Himalaya Alpine-Style: The Most Challenging Routes on the Highest Peaks

Rating:
Summary: Ambitious but foolish
Review: Beautiful photos, great maps, and a wonderful ambition to climb these mountains "Alpine Style" make this a laudible book, initially. However, let's look a little further into the results of the authors' own mountaineering exploits. One is now dead. The other has had to be rescued twice from the tops of two of the mountains described in the book--putting other climbers' lives at risk while pursuing an "Alpine Style" ethic that he wasn't qualified to pursue. Accounts by better qualified climbers, such as Messner, would have given this book more credibility. As it stands now, this book is a little akin to having Charlie Manson write a book called "Getting Away with Murder."

Rating:
Summary: New edition of Himalaya Alpine Style
Review: Because Himalaya Alpine Style was such a success, Baton Wicks and The Mountaineers have now reprinted the book. The new edition DOES HAVE AN INDEX. We have also improved the layout of the final chapter to give more space for Doug Scott1s historic Kangchenjunga pictures. There is also a new dust wrapper, featuring a stunning photo by the great French alpinist Pierre Béghin.

Himalaya Alpine Style won the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Literature Festival.

This is what some of the reviewers said:

America1s finest climber, Alex Lowe, wrote that it was HARD TO PUT DOWN ... A MUST IN THE LIBRARY OF ANYONE PASSIONATE ABOUT THE MOUNTAINS. Britain1s Joe Simpson, author of Touching the Void, called it A SUPERB EFFORT and the Alpine Journal praised its SENSE OF WIDE VISION.

Please note that my account of the epic American-British-Canadian 1988 Kangshung Face expedition IS STILL IN PRINT. It has been republished by Odyssey Books ([e-mail]) as EVEREST - ALONE AT THE SUMMIT.

See Everest Kangshung Face by Stephen Venables for further information.

My latest book, A SLENDER THREAD, has just been published by Hutchinson, one of the London imprints of Random House. It is a story I have been waiting a long time to write - the story of my 300 foot fall and dramatic rescue from Panch Chuli V, a remote peak near the borders of India, Nepal and Tibet. I am very pleased with the book and I was delighted to hear the Ed Douglas (author of Regions of the Heart) say that he thought it was better than anything I had done before.

Reviews in London have also been enthusiastic. The Mail on Sunday said: READ IT, BUT BE CAREFUL. YOU MAY NEVER BE CONTENT JUST TO CLIMB THE STAIRS AGAIN.

In the Observer, Peter Beaumont wrote: AS WITH HIS PREVIOUS BOOKS, PAINTED MOUNTAINS AND EVEREST KANGSHUNG FACE, VENABLES WRITES WITH UNDERSTATED ELEGANCE, CONJURING UP VIVIDLY AND HONESTLY HIS COMPANIONS WHILE ALSO SHOWING AN ACUTE AWARENESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT THROUGH WHICH HE TRAVELS.

Judging by its enthusiastic reception in Britain, I hope that A SLENDER THREAD will soon be published in the USA.

Rating:
Summary: Indispensable for all Himalaya enthusiasts
Review: Despite the disparaging comments of some earlier reviewers this is a great mountaineering book. Whoever was been on one of the Himalayan giants knows that this is not children's play. The risks are enormous and it is remarkable that some people venture into these inhospitable areas time and again. I see no reason to qualify the merits of this book based on the success of the authors' personal endeavours.

The book is magnificently produced, with excellent photographs and maps. The selection of mountains and routes is representative for what has happened in the Himalayas during the past three decades. This is not a guidebook. Rather it gives us a broad historical overview of the experiences with Alpine tactics in the Greater Ranges.

I would recommend this book to anyone having an interest to climb in the Himalayas. It is much more representative of what Himalayan climbing is about than the scores of self-aggrandizing, pseudo-tragic Everest accounts now claiming all the 'Climbing' section shelf space in high street bookshops.

Rating:
Summary: High but dry
Review: This is a coffee-table book for climber wannabe's who might want to pretend they're going to climb some of the great ridges of the Himalaya. Most of the photos are pretty good, but the maps are sloppily drawn, and the writing style is about as bone dry as you can get--it's hard to make routes on the overwhelming ridges and cols of the high Himalayas look and sound dull, but by God, the authors really managed to do it. Then again, the authors haven't had much success on these climbs themselves--[...]--clinical studies of passionate endeavors untainted by personal expertise. I am dumbfounded that a couple of reviewers claimed to love this book, but then again, some people also claim to love year-old fruit cake.

Rating:
Summary: Book more talk than action
Review: This is a passable book for armchair climbers--but not for real ones. The Alpine climbs described here are beautifully mapped and written with an accountants precision--and passion. A dry style deadens any of the passion for climbing that anyone who goes up the big peaks would recognize. Given the sad backgrounds of the two writers, one of whom is no longer with us, this set of wonderful climbs described in the book should serve as a cautionary tale of approaching mountains with "more ambition than ability."

Rating:
Summary: It is a good book
Review: Unfortunately, recent reviewers have focused more on the achievments of the authors themselves than what has been written in the book.

It is a great book with loads of info on many different great routes done in the only proper style, i.e. alpine style. There are many references to the original articles, if you ever plan to have some expeditions to the area described in the book, as well as more general references to books of the first ascents of the mountains described and it that respect very resourceful.

Also, I think it is one of the virtues that the book is not written in an overpassionate, and boosting manner as most autobiographic books, but rather describes in a very admiring way the great achievments of extreme alpinism in the Himalaya.

If you want to know more about the greatest achievments in Alpine climbing in recent years this book does give you a great overview of some of the most facinating (and craziest) climbs.

I agree that some of the maps are not very good and that there could have been more depth in the description of the climbs, but the references should help someone wanting some more info.

Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking view into a different world !
Review: Words cannot do justice to this book. The authors have painstakingly brought to life the etherreal beauty of the Himal and Karakoram. Peaks and ranges who were only abstract names take actual appearances. The sheer beauty and force of Mother Nature reigns supreme in this stunning, one-photo a-page, masterpiece. A "must-have", absolutely.

Rating:
Summary: Ho-Hum
Review: Yet another coffee-table book on climbing the Himalayas, this time with a purported "Alpine-Style" aesthetic binding it all together. Unfortunately, many of the photos tend to be a bit amaturish, the writing uninteresting, which is saying alot given the fascinating subject matter the authors had to deal with. The gung-ho climbing aesthetic is also questionable, given the authors' own backgrounds. Plenty of other excellent coffee-table books have been written about climbing the pristine parts of the high Himalaya, in terms of photo quality and relevance, this one doesn't really compete.