Chris Bonington's Everest - Hardcover

Bonington, Chris

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9780071414241: Chris Bonington's Everest

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 007141424X ISBN 13: 9780071414241

Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press, 2003

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A breathtaking celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the Mt. Everest summit

Joining the worldwide celebration of this adventure milestone, Chris Bonington's Everest honors the highest point on Earth with exhilarating panoramic photography and gripping tales of triumph and tragedy at 29,000 feet.

Britain's greatest living mountaineer, a vivid memoirist and outstanding photographer, Sir Chris Bonington offers armchair alpinists a breathtaking climb to the top of the world in this lavish, full-color, large-format book.

Recounting the stunning successes and brutal tragedies of his own Everest expeditions, Bonington reveals the mountain in all its majesty and mystery, giving readers an absorbing firsthand account that is as gripping as any psychological thriller.

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From the Back Cover:

EVEREST, the world's highest mountain peak, has a magnificence, a compulsive attraction that has lured so many climbers over the years. One such was Chris Bonington, Britain's best-known climber. He first accepted the challenge of Everest in the early 1970s and has since made no less than four expeditions to its different faces.

His first, unsuccessful, attempt was on the formidable South West Face that had repulsed so many expeditions. But in 1975 he returned to lead a successful ascent of this face, which put the first Britons on the summit.

In 1982 he went back with a pared-down team for an attempt on Everest's North East Ridge. Tragically, Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker were killed, and the expedition abandoned. Following this, Bonington vowed he was finished with Everest, but in 1985 the lure became too strong to resist and he joined a Norwegian expedition to tackle the South East Ridge route. At 50 Bonington recognized that this was probably the last opportunity for him to achieve for himself something he had helped others to reach--the chance to stand on the world's highest point. This time he went to the summit.

Bonington's original accounts of his four Everest expeditions appeared in his books, Everest South West Face (1973), Everest the Hard Way (1976), Everest the Unclimbed Ridge (1983, written with Charles Clarke) and The Everest Years (1986). To mark the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest, he has drawn upon these volumes and the diaries of the time to write and reflect on the changes that have come to the mountain area he loves and the developments that have transformed the horizons of Himalayan climbing. The result is an absorbing first-hand account of one man's fascination with a mountain, illustrated by some of the most remarkable photographs taken during the expeditions, which give a real sense of the variety, beauty and majesty of Everest. This very personal book is also an overview of the evolution of Himalayan climbing during the last 50 years by one of its most acclaimed exponents.

About the Author:

Sir Chris Bonington first encountered mountains in Snowdonia as a 16-year-old and has since climbed widely from Greenland to Antarctica. His first ascents include the Central Pillar of Freney in the Alps, Annapurna II and Nuptse in the Himalaya and the Central Tower of Paine in Patagonia. He has undertaken 26 expeditions to the peaks of Central Asia, including 12 first ascents of peaks of over 6000 metres, but when he is at home he still loves nothing better than to go out on his local Cumbrian hills with his friends.

Around his climbing life he has built a highly successful career in writing, lecturing and broadcasting, which has made him the best-known face in British mountaineering. The author of 15 books, he was knighted for services to mountaineering in 1996.

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