Below Another Sky: A Mountain Adventure in Search of a Lost Father

Ridgeway, Rick

ISBN 10: 1559276525 ISBN 13: 9781559276528

Publisher: Macmillan Audio, 2001

Synopsis

A renowned adventurer travels to Tibet with a young woman in search of her father’s memory and gains a fresh perspective on his own life

In a gripping adventure and intimate memoir, Rick Ridgeway takes us high into the mountains of Tibet and into the remote corners of his past. Twenty years ago, Rick sat amongst the destruction of a terrifying avalanche cradling his dying friend Jonathan in his arms. Before his friend passed on, Rick vowed to keep watch over Jonathan’s infant daughter, Asia.

Now Asia has grown into a vibrant and headstrong young woman. Hoping to help her connect with the father she never knew, Rick takes her to the Himalayas, the mountain ranges her father cherished most, to search for the place where he died. The trek through remote and forbidding terrain is a fitting backdrop for the precarious emotional journey that the travelers share.

In a stunning conclusion on a treacherous and wind-battered mountain face, Rick and Asia embrace the deepest realities of death—and life. Ultimately, the truths they both seek are revealed, not in the images of a life long gone, but in the bright promise of future possibility.

About this title

Review:

On October 13, 1980, alpinists Rick Ridgeway and Yvon Chouinard, in company with National Geographic photographer Jonathan Wright, were struggling up the slopes of the little-explored Tibetan mountain Minya Konka when an avalanche swallowed them. Wright, only 28 years old, died. As he did, Ridgeway writes, "something left him. I saw it." The survivors buried Wright in a rocky grave on Minya Konka's flanks and, dispirited, returned home with the haunting vision of that death always in their memories.

Fast-forward nearly 20 years. Wright's daughter, an infant when he died, asks Ridgeway to take her to Tibet, climb Minya Konka with her, and find her father's grave. Their remarkable journey in honor of a lost friend and father, one that would honor Wright's vow "to live each day as though it were my only one" and that would take them into mountains that had never before been climbed, forms the heart of Ridgeway's thoughtful memoir, which is sure to become a classic of mountaineering literature. The book is, however, more than a simple narrative of a difficult task accomplished; it affords Ridgeway an opportunity to reflect on his many perilous adventures (kayaking in the stormy waters off Tierra del Fuego and scaling Mount Everest among them) and on what drives him to undertake such challenges in the face of hard-earned knowledge of the risks involved--all of it having something to do, as he writes, with "telling yourself you're not sure you can make it, but making it anyway."

Like Peter Matthiessen's Snow Leopard, Ridgeway's book involves a voyage of personal discovery that's rich with meaning. And, like Matthiessen's book, Below Another Sky deserves a place on the shelves of anyone possessed by the spirit of adventure. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

Rick Ridgeway, a mountaineering legend, is well known for his writing, photography, and filmmaking. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and he is the author of four previous books, including The Shadow of Kilimanjaro, which was named one of the Ten Best Travel Books of 1998 by the New York Times. He lives with his family in California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1559276525
• ISBN 13: 9781559276528
• Binding: Audio Cassette