Can anyone recommend any mountaineering books?

a147pro

For the armchair mountaineer. Have read Into thin Air, the Climb, Left for dead, The Beckoning Silence, K2: Savage Mountain, Everest the Hard Way, Eiger Dreams, Annapurna - True Summit, Messner's autobiography, a couple of the Everest anthologies.

Was thinKing of the Endless Knot by Kurt Diemberger, and any biography of Kukuzka if such exists.

Can anyone recommend anything else?

Tells

Joe Brown - The Hard Years.. Excellent.

And in my opinion, anything by Chris Bonnington..

a147pro

thanks will try. anyone anything else?

Evil Phil

These would be my favourites:

Touching The Void and everything else by Joe Simpson
The White Spider - Henrich Harrer
Against The Wall - Simon Yates
The Flame of Adventure - Simon Yates
Learning to Breathe - Andy Cave
Thin White Line - Andy Cave
Psycho Vertical - Andy Kirkpatrick
Mountains of the Mind - Robert Macfarlane

a147pro

excellent, thank you, will get stuck into them in due course

only ever read The Beckoning Silence and This Game of Ghosts by Joe Simpson and have to say I really disliked them both. Never read touching the void though saw the film which was simply stunning

BostonB

All of the above obviously and I liked these too.

The Boys of Everest
Learning to Breathe Andy Cave
Dougal Haston: The Philosophy Of Risk

I'd add a lot of climbing books are not easy reads. Can be quite gritty. You either like that or you don't.

Hugh_C

Just to follow on from EvilPhil's suggestion of The White Spider, when you're reading that book, you can smell the rotten rock hear those fusillades of falling rock from above, very evocative, grim but fantastic. Also it's written in a quaint English, dating back to the 50s(?). Great read.

I think I've read pretty much all the Everest '96 season books, interesting that there were some omissions from Krakaeur's book that were picked up by some of the other climbers.

Not as easy to read but interesting nevertheless is the Mallory biography The Wildest Dream where you get a background into the insanity of the man.

Speaking of insane, the autobiography of Ranulph Fiennes - Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know - is fantastic. The man is barking. Period. Great read.

H

BostonB

The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev is an alternative view point of Into thin Air

Evil Phil

Yeah, that's a good read alright.

loobylou

This is somewhat old but I found it a classic, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mountaineering-Scotland-W-H-Murray/dp/1898573239

cavedave

Evil Phil

Touching The Void and everything else by Joe Simpson
The White Spider - Henrich Harrer
Mountains of the Mind - Robert Macfarlane

I have read these and they are great.

SomeFool

Tigers of the Snow - Jonathan Neale

a147pro

BostonB wrote: »

The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev is an alternative view point of Into thin Air

got this on a talking book and listened to it driving down to to Cork. became so engrossed I missed the turn twice and was heading to Limerick first, then Kerry!

a couple of years later I went trekking in nepal and made a quite poignant and unexpected connection there. I went up to Annapurna base camp. it was winter and at the time it was the highest I'd ever been, so i was really into it. I walked up to look at the climbers memorials, piles of stones with Buddhist Prayer flags flying and, to my surprise, the first name I came accross was Anatoli's. he was killed in an avalanche there on Christmas Day.

Carawaystick

Bill Tilman and Eric Shipton's books about climbing and exploring in the 20's 30's and 40's aren't bad, probably not PC the way they refer to coolies though....

Pete Boardman ad Joe Tasker's books are good too - climbing Changabang back in the 70's was a pretty amazing feat.