Purchase
No Shortcuts to the Top
Ed Viesturs
Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks
Broadway
October 2006
On Sale: October 17, 2006
368 pages
ISBN: 0767924703
EAN: 9780767924702
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction Memoir
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 bottled oxygen. But No Shortcuts to the
Top is as much about the man who would become the first
American to achieve that goal as it is about his stunning
quest. As Viesturs recounts the stories of his most
harrowing climbs, he reveals a man torn between the flat,
safe world he and his loved ones share and the majestic and
deadly places where only he can go.
A preternaturally
cautious climber who once turned back 300 feet from the top
of Everest but who would not shrink from a peak (Annapurna)
known to claim the life of one climber for every two who
reached its summit, Viesturs lives by an unyielding motto,
“Reaching the summit is optional. Getting down is
mandatory.” It is with this philosophy that he vividly
describes fatal errors in judgment made by his fellow
climbers as well as a few of his own close calls and gallant
rescues. And, for the first time, he details his own pivotal
and heroic role in the 1996 Everest disaster made famous in
Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air.
In addition to
the raw excitement of Viesturs’s odyssey, No Shortcuts to
the Top is leavened with many funny moments revealing
the camaraderie between climbers. It is more than the first
full account of one of the staggering accomplishments of our
time; it is a portrait of a brave and devoted family man and
his beliefs that shaped this most perilous and magnificent
pursuit.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy