Download or read book Psychovertical written by Andy Kirkpatrick and published by Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 2012-08-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CLICK HERE to download the first chapter from Psychovertical Psychovertical is the story of what happens to a nice lower-class kid with dyslexia who gains control over his circumstances by clinging to giant stone faces, thousands of feet in the air, for days at a time. In this case, Kirkpatrick uses his 12-day solo climb of the Reticent Wall on California's El Capitan as the experience that helps him understand how growing up poor and struggling with dyslexia and low self-confidence set him on a path of extreme adventure. Kirkpatrick's writing is gripping and highly entertaining -- even non-climbers will enjoy his raw intensity, gallows humor, and honest, self-deprecating storytelling style. This book is a Boardman-Tasker Prize winner, which is recognition given for outstanding mountaineering literature. From the judges' remarks: “The book is very cleverly structured....The cuts from scene to scene and climb to climb work wonderfully well -- a sort of mountaineering Day of The Jackal -- as Kirkpatrick comes closer and closer to his nemesis on Reticent Wall. And it is this climb, the running narrative of the book, that grips the most: 14 pitches of aid climbing, unrelieved by conversation with a partner other than himself, should by rights be boring. But it grips the heart further and further.”
Download or read book Psychovertical written by Andy Kirkpatrick and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE BOARDMAN TASKER PRIZE 2008 Metro magazine recently wrote that Andy Kirkpatrick makes Ray Mears look like Paris Hilton. Words like boldness, adventure and risk were surely coined especially for him. As one of the world's most accomplished mountaineers and big-wall climbers, he goes vertically where other climbers (to say nothing of the general public) fear to tread. For the first time, this cult hero of vertical rock has written a book, in which his thirteen-day ascent of Reticent Wall on El Capitan in California - the hardest big-wall climb ever soloed by a Briton - frames a challenging autobiography. From childhood on a grim inner-city housing estate in Hull, the story moves through horrific encounters and unique athletic achievements at the extremes of the earth. As he writes, 'Climbs like this make no sense ... the chances of dying on the route are high.' Yet Andy, in his thirties with young children, has everything to live for. This is the paradox at the heart of the story. This book - by turns gut-wrenching, entertaining and challenging - appeals to the adventurer in all of us.
Download or read book Cold Wars written by Andy Kirkpatrick and published by Vertebrate Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andy Kirkpatrick has achieved his life's ambition to become one of the world's leading climbers. Pushing himself to new extremes, he embarks on his toughest climbs yet - on big walls in the Alps and Patagonia - in the depths of winter.
Download or read book Kiss or Kill written by Mark Twight and published by The Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 2002-09-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Mark Twight's collected works, some never before published in North America * Includes dramatic black and white mountaineering photos * Features brand new epilogues to all of the stories They call him Dr. Doom. Raving and kicking against mediocrity, his anger and pain simmer close to the surface. He speaks and writes the language of the punk music that defined him. He is extreme alpinist Mark Twight, and he doesn't back down from the truth. He's a one-man literary punk band. If you have any doubt, here comes his knockout punch: the only collection of writing Twight swears he'll ever publish. Kiss or Kill: Confessions of a Serial Climber is raw, unfiltered Twight. These author's cut are the real deal, not the homogenized fluff offered up by magazine editors who are often unwilling to offend. Twight's words make it clear that climbing is only distantly about the summit. Several of these pieces are new to U.S. readers. Twight edited all of the selections and appended each with a current author's note; confessing his inspiration, events that followed, and lessons learned (or not learned, some might say). It adds up to a frightfully lucid look into Twight's personal life as both man and hardcore alpine climber. The dissection scares me sometimes... Whether railing against the spinelessness of American siege-style mountaineering, admitting addiction to pushing the bounds of the possible, or reveling in his ability to cut away anything in life that holds him back, Twight never blinks. Along the way, there is the drama of new and epic routes, unbreakable bonds between climbing partners, and Twight's evolution as a climber and a man. He tells every story in a unique, in-your-face style. Kiss or Kill is not an easy read. It may scare some readers-but that's the point. "I want this book to help you recognize your own anger, which will help you understand mine", says Twight. "Somewhere out there somebody understands these words and knows they matter. They were written in blood, learned by heart."
Download or read book 1001 Climbing Tips written by Andy Kirkpatrick and published by Vertebrate Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-09 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine an alien came down to Earth, stuck a probe into a climber's brain – one who'd been climbing for over thirty years – and then transmogrified the contents into a big book of climbing tips. Well, 1001 Climbing Tips by Andy Kirkpatrick is just such a book. This is no regular instruction manual – it's much more useful than that. This is a massive collection of all those little tips that make a real difference when at the crag, in the mountains, or when you're planning your next big trip. It's for anyone who hangs off stuff, or just hangs around in the mountains. These tips are based on three decades of climbing obsession, as well as nineteen ascents of El Cap, numerous Alpine north faces, trips to the polar ice caps, and many other scary climbs and expeditions. The following areas are covered: Basics, Safety, Big Wall, Ice, Mixed, Mountain, Training, and Stuff.
Download or read book The Last Step Legends Lore written by Rick Ridgeway and published by Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CLICK HERE to download a sample from The Last Step * A mountaineering classic * Conflict, hardship, endurance, triumph -- it's all here in Ridgeway's extraordinary story In September 1978, Rick Ridgeway, Jim Wickwire, Lou Reichardt and John Roskelley stood atop K2, the first Americans ever to achieve this victory. Under the leadership of Jim Whittaker, they and their teammates had spent 67 days on the mountain, nearly all of them above 18,000 feet, where the stresses of high-altitude living, of monotonous food, of confinement in tiny tents for day after day of frustrating storms had worn them down to the core. The Last Step is Rick Ridgeway's inside story of this extraordinary expedition. It's about the people who, battered by the mountain and their isolation, overcame their individual fears, desire, and disappointments to work together to get somebodyñanybodyñto the top of K2. It's about the glorious success the team achieved, and about the perilous bivouac Jim Wickwire spent just below the summit without food, oxygen or shelter in temperatures of -40F.
Download or read book Unknown Pleasures written by Andy Kirkpatrick and published by Vertebrate Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The idea of owning anything except the experience is hubris.' Unknown Pleasures is a collection of works by the climber and award-winning author Andy Kirkpatrick. Obsessed with climbing and addicted to writing, Kirkpatrick is a master storyteller. Covering subjects as diverse as climbing, relationships, fatherhood, mental health and the media, it is easy to read, sometimes difficult to digest, and impossible to forget. One moment he is attempting a rare solo ascent of Norway's Troll Wall, the next he is surrounded by the TV circus while climbing Moonlight Buttress with the BBC's The One Show presenter Alex Jones. Yosemite's El Capitan is ever-present; he climbs it alone – strung out for weeks, and he climbs it with his thirteen-year-old daughter Ella – her first big wall. His eye for observation and skilled wordcraft make for laugh-out-loud funny moments, while in more hard-hitting pieces he is unflinchingly honest about past and present love and relationships, and pulls no punches with an alternative perspective of our place in the world. Unknown Pleasures is Andy Kirkpatrick at his brilliant best.
Download or read book Down written by Andy Kirkpatrick and published by Andrew Kirkpatrick limited. This book was released on 2020-07-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book will save your life" Pete Whittaker (Wide Boyz) Down is a groundbreaking encyclopedic study of the art of descent. Its purpose is to create a single source for all descent techniques, both the well established and ideal for the novice climber, as well as the cutting edge, high-value techniques for experienced and pro climbers. The book was written and illustrated over three years by award-winning climber and writer Andy Kirkpatrick (Psychovertical, Cold Wars, 1001 Climbing Tips, Higher Education), and is based on four decades of epics, retreats and F**k-ups. At 80,000 words (400 pages) and 300 illustrations, this is both a labour of love and an important and timely book for a community that loses far too many climbers to rappelling accidents. Book Structure Foreword by Joe Simpson Introduction Chapter 1: Safety; How to stay alive. Chapter 2: Feet; General notes on non-technical descent in both winter and summer. Chapter 3: Tools; The tools of the trade and how to use those tools. This chapter covers all types of descenders, as well as notes on all associated software and hardware (abseil cord, hard-links, prusik cords etc). Chapter 4: Anchors; Everything from slinging trees to retrievable ice screws, bounce testing to non-anchor anchors. Chapter 5: Rappel; Here we start putting it all together, covering the core theory of descent, including back-ups, knots, and optimum set-ups. Chapter 6: Lowering; This covers both standard lowering off sports routes and backing off climbs, to more advanced self-rescue lowering, passing knots etc. Chapter 7: Advanced; This long chapter deals with pro techniques, many that will be new to many climbers, including blocking, ghosting and single rope rappels. Chapter 8: Problems; Sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with problems in descent, such as stuck or damaged ropes, having ropes that don’t reach anchors, or having to return back up your ropes. This chapter aims to come up with practical solutions for worst-case scenarios. Chapter 9: Comms: Many of the problems that arise in descent revolve around a failure in communication. This chapter offers some ideas and solutions surrounding this.
Download or read book This Game of Ghosts written by Joe Simpson and published by Random House. This book was released on 1994 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a sequel to 'Touching The Void', in which Simpson described a fall in the Himalayas which crippled and almost broke him.
Download or read book Fall of the Phantom Lord written by Andrew Todhunter and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2013-02-13 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1989, while attempting a new route on a difficult overhanging rock face, climber Dan Osman fell. 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.
Download or read book Touching the Void written by Joe Simpson and published by Direct Authors. This book was released on 2012-12-12 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 25th Anniversary ebook, now with more than 50 images. 'Touching the Void' is the tale of two mountaineer’s harrowing ordeal in the Peruvian Andes. In the summer of 1985, two young, headstrong mountaineers set off to conquer an unclimbed route. They had triumphantly reached the summit, when a horrific accident mid-descent forced one friend to leave another for dead. Ambition, morality, fear and camaraderie are explored in this electronic edition of the mountaineering classic, with never before seen colour photographs taken during the trip itself.
Download or read book The Bold and Cold written by Brandon Pullan and published by Rocky Mountain Books Ltd. This book was released on 2016 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the stories of mountaineers who undertook climbing expeditions in the Canadian Rockies.
Download or read book Shackleton s Heroes written by Wilson McOrist and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Unbelievable Story of Six Men Who Trekked Across the Great Ice Barrier in Support of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition One hundred years ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked on the legendary 1914–1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, defying the odds and accomplishing one of history’s most remarkable feats of endurance while narrowly escaping death, even though his crew failed in their mission to cross Antarctica. His story, inflated by time and celebrity, has come to personify the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Less well known, however, is the incredible but often forgotten tale of the Mount Hope Party (also known as the Ross Sea party)—six men who worked in the shadow of Shackleton’s greater cause. Sent to the opposite side of the Polar continent, these men dropped life-saving food and fuel depots across the Great Ice Barrier, ensuring that Shackleton had the supplies necessary to complete his mission. Unaware of Shackleton’s own failed task, the party persevered in their mission, facing insurmountable obstacles of life on the ice—exhaustion, starvation, and crippling frostbite—risking their lives for the safety of his. Stitching together the previously unpublished diaries of these unsung heroes, McOrist documents their pain and suffering, as well as the humor and camaraderie necessary for their survival. An incomparable record of sheer heroism and tragedy, Shackleton’s Heroes tells a story that history ought to remember—one of the indomitable human spirit in the most extreme conditions.
Download or read book On the Line written by Andy Kirkpatrick and published by Andrew Kirkpatrick limited. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Top rope soloing has been a climbing technique employed by climbers without partners for fifty years, allowing a climber to top rope climbs with a certain degree of safety lacking in free soloing. For various reasons, these techniques were never formally codified or documented for others to learn from or build upon; instead, they were passed on through word of mouth. One possible reason for this lack of formalization was the inherent risk associated with these techniques, making people hesitant to take responsibility for potential accidents. However, the advent of the internet changed this dynamic. Suddenly, the subject began to receive significantly more attention, both on climbing forums and websites, as well as on video platforms like YouTube. While this helped disseminate more information, it also created a problem: what was once a lack of information turned into an overwhelming abundance of it. Everyone was sharing their thoughts at once, leading to a mix of both bad and good advice. Simultaneously, there was a surge in interest in top rope soloing, accompanied by a corresponding increase in accidents. Something needed to be done to address this issue. "On the Line" was a three-year project aimed at consolidating all available information on the subject, both old and new, and integrating it with industrial rope access techniques. The goal was to finally produce a foundational text on the subject. It's important to note that "On the Line" is not meant to be the definitive authority on the subject but rather the first step in the right direction. Subjects covered include: Safety Device mechanics. Device selection. Device attachment Back-ups Rope systems (one rope, two ropes, pseudo leading, top rope TRS). Rigging. Escape. Re-anchors and redirects. Lots and lots of micro details on hardware and software.
Download or read book Crack Climbing written by Pete Whittaker and published by Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Banff Mountain Book Competition Finalist in Guidebooks Crack climbing is a highly technical form of movement in which climbers position their hands, feet, and even their entire body in cracks to make upward progress on rock. An advocate for the sport’s aesthetic lines, physicality, and technical know-how, author Pete Whittaker teaches more than sixty Crack School Masterclasses each year and was featured in the popular climbing film Wide Boyz. This detailed and comprehensive guide teaches step-by-step techniques and tips, including for: Jamming (finger, hand, fist, foot, arm, leg, body) Crack types (chimneys, liebacks, underclings, roof cracks) How to safely lead and place protection Efficient positioning and movement Strength recovery while climbing
Download or read book Seven Climbs written by CHARLES. SHERWOOD and published by Vertebrate Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book No Reservations written by Anthony Bourdain and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The host of the Travel Channel series "No Reservations" provides a behind-the-scenes account of his global culinary adventures, from New Jersey to New Zealand, offering commentary on food in every corner of the globe.
