At the same time, her groundbreaking scientific work challenged gender stereotypes in the academic community and led to important legislation banning carcinogens in children’s sleepwear. With candor and humor, Breaking Trail recounts Blum’s journey from an overprotected childhood in Chicago to the tops of some of the highest peaks on earth, and to a life lived on her own terms. Now with an index, additional photos, and a new afterword, this book is a moving testament to the power of taking risks and pursuing dreams.

    This is the only book to clearly illustrate and systematically guide readers through glacier anatomy, equipment, route finding, and rescue techniques and, just like our other books that are illustrated by Mike Clelland, it is guaranteed to entertain the whole way through.

    Every day he would descend 3,500 feet into the Grimethorpe pit. But at weekends, Andy inhabited a very different world — thousands of feet above the pitheads of the colliery. Introduced to his local mountaineering club while a miner, he soon learned to cherish this newfound freedom. Living through the coalminer’s strikes of the mid-eighties — the guilt, the broken friendships, the poverty — Andy continued to indulge his passion, and in 1986, after much soul-searching, he quit the mines in order to take up mountaineering professionally. At the same time he decided to educate himself, acquiring, almost from a standing start, academic qualifications including a PhD. in sociology. This extraordinary twin odyssey is graphically recalled in this remarkable book. Andy also recounts the grim tale of one of the steepest and most difficult summits in the world — the north face of Changabang in the Himalaya. Seventeen days later, he and two of his teammates — his best friend had already perished — crawled into base camp, frostbitten and emaciated. His account of this terrifying experience provides a dramatic climax to this extraordinary story. Learning to Breathe is first and foremost a lively and humorous memoir, written with energy and insight, about two very different groups of men, each navigating equally inhospitable worlds. Finally, on a larger scale, it is an examination of our ability to draw on inner strengths and the strengths of others.

    Drawing from decades of memories, journals, and an exquisite photographic collection, Washburn completes the self-portrait of a man drawn to altitude, from his first great climb of Mount Washington at age eleven, through numerous first ascents of peaks all over the world, to handily scaling a climbing wall at eighty-eight.       Indeed, Washburn also became renowned for his pioneering work in aerial photography, his dedication to science and cartography, his decades of leading Boston’s Museum of Science, and his close association with the National Geographic Society.       This mountaineering icon candidly offers an intimate look at a life devoted to the world’s highest places, to the friends who challenged the mountains with him, and to wife Barbara, who shared his adventures for nearly sixty-five years.

    Former editor from the Irish Field tells her story of climbing Everest.

    and Auckland exhibition on Hillary's life. She spent eighteen months working closely with Sir Edmund and Lady Hillary and was given free access to Sir Edmund's archives, building up a detailed understanding of his life and met many of the people who have been his closest associates and friends.

    Written by expert local guide, Hilary Sharp, this book showcases the very best routes on both the French and the Italian sides of the Mont Blanc Massif, including 50 great day walks - from 3 to 20 kilometres - and 4 multi-day treks. The area covered takes in a variety of terrain including valley footpaths, airy ridges and via ferratas. At 4808m, Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in Western Europe and dominates the major holiday destinations of Chamonix and Courmayeur. The walks in this guidebook are organised according to the nearest town base, with chapters covering St Gervais les Bains and Les Contamines, Servoz and Plateau D'Assy, Les Houches, Chamonix, Argenti�re and Courmayeur. In addition to the high-level walks there is often a valley walk that can be done whatever the weather, or on rest days, with children, by bike, or as a run. The multi-day treks are Vallorcine to Plaine Joux, the Tour des Aiguilles Rouges, Vallorcine to Servoz and a circuit of the Italian Val Ferret. All routes feature a detailed route description and mapping and are illustrated with spectacular photography.

    Located on the border of China and Pakistan, K2 has some of the harshest climbing conditions in the world. Ninety women have scaled Everest but of the six women who reached the summit of K2, three lost their lives on the way back down the mountain and two have since died on other climbs.In Savage Summit, Jennifer Jordan shares the tragic, compelling, inspiring, and extraordinary true stories of a handful of courageous women -- mothers and daughters, wives and lovers, poets and engineers -- who defeated this formidable mountain yet ultimately perished in pursuit of their dreams.

    This book explains how to tackle one of the world's highest and toughest treks.