Showing results for "The Life" in Climbing & Mountaineering

In May of 1963, Seattle mountaineer Jim Whittaker stepped into world history by becoming the first American to summit Mount Everest. More than 50 years later, he is still regarded as a seminal figure in North American mountaineering, as well as an astute businessman who helped create the outdoor recreation industry. A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond is Jim's courageous, no-punches-pulled autobiography and a look at a peripatetic, sometimes difficult life.

A North Country Life is the story of author Sydney Lea’s powerful connection to his family, friends, and the northern outdoors. Loosely organized by the changing of seasons, different sections feature essays on such topics as childhood family fishing trips in the wilds of Maine, trophy fly-fishing the northern reaches of the Connecticut River, the opening day of turkey hunting season in Vermont, and getting lost in the deep woods while deer hunting. The essays are introspective and dramatic.

A life worth living is lived at the edges where it is wild. At the beginning of his memoir Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map, Rick Ridgeway tells us that if you add up all his many expeditions, he’s spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents: “And most of that in...

THIS GRIPPING AND TRIUMPHANT MEMOIR FOLLOWS A LIVING LEGEND OF EXTREME MOUNTAINEERING AS HE MAKES HIS ASSAULT ON HISTORY, ONE 8,000-METER SUMMIT AT A TIME. For eighteen years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing’s holy grail: to stand atop the world’s fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of...

With heart-pounding descriptions of avalanches and treacherous ascents, Barry Blanchard chronicles his transformation from a poor Native American/white kid from the wrong side of the tracks to one of the most respected alpinists in the world. At thirteen, he learned to rappel when he joined the...

My eyes lifted to the horizon and the unmistakable snowy outline of Everest. Everest, the mountain of my childhood dreams. A mountain that has haunted me my whole life. A mountain I have seen hundreds of times in photographs and films but never in real life. In April 2018, seasoned adventurer...

Fifty Percent of Mountaineering Is Uphill is the enthralling true story of Jasper's Willi Pfisterer, a legend in the field of mountaineering and safety in the Rocky Mountains. For more than thirty years, Willi was an integral part of Jasper's alpine landscape, guiding climbers up to the highest peaks, and rescuing them from perilous situations.

Reinhold Messner is one of history's greatest mountaineers, a man who pushed the frontier of what is possible for a whole generation of climbers and beyond. In his new memoir, Against the Wind, Messner looks back on a life of accomplishments and recounts some of the most important episodes after turning eighty in 2024.

What compels mountain climbers to take the risks that they do? Is it the thrill in the physical accomplishment, in managing to defy the odds, or both - and why do they continue to do what they do in the face of such great danger? In On the Ridge Between Life and Death, David Roberts confronts these questions head-on as he recounts the exhilarating highs and desperate lows of his climbing career.

‘An extraordinary treasure trove’ Andrew Marr A unique collection of unpublished letters from the climbing legend George Mallory to his family, revealing his innermost thoughts about people, places and mountains. On the 8th of June, 1924, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were seen through a...

How is a person changed by commitment to their passion, and how does their commitment change over time? These are questions that esteemed climber Sonnie Trotter asks as he reflects on the most thrilling adventures of his sport and his life. 2025 is Sonnie Trotter’s 30th year climbing. He’s...

Born in the late 1880s to a gritty mining magnate who made his millions in the California gold rush and a well-bred mother descended from one of New York’s distinguished families, society beauty Louise Arner Boyd was raised during a glittering era. After inheriting a staggering family fortune, she began leading a double life. She fell under the spell of the north in the late 1920s after a sailing excursion to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next three decades, she achieved international notoriety as a rugged and audacious polar explorer while maintaining her lifestyle as a society woman.

In The Last of His Kind, renowned adventure writer David Roberts gives readers a spellbinding history of mountain climbing in the twentieth century as told through the biography of Brad Washburn, legendary mountaineering pioneer and photographer. Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air, has praised David Roberts, saying, “Nobody alive writes better about mountaineering” - and nowhere is that truth more evident than in this breathtaking account of the life and exploits of America’s greatest mountain climber.

Edge of the Map is equal parts inspiring, dramatic, and heartbreaking. One of America's greatest high altitude mountaineers, Christine Boskoff was at the top of her career when she and her partner perished in an avalanche in 2006. Principled and humble, Boskoff was also a deeply loved role model in the climbing community.

Fanny Bullock Workman was a complicated and restless woman who defied the rigid Victorian morals she found as restrictive as a corset. With her frizzy, brown hair tucked under a topee, Workman was a force on the mountain and off. Instrumental in breaking the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, this American woman climbed more peaks than any of her peers, became the first woman to map the far reaches of the Himalayas, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne, and the second to address the Royal Geographic Society of London.

This gripping and triumphant memoir follows a living legend of extreme mountaineering as he makes his assault on history, one 8,000-meter summit at a time. For eighteen years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing’s holy grail: to stand atop the world’s fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of...

By the time life had finished hitting Rick Crandall from all sides, he was at the lowest point of his life, both personally and professionally. His wife, Pamela, makes an astute and life-changing suggestion: "Let's get a dog." So begins the story of Emme, a 200-pound Saint Bernard trapped in the body of a five-pound Australian terrier puppy. Soon, Emme and Rick hit the hiking trails around Aspen, Colorado. While she is groomed to be a show dog, it's soon obvious that her heart is in the hills and with Rick, who decides to add more challenging hikes to the mix.