taking a break for a while – back soon
Fiva – Gordon Stainforth
Published: 2012
Reading style: moderate
Images: B&W selection
What the publisher says:
An Adventure That Went Wrong
The epic true story of a near-death experience on a mountain in Norway.
In the summer of 1969, as Apollo 11 was blasting off to the moon, two teenage twin brothers, with only three years’ mountaineering experience, set off to climb one of the highest rock faces in Europe. With just two bars of chocolate, some sandwiches, a four-sentence route description, and an old sketch map, they left their tent early one morning with the full expectation of being back in time for tea. Within a few hours things had gone badly wrong, they were looking death in the face, and the English Home Counties seemed very far away …
‘What a brilliant and refreshing read! Once started you just can’t put it down’ Sir Chris Bonington, CBE
‘A wonderful, nostalgic, gripping, classic yarn with great humour’ Joe Simpson
Finalist – Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature 2012
Winner – Mountain Literature Award BANFF FESTIVAL 2012
Hooker & Brown – Jerry Auld
Published: 2009
Reading style: easy
Images: no (fiction)
What the publisher says:
Rumi, a geology student and climber, is drawn to the legend of Hooker and Brown. The two peaks had been forgotten since they were first discovered and marked on maps in the 1800s. Compelled to see the mountains for himself, Rumi sets out on a journey that challenges both mind and body.
Part adventure story, part historical mystery, Hooker & Brown is a powerful and exhilarating page turner set in the Rocky Mountains.
“Like a polished stone, Hooker & Brown reveals the layers of time, meaning and beauty.”
Ararat – Frank Westerman
Published: 2008
Reading style: moderate
Images: no
What the publisher says:
In Search of the Mythical Mountain
Mount Ararat in Turkey is where, as biblical tradition has it, Noah’s Ark ran aground and God made his covenant with mankind. Now it stands astride the fault-line between religion and science, a geographical, political and cultural crossroads, bound up with the centuries-old history of warfare between different cultures in the region. Frank Westerman takes pilgrimage from the mountain’s foot to its highest slopes, meeting along the way geologists, priests and an expedition in search of the Ark’s remains, as well as a Russian astronaut who observes that ‘there is something between heaven and earth about which we humans know nothing’.
‘A book of stupendous richness and complexity… written with enough knowledge and craft to keep the drowsiest of readers wide awake from first to last’ Spectator
sky icebergs
Sky Iceberg No. 3 Print by Rachel Prouty
Sky Iceberg No. 2 Print by Rachel Prouty
Sky Iceberg No. 4 Print by Rachel Prouty
“Collage from the series Sky Icebergs. These are icebergs and mountains created out of the Atlas of Deep Sky Splendors during the past winter. They are small wonders made out of photographs of expansive worlds.”
Via Little Paper Planes and Rachel Prouty.
Moments of Doubt and other mountaineering writings – David Roberts
Published: 1986
Reading style: moderate
Images: no
What the publisher says:
This collection of 20 essays and articles on mountaineering and adventure by David Roberts, selected from the published works of two decades, showcases one of the most highly regarded writers in the field. The articles are comprised of three types: Adventures (Roberts’ own climbs and outings), Profiles (other adventurers), and Reflections (meditative essays about the meaning of the whole business). Roberts ranges the globe (Africa, Alaska, New Guinea) and introduces unique personalities (Reinhold Messner, John Roskelley, Don Sheldon). He also recounts how his own love of writing and the “useless pastime” of climbing combined to produce the bread and butter of his career today. Popular with audiences far beyond active mountaineers, Roberts sets himself this challenge: “For me, the abiding puzzle of adventure writing lies in keeping, on the one hand, a sense of proportion about the absurdity of most of our antics in the outdoors, while staying alert, on the other, to the majesty of spirit which at their best those antics demonstrate.”
Roberts’ first writings on his adventures on Alaska’s Mount Deborah and Mount Huntington changed the face of mountaineering literature. They are recorded in The Early Climbs: Deborah and The Mountain of My Fear (The Mountaineers).
The Will to Climb – Ed Viesturs with David Roberts
Published: 2011
Reading style: easy
Images: 8 pages, colour
What the publisher says:
The bestselling author of No Shortcuts to the Top and K2 chronicles his three attempts to climb the world’s tenth-highest and statistically deadliest peak, Annapurna in the Himalayas, while exploring the dramatic and tragic history of others who have made–or attempted–the ascent, and what these exploits teach us about facing life’s greatest challenges.
As a high school student in the flatlands of Rockford, Illinois, where the highest objects on the horizon were water towers, Ed Viesturs read and was captivated by the French climber Maurice Herzog’s famous and grisly account of the first ascent of Annapurna in 1950. When Viesturs began his own campaign to climb the world’s fourteen highest peaks in the late 1980s, he looked forward with trepidation to undertaking Annapurna. Two failures to summit in 2000 and 2002 made Annapurna his nemesis. His successful 2005 ascent was the triumphant capstone of his climbing quest.
In The Will to Climb, Viesturs brings the extraordinary challenges of Annapurna to vivid life through edge-of-your-seat accounts of the greatest climbs in the mountain’s history, and of his own failed attempts and eventual success. In the process he ponders what Annapurna reveals about some of our most fundamental moral and spiritual questions —questions, he believes, that we need to answer to lead our lives as well.
