| Greater Ranges/Climbing Travel |
| A Progress in Mountaineering (1950) |
| JHB Bell |
| Splendid mixture of idiosyncratic instruction and reminiscence from legendary Tartan/Teutonic climber. |
| |
| A Slender Thread (2000) |
| Stephen Venables |
| Venables has an appalling high-altitude accident in the Indian Himalaya but with a little help from his friends, somehow survives the unsurvivable. |
| |
| Against the Wall (1997) |
| Simon Yates |
| Yates has a hard time on a Patagonian big wall in company with the early 90s alpine elite. |
| |
| Annapurna (1952) |
| Maurice Herzog |
| The story of the bravura ascent of the first 8000m peak to be climbed is recounted in heroic style with a cast featuring many of the celebrated Etoiles du Midi of the 50s, Lachenal, Rebuffat, Terray. |
| |
| Conquistadors of the Useless (1961) |
| Lionel Terray |
| Epic, self-regarding memoirs of the great French alpinist. |
| |
| Dark Shadows Falling (1997) |
| Joe Simpson |
| Simpson gets even more morose and gloomy about the darker side of mountaineers. I hope he's not going to do anything silly. |
| |
| Elusive Summits (1990) |
| Victor Saunders |
| Haphazard, semi-organised, plucky Brit alpine-stylee mountaineers tilt at big white mountains in far away places with limited success, but with lots of laughs and alarming escapades. Finally they triumph on one of the hardest mixed lines in the Karakorum. |
| |
| Eric Shipton: Everest and beyond (1997) |
| Peter Steele |
| Disappointingly banal biography of the great mountain traveller. Largely repeats what's in Shipton's books with comparatively little new light thrown on his character and few surprises. Useful reference as an introduction to Shipton's life and writing if you know nowt about him however. |
| |
| Everest The Cruel Way (1980) |
| Joe Tasker |
| A neglected classic, overshadowed by Tasker's much better known Savage Arena. However, this account of the British Everest Winter Expedition is a compelling and honest account of how horrible it is to climb at high altitude in the cold months. |
| |
| Everest, Kanshung Face (1989) |
| Stephen Venables |
| A superior Everest expedition book. The epic story of the first Briton to summit Everest without supplementary oxygen. |
| |
| Hands of a Climber (1993) |
| Steve Dean |
| Worthy but rather uninspiring biography of the great inter-war scouse rock prodigy Colin Kirkus. ** |
| |
| Himalaya Alpine-Style (1995) |
| Andy Fanshaw & Stephen Venables |
| Fabulous large-format 'guidebook' (ha ha) to some really big gnarly monsters in the Himalaya. Well, you can dream can't you? Essential for findding out where all these unpronounceable places are so you can sound knowledgeable. |
| |
| Hold the Heights (1993) |
| Walt Unsworth |
| Mountaineering-biased, Euro-centric fact-packed history of climbing from the one-time editor of Bumbler & Stumbler and owner of Cicerone Press. Factually excellent and worthy but rather dull. A pub-quiz buff's bible. |
| |
| I Chose to Climb/The Next Horizon (1966/1973) |
| Chris Bonington |
| The Richard Branson of British Climbing recounts the origins of his inexorable ascent towards public acclaim. Yawns ahoy, enlivened by the occasional death. |
| |
| In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods (1977) |
| Galen Rowell |
| Toe-curlingly embarrassing bitching on an epic scale is laid bare as a big US expedition to K2 self-destructs. Fabulous photographs. |
| |
| Into Thin Air (1997) |
| Jon Krakauer |
| Freelance journo Krakauer goes on a freebie jaunt up Everest courtesy of the expense accounts dept of Outside Magazine. It all goes horribly pear-shaped as the commercial expeditions he is covering get gridlocked on the Hilary Step - and a terrible storm descends. There follows a ghastly commercial breakdown. |
| |
| K2 The Savage Mountain (1954) |
| Charles Houston |
| Epic account of the disastrous post-war US K2 expedition by legendary and universally-respected American mountaineer. |
| |
| K2 The Story of the Savage Mountain (1995) |
| Jim Curran |
| The history, drama and gore behind the attempts on K2 is recounted in accessible style. |
| |
| Mirrors in the Cliffs (1983) |
| Jim Perrin (Ed). |
| Effectively 'Games Climbers Play 2' - but edited by Perrin so more high-brow. Snores galore but also much solid material recycled from the ephemeral trash bin of magazine/journal scribbling. |
| |
| My Vertical World (1992) |
| Jerzy Kukuczka |
| Hard-as-Nails Pole Kukuczka tells his stoically brutal story of climbing all the 8000ers. Makes Reinhold Mesnner look like a right wuss. |
| |
| No Place To Fall (1995) |
| Victor Saunders |
| Saunders' follow-up to Elusive Summits, but not quite as tightly written. Similar deadpan drollery ensues however. |
| |
| Painted Mountains (1986) |
| Stephen Venables |
| One of Britain's most experienced mountaineers kicks off his eventful career with this, the story of his first major expeditions to the high mountains of Asia. |
| |
| Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia (1966) |
| Anthony Smythe & John Cleare |
| Ahead of its time photo-action book which would spawn more ambitious imitators in the 70s **** |
| |
| Rope Boy (1970) |
| Denis Gray |
| Potentially interesting reminiscences of the heroic post-war era of British climbing with a cast including the usual suspects (Brown, Whillans etc). Sadly, the anecdotal style is a trifle lifeless and the narrative can be hard going. |
| |
| Storms of Silence (1996) |
| Joe Simpson |
| Simpson in sustained downbeat mood gets all morose and gloomy about the darker side of mountains. |
| |
| The Hard Years (1967) |
| Joe Brown |
| Mainly ghost-written autobiography of the 'Human Fly'. Sadly the quality of the writing doesn't match up to this most famous British climber's achievements. |
| |
| The Kurt Diemberger Omnibus (1999) |
| Kurt Diemberger |
| Romantically-inclined Austrian with interesting climbing life of exceptional longevity, but frustratingly overblown prose style. His three famous books appear here under one cover. |
| |
| The Seven Mountain Travel Books (1985) |
| W.H. Tilman |
| Professional grump Tilman, the perfect foil to suave Shipton, was an eloquently spiffing dead-pan humorist. His classic mountaineering-related books are all here to enjoy in a bumper album. |
| |
| The Shining Mountain (1978) |
| Pete Boardman |
| Feeling slightly fraudulent in the wake of the public acclaim from his 1975 Everest expedition, Boardman tilts at an audacious Himalayan big wall in company with fellow alpine visionary Joe Tasker. Everyone tells them they won't succeed. They do. Boardman's guilt is exorcised. |
| |
| The Six Mountain Travel Books (1985) |
| Eric Shipton |
| Although not the world's most accomplished writer, Shipton nevertheless did loads of interesting stuff in the hills and his works are classic accounts of a romantic-individualist, nomadically adventuring in an End-of-Empire globe. Here are all his famous tomes in one bargain package. |
| |
| This My Voyage (1949) |
| Tom Longstaff |
| Legendary world explorer recounts a life of mountain adventure in a remarkably condensed book. |
| |
| Touching the Void (1988) |
| Joe Simpson |
| The escape-from-certain-death book to end all escape-from-certain-death books. |
| |
| Trango the Nameless Tower (1978) |
| Jim Curran |
| Cuddly climbing cameraman writes laddishly amusing and eminently readable account of the first ascent of Trango Tower by Brits in 1976. |
| |
