Beyond Possible: One Soldier, Fourteen Peaks - My life in the Death Zone by Nirmal Purja

$15.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: near fine

My comfort zone begins where most individuals quit. As a kid in Nepal, I went barefoot because my family had nothing. That's how I developed the resilience I needed for joining the Gurkhas - one of the most fearless forces in the British Army. Then against all odds, I became the first ever Gurkha soldie r in more than 200 years of history to join the Special Boat Service where I served in the some of the world's most dangerous warzones, kicking down doors to capture enemy gunmen and terrorist bomb makers. But elite combat wasn't enough. I wanted more of a test. That's where my next project came in, something nobody thought possible - to climb all fourteen "death zone" mountains in seven months. The previous standard for conquering the world's most dangerous peaks was seven years, ten months and six days. I smashed through that achievement in six months, breaking several world records in the process. I'd have been even quicker had I not been called in to lead four perilous, high-altitude rescue missions. I knew that to quit on the mountain was to die. Even though I'd only started my climbing a few years earlier, as a hobby, I found I was able to adapt quickly to the deadly conditions. I was rarely phased by the lung-burning temperatures or brutal winds and fatigue seemed to pass me by. Fear became irrelevant because I had belief. In the death zone, I came alive. There were intimidating challenges to negotiate away from the mountains, too. Financial hurdles had to be overcome in order to fund an expedition with a six-figure price tag. Political negotiations with the Chinese government were required to ensure my entry to Shishapangma. And as I broke several world records, my mother was hospitalized. As the youngest son in a Nepalese family I was duty bound to care for her. My world fell apart. But this is what happens when ambition meets limitless imagination. Beyond Possible: One Soldier, Fourteen Peaks - My Life In The Death Zone is the inside story of my incredible adventure.   ...Show more

High Adventure by Sir Edmund Hillary

$12.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: very good

Reprinted on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the conquering of Everest, this is the authoritative first-person account of Hillary and Tenzing's conquest. "High Adventure" is regarded as a mountaineering classic, but it is also a thrilling and inspiring story of courage and endurance. First pub lished 1955. ...Show more

Life Is Meeting by John Hunt

$10.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: good

K2, Triumph and Tragedy by Jim Curran

$15.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: good

K2, "The Savage Mountain", is the second highest in the world--and the most difficult. In 1986 it was the scene of both triumphant achievement and the greatest tragedy in the history of mountaineering.

Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest

$14.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: good

Addicted to Danger - A Memoir about Affirming Life in the Face of Death by Jim Wickwire; Dorothy Bullitt

$16.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: very good

Adventurist Jim Wickwire, an eyewitness to glory and terror above 20,000 feet, has braved bitter cold, blinding storms, and avalanches to become what the Los Angeles Times calls "one of America's most extraordinary and accomplished high-altitude mountaineers." Although his incredible exploits have inspi red a feature on 60 Minutes and a full-length film, he hasn't told his remarkable story in his own words -- until now. Among the world's most fearless climbers, Jim Wickwire has traveled the globe in search of fresh challenges. He was one of the first two Americans to reach the summit of K2, the world's second highest peak, the toughest and most dangerous to climb. But with the triumphs came tragedies that haunt him still. During several difficult climbs, he was forced to look on helplessly as four of his climbing companions lost their lives. A successful Seattle attorney, Wickwire climbed his first mountain in 1960. Deeply compelled by the thrill of risk, he pushed himself to the limits of physical and mental endurance for thirty-five years, before facing a turning point that threatened his faith in himself and his hope in the future. How he reassessed his priorities and rededicated his life -- to his family and his community -- completes a unique and moving portrait of one man's courage and commitment. Addicted To Danger is a tale of adventure in its truest sense. ...Show more

Nanda Devi - The Tragic Expedition by John Roskelley

$20.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: very good

In 1976, John Roskelley joined an expedition to climb Nanda Devi, a 26,645-foot peak in India's remote northwest frontier. What unfolded during this climb was a story of strong emotion, conflicting ambitions, death and victory, desire and regret. This is the story of Willi Unsoeld, the expedition leader who supported the participation of his young daughter, who was named after the mountain they were climbing. ...Show more

A Day To Die For: 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - One Survivor's Personal Journey to Uncover the Truth by Graham Ratcliffe

$12.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: good

On the night of 10-11 May 1996, eight climbers perished in what remains the worst disaster in Everest's history. Following the tragedy, numerous accounts were published, with Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" becoming an international bestseller. But has the whole story been told? "A Day to Die For" reveal s the full, startling facts that led to the tragedy. Graham Ratcliffe, the first British climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest twice, was a first-hand witness, having spent the night on Everest's South Col at 26,000 ft, sheltering from the deadly storm. For years, he has shouldered a burden of guilt, feeling that he and his teammates could have saved lives that fateful night. His quest for answers has led to discoveries so important to an understanding of the disaster that he now questions why these facts were not made public sooner. History is dotted with high-profile disasters that both horrify and capture the attention of the public, but very rarely is our view of them revised to such devastating effect. ...Show more

Dead Lucky by Lincoln Hall

$12.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: very good

AWARDED SPECIAL JURY MENTION AT THE BANFF MOUNTAIN FILM AND BOOK FESTIVAL 2007 "The day I summitted Mount Everest was the day I died" Lincoln Hall set off for Everest in early May 2006. Five weeks after reaching Base Camp in Tibet, he began his push for the summit. After three days of climbing high er into the oxygenless air, he was blessed with a perfect summit day. For a few minutes, Hall was the highest man on the planet. His Sherpa companions arrived, photos were taken, and the climbers commenced their long descent. Then things began to go horribly wrong. Hall was struck by cerebral oedema - highaltitude sickness - in the aptly named 'death zone'. Drowsiness quickly became overpowering lethargy, and he collapsed in the snow. Two Sherpas spent hours trying to revive him, but as darkness fell he was pronounced dead. The expedition's leader ordered the Sherpas to descend to save themselves. The news of Hall's death travelled rapidly from mountaineering websites to news media around the world, and by satellite phone to Hall's family in Australia. Early the next day, Dan Mazur, an American mountaineering guide with two clients and a Sherpa, was startled to find Hall sitting cross-legged on the knife-edged crest of the summit ridge. Hall's first words - 'I imagine you are surprised to see me here' - were a massive understatement. Much was reported in the press about Hall's resurrection, but only he has real insight into what happened, and how he survived that longest night. DEAD LUCKY is Lincoln Hall's own account of climbing Everest during a deadly season in which eleven people perished on the world's highest mountain. ...Show more

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer

$12.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: very good

Unabridged! When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering affects of oxygen deprivation. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous decent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers wer e still pushing doggedly toward the top. No one had noticed that the sky had begun to fill with clouds. Six hours later and 3,000 feet lower, as the storm swept the peek with seventy-knot winds and blinding snow, Krakauer collapsed in his tent, freezing, hallucinating from exhaustion and hypoxia, but safe. The following morning he awakened to learn that six of his companions hadn't made it back to their camp, and were in a desperate struggle for their lives. When the storm finally passed, five of his fellow climbers would be dead, and the sixth so horribly frostbitten that he would have to have his right hand amputated. By the time all expeditions had quit the mountain and departed Nepal, twelve people had perished on the slopes of Everest. Into Thin Airis the definitive, personal account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author ofEiger DreamsandInto the Wild.On assignment fromOutsidemagazine, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas to report the growing commercialization of the planet's highest mountain. Everest has always been a dangerous mountain. From the first British expeditions in the 1920s until 1996, one climber has died for every four who have attained the summit.  This shocking death toll has not put a damper on the burgeoning business of guided ascents, however, in which amateur alpinists with alarmingly disparate skills are ushered up the mountain for a $65,000 fee. To ascend into the thin, frigid air above 26,000 feet--the cruising altitude of a commercial jetliner--is an inherently inrrational act. The environment is unimaginably harsh, the margin for error minuscule. Krakauer examines  what it is about Evereest that has compelled so many people--including himself--to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's frank eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement. ...Show more

Between Heaven & Earth: The Life of a Mountaineer Freda Du Faur 1882 to 1935 by Sally Irwin

$15.00 NZD

Category: Mountaineering | Reading Level: good

About a woman born ahead of her time, this book takes the reader into the realms of the Blue Mountains, Ku-ring-gai Chase and the daring milieu of early mountaineering in the Southern Alps of NZ. It is also about the way Freda Du Faur had to conquer other obstacles on the way to realising her ambitions. ...Show more

No Ordinary Woman - The Story of Mary Schaffer Warren by Janice Sanford Beck

$15.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

Artist, photographer, writer and explorer Mary Schaffer Warren overcame the limited expectations of women a century ago in order to follow her dreams. Born into a wealthy Pennsylvania Quaker family, Mary Sharpless was a precocious child who longed to experience the world beyond her sheltered home. An 18 89 cross-Canada trip with her new husband, doctor and botanist Charles Schaffer, proved to be the turning point in her life: it was when she fell hopelessly in love with the Canadian mountains. After her husband's death in 1903, Mary embarked upon a series of explorations in the Canadian Rockies that were far more extensive than was thought proper for a woman at the time. Her most famous trips, in 1907 and 1908, led to the rediscovery of Maligne Lake and, later, her highly regarded book "Old Indian Trails of the Canadian Rockies," published in 1911 and now part of the Mountain Classics Collection from Rocky Mountain Books. Mary eventually settled in Banff and married her handsome young guide, Billy Warren. Since her death in 1939, her extraordinary accomplishments continue to inspire people-particularly women -to follow their dreams. This latest printing of Janice Sanford Beck's bestselling biography of Mary Schaffer Warren features new information based on correspondence between Schaffer and her friend and lawyer, George Vaux Jr., that was recently acquired by the Whyte Museum in Banff. ...Show more