Ed Viesturs Boeken

For eighteen years Viesturs pursued climbing's holy grail: to stand atop the world's fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of bottled oxygen. As he recounts his most harrowing climbs, he reveals a man torn between the safe world he and his loved ones share and the majestic and deadly places where only he can go. A cautious climber who once turned back 300 feet from the top of Everest, but who would not shrink from a peak (Annapurna) known to claim the life of one climber for every two who reached its summit, Viesturs has an unyielding motto, "Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory." It is with this philosophy in mind that he vividly describes fatal errors in judgment made by his fellow climbers as well as a few of his own close calls and gallant rescues.--From publisher description

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 the long chronicle of mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges. Yet summiting K2 remains a cherished goal for climbers from all over the globe

World-renowned climber Ed Viesturs paints a portrait of obsession, dedication, and human achievement in a love letter to the world's highest peak.

The bestselling author of The Mountain and No Shortcuts to the Top chronicles his three attempts to climb the world’s tenth-highest and statistically deadliest peak while exploring the dramatic and tragic history of others who have made—or attempted—the ascent. “Viesturs and Roberts have written an exhaustively researched and wonderfully compelling history of the most fascinating and dangerous of the Himalayan giants.”—David Breashers, veteran mountaineer and documentary filmmaker, director of IMAX film Everest As a high school student, Ed Viesturs read and was captivated by the French climber Maurice Herzog’s famous and grisly account of the first ascent of Annapurna in 1950. When he began his own campaign to climb the world’s fourteen highest peaks in the late 1980s, Viesturs looked forward with trepidation to undertaking Annapurna himself. Two failures to summit in 2000 and 2002 made Annapurna his nemesis. His successful 2005 ascent was the triumphant capstone of his climbing quest. In The Will to Climb Viesturs and co-author David Roberts bring the extraordinary challenges of Annapurna to vivid life through edge-of-your-seat accounts of the greatest climbs in the mountain’s history, and of his own failed attempts and eventual success. In the process Viesturs ponders what Annapurna reveals about some of our most fundamental moral and spiritual questions—questions, he believes, that we need to answer to lead our lives well.

Osmnáct let se snažil Ed Viesturs dosáhnout na svatý grál alpinismu: stanout na vrcholu všech osmitisícových hor planety bez pomoci umělého kyslíku. Je to neobyčejně opatrný horolezec, který se neváhal otočit a sestoupit zpět sotva devadesát metrů pod vrcholem Mount Everestu. A nezastavil se ani před výzvou jménem Annapurna, před horou, která proslula tím, že si vyžádá za každé dva horolezce, které pustí na svůj vrchol, jeden život. „Dostat se na vrchol je možnost. Vrátit se zpátky dolů je povinnost.“ Ve světle své nezlomné filozofie líčí Ed osudově chybná rozhodnutí svých kolegů horolezců, několik případů, kdy sám jen se štěstím vyvázl, a také pár záchranných akcí, kterých se zúčastnil. A poprvé také detailně popisuje klíčovou roli, kterou sehrál při katastrofě na Everestu v roce 1996, proslavené Jonem Krakauerem v jeho knize Into Thin Air. Na vrchol žádné zkratky nevedou je víc než jen celistvý popis jednoho z nejúžasnějších počinů současnosti; je to zároveň portrét statečného a rodině oddaného muže a vysvětlení motivace, která jej dohnala až k tomuto vrcholně nebezpečnému a velkolepému výkonu. V epilogu hovoří Viesturs o uběhnutí svého prvního newyorského maratonu a o své výpravě na jaře roku 2007 na kanadský Baffinův ostrov, kde studoval dopady globálního oteplování.