek behind the barn.

The Seventh Taking is the chilling tale of a young man’s journey through harsh mountain country in his search for the girl he loves and the two friends who dare to brave the dangerous elements - both human and natural - to support a friend. When Joy Vincent disappears in the Blue Summit Mountains of Tennessee while vacationing with her family, park rangers begin an intensive search for the Louisiana high-school junior. Seven weeks later, the search is abandoned, and authorities conclude that Joy voluntarily ran away because of a fight with her father.

On the afternoon of July 13, 1977, having become the first climbers to reach the summit of the Ogre, Doug Scott and Chris Bonington began their long descent. In the minutes that followed, any feeling of success from their achievement would be overwhelmed by the start of a desperate fight for survival. And things would only get worse.

When New York native Samuel Dubois moves to Montana, he learns the hard way that his favorite fantasy novel doesn’t help when he’s lost in the wilderness. Surrounded by animals that scream like creatures from his books, towering, creaky trees, and blood-sucking insects, Samuel spends the worst night of his life perched on top of a rock with only his book and the moon for comfort.

Impossible! Suicidal! That's 13-year-old Cat's reaction to her impulsive, irrepressible cousin Ty's harebrained scheme to spread the ashes of their late fathers at the summit of the same treacherous mountain that claimed both their lives. But when Ty sets off on his own - stealing her dog and her father's ashes - Cat is forced to follow against her better judgment. Things deteriorate quickly. Avalanches, dangerous glacial crevasses, and a blinding blizzard force Cat to put all her mountaineering knowledge to work if they are to survive.