How Do I 
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Format Information
| OverDrive WMA Audiobook |
Checked Out - Place a hold |
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Description
A breathtaking audiobook by the first American to climb the fourteen highest mountains in the world. For eighteen years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing's holy grail: to stand atop the world's fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of bottled oxygen. But NO SHORTCUTS TO THE TOP is as much about the man who would become the first American to achieve that goal as it is about his stunning quest. A preternaturally cautious climber who once turned back 300 feet from the top of Everest, Viesturs has an unyielding motto, “Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”
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Excerpts
From the book
...CHAPTER 1
Self--Arrest
At last things seemed to be going our way. Inside our Camp III tent, at 24,300 feet, Scott Fischer and I crawled into our sleeping bags and turned off our headlamps. The next day, we planned to climb up to Camp IV, at 26,000 feet. On the day after, we would get up in the middle of the night, put on all our clothing, grab our gear and a little food, and set off for the summit of K2, at 28,250 feet the second-highest mountain in the world. From Camp IV, the 2,250 vertical feet of snow, ice, and rock that would stretch between us and the top could take as long as twelve hours to climb, since neither Scott nor I was using supplemental oxygen. We had agreed that if we hadn't reached the summit by two P.M., we'd turn around--no matter what.
As usual in the midst of a several-day summit push at high altitude, Scott and I were too keyed up to fall asleep. We tossed and turned in our sleeping bags. Then suddenly, around ten P.M., the radio in our tent crackled to life. I turned on my headlamp, grabbed the walkie--talkie, and listened intently. The voice on the radio was that of Thor Kieser, another American, calling from Camp IV, 1,700 feet above us. "Hey, guys," Thor blurted out, his voice tense with alarm. "Chantal and Alex aren't back. I don't know where they are."
I sighed in pure frustration. In the beam of my headlamp, I saw a kindred expression on Scott's face. Without exchanging a word, we knew what this meant. Our summit push was now on indefinite hold. Instead of moving up to Camp IV to get into position, the next day we would find ourselves caught up in a search--and possibly a rescue. The jinx was alive and well.
On August 3, as Scott and I had made the long haul from base camp up to Camp III (a grueling 7,000 feet of altitude gain), Thor Kieser, Chantal Mauduit, and Aleksei Nikiforov had gone for the summit from Camp IV. Chantal, a very ambitious French alpinist, had originally been part of a Swiss team independent from ours. When all of her partners had thrown in the towel on the mountain and left for home, she had stayed on (illegally, in terms of the permit system) and in effect grafted herself onto our group. She was now the only woman on the mountain. Aleksei--or Alex, as we called him--was a Ukrainian member of the Russian quintet that made up the core of our team.
That morning, Alex and Thor had set out at five--thirty a.m., Chantal not until seven. These starting times were much later than Scott and I would have been comfortable with, but the threesome had been delayed because of no shortcuts to the top high winds. Remarkably, climbing without bottled oxygen, Chantal caught up with the men and surged past them. Struggling in the thin air, Thor turned back a few hundred feet below the summit, unwilling to get caught out in the dark. Chantal summited at five p.m., becoming only the fourth woman ever to climb K2. Alex topped out only after dark, at seven p.m.
The proverbial two p.m. turn-around time isn't an iron--clad rule on K2 (or on Everest, for that matter), but to reach the summit as late as Chantal and Alex did was asking for trouble. And trouble had now arrived.
On the morning...
Reviews
...This is a great read for those of us who climb, those who want to learn to climb and live to tell about it, and those who like great adventures."
About the Author
ED VIESTURS still climbs and seeks out new adventures. He lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, with his wife and three children. DAVID ROBERTS is a veteran author of mountaineering books, including On the Ridge Between Life and...
Digital Rights Information
| OverDrive WMA Audiobook | |
| Burn to CD: | Not permitted |
| Transfer to device: | Permitted (3 times) |
| Transfer to Apple® device: | Permitted |
| Public performance: | Not permitted |
| File-sharing: | Not permitted |
| Peer-to-peer usage: | Not permitted |
| All copies of this title, including those transferred to portable devices and other media, must be deleted/destroyed at the end of the lending period. | |
