The first couple to climb the world's seven summits tells their remarkable story of adventure, love and courage in the face of overwhelming challenges.On May 16, 2002, Phil and Susan Ershler reached the top of Mt. Everest and became the first couple in history to scale the fabled Seven Summits. What made their achievement all the more remarkable was that Susan was not a mountain climber, but a high-powered Fortune 500 executive who had never hiked or climbed until ...

As he teetered on a narrow rock ledge a yak's bellow short of the stratosphere, with a rubber mask strapped to his face, a pair of mittens the size of a sealion's flippers, and a drop of two kilometres below him, it's fair to say Mark Horrell wasn't entirely happy with the situation he found himself in.He was an ordinary hiker who had only read books about mountaineering, and little did he know when he signed up for an organised trek in Nepal with a group of elderly ladies that ten...

With a new preface by the author • As featured in the upcoming motion picture Everest, starring Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, and Jake Gyllenhaal“I can tell you that some force within me rejected death at the last moment and then guided me, blind and stumbling—quite literally a dead man walking—into camp and the shaky start of my return to life.”In 1996 Beck Weathers a...

“He wrapped the rope around his body, got ready to rappel and leaned back. Standing about five feet from him, I heard a sharp scraping, Suddenly Ed was flying. I could see him fall, wordless, fifty feet free, then strike the steep ice below…he was sliding and bouncing down. He passed out of sight, but I heard his body bouncing. There wasn't a chance of his stopping for 4,000 feet.”—From David Robert's The Mountain of My FearIn these thrillingly true tales of narrow...

In national bestseller The Mountain, world-renowned climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs and cowriter David Roberts paint a vivid portrait of obsession, dedication, and human achievement in a true love letter to the world’s highest peak.In The Mountain, veteran world-class climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs—the only American to have climbed all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks—trains his sights on Mount Everest in richly det...

*The bestselling author of The Mountain and No Shortcuts to the Top chronicles his three attempts to climb the world’s tenth-highest and statistically deadliest peak while exploring the dramatic and tragic history of others who have made—or attempted—*the ascent.“Viesturs and Roberts have written an exhaustively researched and wonderfully compelling history of the most fascinating and dangerous of the Himalayan giants.”—David Breashers, v...

“A fascinating tale. . . . Readers who are into high-altitude adventure stories won’t be disappointed.”—Associated PressIn 1939 the Savage Mountain claimed its first victim. Born into vast wealth yet uneasy with a life of leisure, Dudley Wolfe, of Boston and Rockport, Maine, set out to become the first man to climb K2, the world’s second-highest mountain and, in the opinion of mountaineers, an even more formidable challenge than Mt. Everest. Although close to middle age an...

Mountaintops have long been seen as sacred places, home to gods and dreams. In one climbing year Peter Boardman visited three very different sacred mountains. He began on the South Face of the Carstensz Pyramid in New Guinea. This is the highest point between the Andes and the Himalaya, and one of the most inaccessible, rising above thick jungle inhabited by warring Stone Age tribes.During the spring Boardman made ...

The account of one of the deadliest and most mysterious tragedies in mountaineering history-the 2008 K2 disaster.One Mountain Thousand Summits reveals the true story of the K2 tragedy that claimed the lives of eleven men. Based on his numerous trips to Nepal and in-depth interviews he conducted with the survivors, the families of the lost climbers, and the Sherpa guides whose heroic efforts saved the lives of at least four climbers, Freddie Wilkinson's nar...

On 30 January 1981 Joe Tasker and Ade Burgess stood at 24,000 feet on the west ridge of Mount Everest. Below them were their companions, some exhausted, some crippled by illness, all virtually incapacitated. Further progress seemed impossible. Everest the Cruel Way is Joe Tasker's story of an attempt to climb the highest mountain on earth - an attempt which pushed a group of Britain's finest mountaineers to their limits. The goal had been to climb Mount Everest at its hardest: via the infa...

**High Crimes is journalist Michael Kodas's gripping account of life on top of the world—where man is every bit as deadly as Mother Nature."Well written, and as deftly plotted as the finest mystery novel, Kodas brings to life a disturbing picture of society at high altitude." ―Austin Chronicle**In the years following the publication of Into Thin Air, much has changed on Mount Everest. Among all the books documenting the glorious adventures in moun...

At 8am on 29 May, 1999, Cathy O’Dowd, a 30-year-old mountaineer from South Africa, stepped onto the summit of Everest and into history. She had become the first woman to climb the highest mountain in the world from both its south (Edmund Hillary) and north (George Mallory) sides. To achieve this, Cathy has had to face the ultimate risks of Everest.During her first ascent from the south in 1996, she and her team were trapped in the killer storm described in Jon Krakauer’s best selle...