Sooner or later, nearly all climbers get injured and it will be injuries that ultimately dictate how far you get in climbing, if you let them. Unfortunately, the data shows it takes over a decade just to get small proportions of medical research adopted in regular practice. Sourcing reliable and up to date advice on preventing and treating finger, elbow, shoulder and other climbing injuries is challenging to say the least. You need to be the expert, because there are so many strands of knowledge and practice to pull together to stay healthy as a climber, and no single source of advice to cover all of these. The book draws together both the cutting edge of peer reviewed sports medicine research, and the subtle concepts of changing your climbing habits and routine to prevent and successfully recover from injuries. It is a handbook on how to take care of yourself as a lifelong climbing athlete. By spanning the fields of climbing coaching, physiotherapy, sports medicine and behavioural science, it goes beyond the general advice on treating symptoms offered by sports medicine textbooks and into much more detail on technique and habits specific to climbing than the existing climbing literature base. You will learn how your current climbing habits are already causing your future injuries and what you can do to change that. If you are already injured, it will prevent you from prolonging your injury with the wrong climbing habits and rehabilitation choices. You will learn how the ingredients of prevention and good recovery come from wildly different sources and how you have been using only a fraction of them. Fully referenced throughout, the practical advice for diagnosis, rehabilitation and prevention of climbing injuries is drawn from up to date peer reviewed sports medicine research.

    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.

    Again and again, protected by the rope, he fell. He decided then that it would not be in climbing but in falling that he would embrace his fear--bathe in it, as he says, and move beyond it.A captivating exploration of the daredevil world of rock climbing, as well as a thoughtful meditation on the role of risk and fear in the author's own life.In the tradition of the wildly popular man-versus-nature genre that has launched several bestsellers, Andrew Todhunter follows the lives of world-class climber Dan Osman and his coterie of friends as he explores the extremes of risk on the unyielding surface of the rock.Climbing sheer rock faces of hundreds or thousands of feet is more a religion than a sport, demanding dedication, patience, mental and physical strength, grace, and a kind of obsession with detail that is crucial just to survive. Its artists are modern-day ascetics who often sacrifice nine-to-five jobs, material goods, and the safety of everyday life to pit themselves and their moral resoluteness against an utterly unforgiving opponent.In the course of the two years chronicled in Fall of the Phantom Lord, the author also undertakes a journey of his own as he begins to weigh the relative value of extreme sports and the risk of sudden death. By the end of the book, as he ponders joining Osman on a dangerous fall from a high bridge to feel what Osman experiences, Todhunter comes to a new understanding of risk taking and the role it has in his life, and in the lives of these climbers.Beautifully written, Fall of the Phantom Lord offers a fascinating look at a world few people know. It will surely take its place alongside Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm as a classic of adventure literature.

    Everest disaster vanished into thin air, one man had the courage to bring them down alive... On May 10, 1996, two commercial expeditions headed by expert leaders attempted to scale the world's largest peak. But things went terribly wrong. Crowded conditions, bad judgement, and a bitter storm stopped many climbers in their tracks. Others were left for dead, or stranded on the frigid mountain. Anatoli Boukreev, head climbing guide for the Mountain Madness expedition, stepped into the heart of the storm and brought three of his clients down alive. Here is his amazing story-of an expedition fated for disaster, of the blind ambition that drives people to attempt such dangerous ventures, and of a modern-day hero, who risked his own life to save others..

    This full-color book reveals the techniques and tricks gleaned from John Sherman's 30-year career as one of America's most respected and notorious bouldering gurus.

    That passion for "feeding the rat" made him the unsung hero of dozens of horrifying epics in the mountains, including the famous Ogre expedition that almost killed Doug Scott and Sir Chris Bonington. The book is also the story of the extraordinary friendship between Mo Anthoine and A. Alvarez — the distinguished poet, journalist, and critic — whose deeply moving portrait of his longtime climbing partner is a classic of adventure literature.

    In this collection of his finest essays and reporting, Krakauer writes of mountains from the memorable perspective of one who has himself struggled with solo madness to scale Alaska's notorious Devils Thumb. In Pakistan, the fearsome K2 kills thirteen of the world's most experienced mountain climbers in one horrific summer. In Valdez, Alaska, two men scale a frozen waterfall over a four-hundred-foot drop. In France, a hip international crowd of rock climbers, bungee jumpers, and paragliders figure out new ways to risk their lives on the towering peaks of Mont Blanc. Why do they do it? How do they do it? In this extraordinary book, Krakauer presents an unusual fraternity of daredevils, athletes, and misfits stretching the limits of the possible.From the paranoid confines of a snowbound tent, to the thunderous, suffocating terror of a white-out on Mount McKinley, Eiger Dreams spins tales of driven lives, sudden deaths, and incredible victories. This is a stirring, vivid book about one of the most compelling and dangerous of all human pursuits.

    Their four books of lightweight Himalayan expeditioning are here published in one volume for the first time.

    Macfarlane is both a mountaineer and a scholar. Consequently we get more than just a chronicle of climbs. He interweaves accounts of his own adventurous ascents with those of pioneers such as George Mallory, and in with an erudite discussion of how mountains became such a preoccupation for the modern western imagination. The book is organised around a series of features of mountaineering--glaciers, summits, unknown ranges--and each chapter explores the scientific, artistic and cultural discoveries and fashions that accompanied exploration. The contributions of assorted geologists, romantic poets, landscape artists, entrepreneurs, gallant amateurs and military cartographers are described with perceptive clarity. The book climaxes with an account of Mallory's fateful ascent on Everest in 1924, one of the most famous instances of an obsessive pursuit. Macfarlane is well-placed to describe it since it is one he shares. MacFarlane's own stories of perilous treks and assaults in the Alps, the Cairngorms and the Tian Shan mountains between China and Kazakhstan are compelling. Readers who enjoyed Francis Spufford's masterly I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination will enjoy Mountains of the Mind. This is a slighter volume than Spufford's and it loses in depth what it gains in range, but for an insight into the moody, male world of mountaineering past and present it is invaluable. --Miles Taylor

    Along with intensely positive experiences in climbing is the possibility of the opposite extremeto become stranded, severely injured, or even killed, in disturbingly easy ways. This book explores this dark side of climbing. When an accident happens on a 14er, the victim is far from help and in an environment where rescue is difficult at best. The book is full of hair-raising stories of these disasters and resue attempts and also aids in avoiding such disasters.

    What set their climb apart from those before it, and even those afterward, was a disaster of such magnitude that it became know as North America's worst mountaineering tragedy. Prior to July of 1967 only four men had ever perished on Denali, and then, in one fell swoop, Denali--like Melville s, Great White Whale, Moby Dick--indiscriminately took the lives of seven men. The brothers survive one danger after another: a terrible train accident, a near drowning in the McKinley River, an encounter with a large grizzly, a 60 foot plunge into a gaping crevasse, swept away by a massive avalanche, and finally a climactic escape from the terror of 100 mph winds while descending from the summit. Should I Not Return is a one of a kind cliffhanger packed with danger, survival under the worst conditions, and heroism on the Last Frontier s most treasured trophy--the icy slopes of Denali, North America s tallest mountain--Mount McKinley.

    Caldwell's odds-defying feat was the culmination of an entire lifetime of pushing himself to his limits as an athlete.This engrossing memoir chronicles the journey of a boy with a fanatical mountain-guide father who was determined to instill toughness in his son to a teen whose obsessive nature drove him to the top of the sport-climbing circuit. Caldwell's affinity for adventure then led him to the vertigo-inducing and little understood world of big wall free climbing. But his evolution as a climber was not without challenges; in his early twenties, he was held hostage by militants in a harrowing ordeal in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Soon after, he lost his left index finger in an accident. Later his wife, and main climbing partner, left him. Caldwell emerged from these hardships with a renewed sense of purpose and determination. He set his sights on free climbing El Capitan's biggest, steepest, blankest face--the Dawn Wall. This epic assault took more than seven years, during which time Caldwell redefined the sport, found love again, and became a father.The Push is an arresting story of focus, drive, motivation, endurance, and transformation, a book that will appeal to anyone seeking to overcome fear and doubt, cultivate perseverance, turn failure into growth, and find connection with family and with the natural world.

    Though tempted to pull out and go home, she reluctantly runs.Little did she know the race up Corrig Mountain would inflict such physical blows: Her lungs catch fire, her legs explode, her heart hits record speeds. And though it’s a gentle summer’s evening back in Dublin, on top of Corrig Mountain the wind screeches and the mist swirls as she lurches and lunges over grass, rocks, and rutted bog. The next morning, everything hurts. But still she perseveres. Every week, she’s battling it out with the other mountain runners, adversaries on the hill. But by 9 pm, she’s joining her new found friends in the pub, discovering the wonderful healing powers of a proper pint. Over the next three years, Moire competes in every mountain race she can find, whatever its shape or form: everything from ten kilometre sprints up summits, to one hundred kilometre runs requiring map and compass. She even dabbles in adventure racing, doing multi-day multi-sport races in teams of four in the barren wastelands of Ireland and Scotland. But it is not until she sets her sights on the still unconquered Wicklow Round that she finally finds her nemesis. In July 2008, Moire made a solo attempt on the Wicklow Round, a gruelling endurance run spanning a hundred kilometres over twenty six of Ireland’s remotest mountain peaks. After twenty one and a half hours she collapsed, two summits from the end. Battered and bruised yet undeterred, she returned a year later to become the first person ever to complete the challenge.This is her story.

    He and his climbing partner, Simon, reached the summit of the remote Siula Grande in June 1985. A few days later, Simon staggered into Base Camp, exhausted and frost-bitten, with news that that Joe was dead.What happened to Joe, and how the pair dealt with the psychological traumas that resulted when Simon was forced into the appalling decision to cut the rope, makes not only an epic of survival but a compelling testament of friendship.

    Veteran journalist with 25 years of climbing experience, author Potterfield is a master craftsman who has himself been in the zone. These stories, the result of extensive interviews, reveal that the keys to averting tragedy lie in the head and heart as much as in technical proficiency and physical strength.There is the story of Colby Coombs' disastrous experience on Alaska's Mount Foraker, which ranks with Joe Simpson's Touching the Void as one of the greatest survival stories of the genre. On K2, experienced climber Scott Fischer (who lost his life in the 1996 Everest tragedy) and partner Ed Viesturs battle for the summit in the face of numerous setbacks, severe injuries, and harrowing weather conditions. Peter Potterfield recounts his own riveting tale of hope and desperation after a climbing fall that left him trapped and badly injured on a narrow ledge in Washington's North Cascades.