CONDITION USED GOOD, EVEREST KANGSHUNG FACE, HARDCOVER, 1989

The East or Kangshung Face of Everest is the least accessible and most dramatic face of the world’s highest mountain. Until 1988, it had only been climbed once. The first Westerner to penetrate the Kama valley in 1921, George Mallory, took one look and left it to others.

In telling the story of this notable achievement, Stephen Venables shares all the emotions of expedition climbing first-hand: the frustration of a slow, bad-weather approach; the exhilaration of discovering marvellous rock climbing on the lower buttress; the delight in tier after tier of bizarre snow flutings and ice towers; the satisfaction of solving a crucial crevasse problem with the world’s highest Tyrolean traverse; the solitary, single-minded fight for every historic step above the South Col, coupled with the suppressed excitement of knowing the summit is within reach; and the desperate descent, calling in equal measure on ultimate reserves of stamina and willpower — along the very boundary line of survival.

To this classic climbing narrative, Venables brings a sensitivity to the beauty of the ever-changing light in the remote Kama valley, a keen knowledge of Everest’s climbing history, and a good-humoured eye for the nuts and bolts of an expedition — one on which he was something of a late addition, recommended by Lord Hunt to join Americans Robert Anderson and Ed Webster, and Canadian Paul Teare. Despite minor differences in vocabulary and musical taste, the four men welded efficiently and amicably into the smallest team ever to achieve a new route on Everest.

Even in 1988, Robert Anderson’s four-man team was considered rash to attempt a new route on the East Face — unsupported and without supplementary oxygen. But when Stephen Venables reached the summit on May 12th, their joint achievement in completing the East Face, and his solo effort in pressing on from the South Col to the summit, were greeted as the most remarkable climbing feat of the year.

Stephen Venables made the 206th recorded ascent of Everest and is probably the eighth Briton to reach the summit. He is certainly the first to do so entirely without the aid of supplementary oxygen. Born in 1954, he has climbed extensively in Europe, the Himalaya, the Karakoram, as well as in Africa and South America. His first book, Painted Mountains, which described two expeditions to Kashmir, won the Boardman Tasker Prize for the best mountaineering book of 1986.

“The most promising book by a young writer about the Himalaya for very many years.”