At 28,251 feet, the world's second-tallest mountain, K2 thrusts skyward out of the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan. Climbers regard it as the ultimate achievement in mountaineering, with good reason. Four times as deadly as Everest, K2 has claimed the lives of seventy-seven climbers since 1954. In August 2008 eleven climbers died in a single thirty-six-hour period on K2-the worst single-event tragedy in the mountain's history and the second-worst...

In July 1967, seven young men--members of Joe Wilcox's twelve-man expedition--died on Mt. McKinley, North America's highest peak, stranded at 20,000 feet during a vicious Arctic storm. Ten days passed with no rescue attempt; the bodies were never recovered. And, for reasons that have remained cloudy, there was no proper official investigation. This book begins as a classic tale of men against nature, gambling--and losing--on one of the world's starkest...

"Now in her mid-thirties, Loewen has become a wife, a mother, and a leader of Seattle Mountain Rescue (SMR), a volunteer-based search-and-rescue operation. She no longer struggles with the respect of co-workers--she has it in spades--nor crippling self-doubt--overcome after hundreds of rescues. But she does still ponder the question of why she continues to head into the backcountry, confronting danger, risk, and, often, death. SMR is involved in everything...

In Continental Divide, Maurice Isserman tells the history of American mountaineering through four centuries of landmark climbs and first ascents. Mountains were originally seen as obstacles to civilization; over time they came to be viewed as places of redemption and renewal. The White Mountains stirred the transcendentalists; the Rockies and Sierras pulled explorers westward toward Manifest Destiny; Yosemite inspired the early environmental conservationists....

"In June 1992, best friends Jim Davidson and Mike Price stood triumphantly atop Washington's Mount Rainier, celebrating what they hoped would be the first of many milestones in their lives as passionate young mountaineers. Instead, their conquest gave way to catastrophe when a cave-in plunged them deep inside a glacial crevasse--the pitch-black, ice-walled hell that every climber's nightmares are made of. At once a heart-stopping adventure story,...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • This gripping and triumphant memoir from the author of The Mountain follows a living legend of extreme mountaineering as he makes his assault on history, one 8,000-meter summit at a time.
“From the drama of the peaks, to the struggle of making a living as a professional climber, to the basic how-tos of life at 26,000 feet, No Shortcuts to the Top is fascinating reading.”—Aron Ralston,...

"In 2013, the first all-African American team of climbers, sponsored by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), challenged themselves on North America's highest point, the dangerous and forbidding Denali, in Alaska. Mills uses Expedition Denali and its team members' adventures as a jumping-off point to explore how minority populations view their place in wild environments and to share the stories of those who have already achieved significant...

The classic tale of the first accent of Everest's dangerous West Ridge. "Not only did Hornbein play a crucial role in one of the most extraordinary accomplishments in the history of mountaineering, his account of the feat is one of the finest things ever written about this peculiar, hazardous, and uncommonly engaging pursuit." —Jon Krakauer. This special 50th anniversary edition reintroduces the adventure in a larger format with full-color photographs...

After preparing to be an outdoorsman, Maxwell sets out to climb the mountain in the park.