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A thrilling chronicle of the tragedy-ridden record of climbing K2, the world's most difficult and unpredictable hill, by the bestselling authors of No Shortcuts to the Top
At 28,251 toes, the world's second-tallest hill, K2 thrusts skyward out of the Karakoram Range of north Pakistan. Climbers respect it as the best accomplishment in mountaineering, with good reason. Four times as lethal as Everest, K2 has claimed the lives of seventy-seven climbers since 1954. In August 2008 eleven climbers perished within a thirty-six-hour period on K2–the worst single-event tragedy in the mountain's record and the second-worst in the long chronicle of mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges. Yet summiting K2 remains a cherished goal for climbers from all over the world. Before he encountered the task of K2 himself, Ed Viesturs, one of the world's leading high-altitude mountaineers, considered it as "the ultimate goal of mountaineering."
In K2: Life and Loss of life on the World's Most Dangerous Pile, Viesturs explores the amazing record of the hill and of these who have attempted to conquer it. At the same time he probes K2's most memorable sagas so that they can illustrate the lessons learned by confronting the fundamental questions elevated by mountaineering–questions of risk, ambition, commitment to one's teammates, self-sacrifice, and the price of glory. Viesturs is aware the hill firsthand. He and renowned alpinist Scott Fischer climbed it in 1992 and were nearly killed within an avalanche that directed them slipping to almost certain fatality. Fortunately, Ed managed to get into a self-arrest position with his ice ax and stop both his land and Scott' s.
Focusing on seven of the mountain's most remarkable campaigns, from his own troubled ascent to the 2008 tragedy, Viesturs and Roberts crafts an edge-of-your-seat narrative that climbers and armchair travelers as well will see unforgettably compelling. With images from Viesturs's personal collection and from historical sources, this is actually the definitive bill of the world's ultimate hill, and of the lessons that can be gleaned from attempting toward its elusive summit.
From the Hardcover model.
