What is the book about? Great photographs What do readers think? Foreword by Sir Ranulph Fiennes Short text extracts Prologue Reaching the summit Other books that Cathy has contributed to

Going to recommend
your book
 - it was BRILLIANT!
 Jeanette Budd,
South Africa

Just for the love of it

'The story of what she choose to do will haunt everyone who reads it.'  UK Daily Mail

Cathy O’Dowd’s stunning book, sharing her passion for the world’s highest mountain through the extraordinary story of her first three Everest expeditions.

'Our children did very well indeed.'  President Nelson Mandela

It truly was one of the top 5 best Everest books I have read
and I have read nearly all of them.
Karl J. Landa

At 8a.m. on 29 May Cathy O'Dowd, a 30-year-old mountaineer from South Africa, stepped onto the summit of Everest and into history. She had become the first woman to climb the highest mountain in the world from both its south (Edmund Hillary) and north (George Mallory) sides.

To achieve this, Cathy has had to face the ultimate risks of Everest. During her first ascent from the south in 1996, she and her team were trapped in the killer storm described in Jon Krakauer's best seller Into Thin Air. They were the closest of any team to those stranded and dying in the storm. In the aftermath of the storm they retreated to base camp.

While other teams were packing up to leave they chose to try again. They finally reached the summit, only to have the thrill of success snatched away when a team member disappeared on the descent.

In 1998 Cathy, attempting the north side of Everest, stopped only a few hundred metres from the summit to try and help a dying American climber. The woman's first words were 'don't leave me'. Yet Cathy eventually had to leave her to save her own life.

Now Cathy has captured the drama of her Everest climbs, her passion for the challenge of climbing mountains and her love for wild places in this story of her three attempts on the mountain. Cathy tries to answer the question of why, if climbing Everest can be so dangerous, people still want to do it.

She shares with the reader all the joys of her journey, a journey as much about self-discovery as about mountain climbing. This is a book of challenge, of adventure, of love and life and death. This is Everest, the world's highest mountain, climbed 'just for the love of it'.

Your book beautifully illustrates the fact that its an inner journey as much as it is an outer one against natures harsh elements.
Ziah Hayat, South Africa

And it is not just about great writing. With 40 colour pictures and 72 black-and-white ones the visuals are stunning, too. Plus three maps, so you always know where you are.

‘It was important to me that the book be as visually rich as possible. The landscapes we climb in are so extraordinary, so uniquely beautiful, and I wanted that vision to be available to the readers.’  Cathy O'Dowd

It was beautifully written and the photos are stunning - I couldn't put it down!
I also enjoyed the superb maps at the beginning.
Anne Gardner, UK

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what an outstanding book you wrote and published.  I could almost hear your voice coming through the pages off the book.   I was continually impressed by your candidness and honesty at how you came to be such an influential speaker and person just by doing what you love and having the fortitude to really be true to yourself. 
Personally I found many applicable lessons from your experience of just putting one foot in front of the other and looking only a few feet ahead of you at a time when you were schlogging through the tough parts.  Inadvertently I believe you made a lasting impression.
Tami Sage, Seattle

I love mountains, I am climbing them and I had my dreams about the Roof of the World too. You took me with you there for 319 pages and a long, long sleepless night while reading it all. I was climbing with you, suffering with you, smiling with you, freezing with you .....I cried Bruce and Fran's death from the bottom of my heart ....But life goes on! You wrote that! You gave me and a million other women a memorable example!'
Rebeca Grötzschel, Austria

I found myself reading at times when there was other 'stuff' that I should have been doing, just didn’t want to put it down.
Gareth Davies, Cardiff

Your book beautifully illustrates the fact that its an inner journey as much as it is an outer one against natures harsh elements. Your book has a 'theme song' between the words which really for me shows how someone like yourself deeply loves the Himalayas, its beauty and grandeur. The love of being close to nature and doing something that truly awakens the spirit within us. Thank you for sharing your thoughts an emotions and committing them to paper and sharing them with other people like myself.
Ziah Hayat, South Africa

I have found your narrative style engaging, open, honest and, above all, I have enjoyed your descriptive skills and the way you convey your feelings at various times. The incident on the North Face with Fran was deeply tragic and heart rending but, above all, real.
Fritz Carlsson, Pretoria

Congratulations. As an author and speaker myself, I appreciate the merit of a good story (or two) well told. And your book is that, to be sure. In addition, kudos for making the climb from both sides. And the first woman to do so! That can never be taken away from you and will remain your legacy long after you've moved on to elevation far higher than Everest.
Richard Davis, Zurich

The book was a great read. My daughter and I had to fight for it each evening as we were reading it at the same time.
Ian Jewitt, UK

I have very much enjoyed your book : it gave me tons of energy and strength for the future.
Eloi Perrin Aussedat, Paris

I found it so readable that I could have read it from cover to cover, at one sitting, if I had time to do so. ... congratulations to Cathy for a wonderful and moving account of [her] exploits and for her positive and philosophical approach to the tragic loss of Bruce - if only more people could celebrate peoples' lives, rather than mourning their deaths.
Julius Marstrand, Cheltenham

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"It is one of the symptoms of this age of nerves and hysteria that we magnify everything, that our boasts are frantic and our scares pitiable, that we call a man who plays well at football a hero and that all successes are triumphs."

I quoted this cutting from the Sketch newspaper, which followed Shackleton's return from Antarctica in June 1909, in my book Mind over matter published in 1993 on my return from the world's first unassisted crossing of the Antarctic continent.

Although written in 1909 it is astonishing how appropriate it still is today when attitudes to human endeavour are measured largely in terms of success or failure, or the number of points put on the scoreboard, with very little in-between.

Just 'playing the game' or simply 'having a go' doesn't seem to be a good enough reason to challenge oneself anymore, and increasingly in our technological age, the value, logic and reasoning behind feats of human endurance and courage are being questioned.

How refreshing therefore, when there are still so many challenges left in the world, and at a time when these very qualities need to be developed in our youth, to find a young modern explorer in Cathy O'Dowd pushing her limits, 'just for the love of it'. A reason that seems as good as any, and probably better than most.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes

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Still not sure? Take some time to read some extracts from the text of the book.

Chapter 1 : A man and a mountain

Page 30... It was getting steadily colder and I was falling back in the queue. I plodded on, exhausted, icy cold, demoralised. Jackie and Nandi were up in front and seemed to be moving so effortlessly. I was desperate to stop for a rest and huddled down behind a rock to seek protection from the wind. I rapidly realised that the only way to keep warm was to keep moving. It was a devil's bargain, with rest and warmth incompatible. Somewhere in those long hours, when it seemed as if the sun would never rise again, I decided to withdraw from selection for the Everest team. If Kilimanjaro could be this unpleasant, Everest had to be worse. Without enjoyment, I couldn't see the point of it all. Then the first glimmer of dawn appeared, a slim line of red on the horizon. I immediately felt better and stronger. All thoughts of giving up dissipated with the darkness. As others moved ever more slowly I began to pass them, working my way towards the front. I found Jackie huddled down, looking awful. She was nauseous with altitude. 'Bitch,' she whispered, as I passed her.

Chapter 2: Trouble in paradise

Page 49... Both Deshun and I were put under subtle pressure to leave. It was suggested that if we left, Ian and his expedition would be finally destroyed. It was implied that we would put our lives in danger if we chose to stay with the 'maniac' Woodall. I couldn't see it. Admittedly I was not present at the final confrontation, but I had not seen Ian do anything in the three months I had known him that I considered dangerous or reckless. I felt that if I was in trouble on a mountain, I could trust both Ian and Bruce to help. I did not feel that way about Andy, Hack or Ed. And as for Charlotte, she was orbiting in a different solar system. 'Well?' Ian said. 'I'd like you to stay, if you want to.' I grinned. 'Oh I'm staying. You can't get rid of me that easily.'

Chapter 3: Rivers of ice

Page 62... And then the ground vanished. Instead of smooth white snow in front of my feet, there was an ice-lipped chasm, disappearing down into uncharted depths in the bowels of the glacier. It was a crevasse, about four metres wide. The white ice changed in colour with depth, passing gradually from pastel blue into indigo, before disappearing into darkness. I saw ahead a thin metal ladder spanning the crevasse, as delicate as a bracelet. It was not one ladder but two, tied end to end, with a little bit of bright blue rope. There seemed one obvious solution to crossing it. I knelt and gingerly start to crawl across the ladder, staring down in wonder at the inky depths visible between the rungs. 'Give us a smile then, girl. Everest style at its best yet.' Bruce's voice boomed out cheerfully. It seemed there might be another way of doing this. Just when I was trying to look as if I knew what I was doing. Ian came next. He casually picked up the two ropes that lay slack on each side of the ladder. He twisted them round his wrists and walked across, using the rope tension to keep his balance. I didn't like the look of that at all. But I was damned if I was going to crawl while the men walked.

Chapter 4: The voice of the wind

Page 92... I settled down for another night, determined not to use one of our three remaining bottles of oxygen. The pattern of jerking awake to apparent imminent suffocation repeated itself. Time seemed to be slowing down. The thought of a whole night of it filled me with dread. My throat began to tighten with the lump of held-back tears. That made breathing more difficult. I began to panic, the lump grew. I was caught in a downward spiral. My windpipe seemed to be shrinking by the minute. Soon it would be as narrow as a thread. I would never get my breath back.

Chapter 5: Anybody out there?

Page 109... Our tent was a tiny bubble in a world gone mad. It was as if we were plunged into a Dantean hell as the mountain was raked by howling winds, cloaked in swirling snow, frozen to its very core. It was as if we and our mountain had been ripped away from the very earth itself and now swirled distraught through space, caught in a vortex of insanity. We expected moment by moment that the tent fabric would tear, that we would be hurled from our haven into madness in a few seconds. Caught on the line between calm and panic, between safety and death, we could do nothing but wait. Bruce placed a torch in the tent door, shining out onto the face of Everest, in the hope that it might indicate where the tents were. I lay in my sleeping bag, waiting for the crackle of the radio that would bring further news. Opening my eyes a crack, I could see the light burning in the tent door, like a beacon of hope. However, with my eyes closed the light vanished, while the noise of the wind did not. It howled on, so much more powerful than our pathetic little light. It was a remorseless, unrelenting killer, all the worse in that it could neither know nor care about the suffering it was inflicting on the humans struggling through it.

Chapter 6: Stairway to heaven

Page 137... Although I mostly concentrated to the few steps in front of me, blocking out the vast empty spaces that surrounded the ridge, occasionally I allowed myself the luxury of looking out across the myriad of snowy peaks below me. With no one else in sight, and no signs of human existence visible below, it was like being the last person alive on earth, having the whole of a magnificent planet to myself. I felt humbled, aware of how frail and fragile the humans were dotted on the side of this huge edifice of snow and rock. I was also frustrated. The ridge undulated gently. Each crest looked as if it might be the final one, but as I dragged my weary body onto the top I found another one slightly higher, slightly further on. The ridge seemed to run on interminably in front of me. I felt as if I was on a snowy treadmill, a ridge that ran forever with no conclusion. I felt condemned to walk it for eternity.

Chapter 7: A fallen star

Page 152... I woke abruptly. It was light. I looked at my watch. It was 5 a.m. No Bruce, no radio call. He's dead. No, maybe he isn't. Maybe he's still on his way down. Maybe he bivied and didn't call. Maybe he's nearly here. But in the depths of my heart, after that long night with no communication, I knew he was dead.

Chapter 8: The end of the beginning

Page 173... At first I was greeted as a kind of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, the girl from nowhere who climbed the highest mountain in the world. When it became clear I was not a sweet malleable soul who was going to weep on some reporter's shoulder and give her the inside story on how I climbed Everest despite that devil-incarnate Ian Woodall, things changed. Then I was a callous bitch, stepping over bodies in search of personal glory. There was no room to be just an ordinary person, with good and bad sides, complex, nuanced, human.

Chapter 9: The white wind

Page 199... Kathmandu was as chaotic, dirty, vibrant, exotic and overwhelming as ever. The dusty streets held an inextricable tangle of cars, rickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians and trucks. Right of way was an alien concept. Through all the chaos walked the sacred cows. Protected from slaughter under the Hindu faith, they wandered the city at will. They were always rake thin and probably thought there was some advantages to being a secular cow being fattened up for the kill instead.

Chapter 10: Mother goddess of the earth

Page 216... Ian and I would lie in the warmth of our tent, my head on his shoulder, his arm round my back, in silent enjoyment of the peace and stillness of the wilderness night. There was a simplicity to mountain life which I loved, a clarity of purpose which was difficult to achieve elsewhere. There were none of the million different worries that tear you apart in the modern world. We ate, drank, slept, climbed. All progress was focused in a single direction - upwards, towards the point where you could go no higher.

Chapter 11: Knocking on heaven's door

Page 233... To Ian's annoyance I kept opening the outer door to peer out at the setting sun. Each opening brought a flurry of spindrift and a wave of cold air, but it was worth it. A rising tide of cloud had washed in among the massive peaks. The sun was sinking slowly into it, a ball of deep orange turning the surrounding cloud hazy gold. As the sun slipped down into the cloud sea, it changed colour to brilliant pink, set over shadowed purple, shot through with the last golden rays. Slowly darkness began to take over. Now the clouds were turning to sombre blue, glimpses of soft pink still visible in the far distance. It became too cold even to peer out of the tent door. The last colour was left to fade away without an audience.

Chapter 12: Don't leave me

Page 251... As I approached I saw he was lying with his harness clipped to a line of fixed rope. His stomach was uppermost, his head and legs dangling down on either side. I wondered if he might have fallen and broken his back. The unstable rocky slope fell away steeply below him and I knelt down cautiously next to him. I brushed the hair away from his face. 'Don't leave me,' she said. Her face had the waxy perfection of fairytale drawings of Sleeping Beauty. The skin was milky white, and totally smooth. It was a sign of severe frostbite but made her look like a porcelain doll. Her eyes stared up at me, unfocusing, pupils huge dark voids. 'Don't leave me,' she murmured again.

Chapter 13: One step at a time

Page 268... The Tibetans believe that mountains rest lightly on the earth and that, if they are not pegged down, by chortens or prayer poles, they are liable to fly off. It seems a fantastic theory for something as heavily grounded as the pyramid of Everest, with its many thousands of square tons of rock. But the Tibetans do not get bogged down by the narrow-minded geophysics of the situation. One has only to see a mountain peak floating above a sun-lit cloud to realise they are indeed creatures of myth, and of wonder. The spirit of the mountains surpasses all their physical realities.

Chapter 14: Highway in the sky

Page 299... I was climbing into a magical moment. As we had moved along the summit ridge the moon had been slowly sinking in the west, while the sky in the east gradually lightened. The moon, burnished gold, was finally dropping into the low cloud in the west. The sun was just coming up, flaming orange, in the east. The narrow north-east ridge of Everest ran between the two, with nothing but empty air all around it. In the subdued pre-dawn light, it felt like a highway in the sky. It was a pathway to heaven, all the dross of the earth left thousands of metres below us. Such moments are unforgettable, unrepeatable. It was the priceless reward for all the effort involved in getting there.

Epilogue

Page 319... The record as the first woman was something special, something fun to have achieved, but it occurred almost by accident. What I have that I cherish most is three-and-a-half years of life lived to the full, of memories, of experiences, of knowledge of the world and of myself. I remember sunrises, special vistas, moments of laughter, more clearly than I do the summits. Why climb Everest at all? And why on earth climb it twice? Just for the love of it.

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Prologue

Page 15… I dumped the Sunday paper on the table and went into the kitchen to make myself coffee. I had promised myself a leisurely start to the day before getting back to work writing up my Masters thesis. I would sit in the sun, which was streaming in through the bay windows, read the paper, and then return to my computer. I would rather have spent the day rock-climbing, but it was November, time of end-of-year exams, and there was no one available to join me on the rock.

I lived in Grahamstown, a small town hanging onto vestiges of its British past in the middle of the great sun-baked plains of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. The town centred on a university and a few elite schools. I had been in Grahamstown for nearly three years and was in the final months of my Masters degree in Media Studies.

I was a Johannesburg girl, born and bred in the great city where all South Africa’s wealth and industry is concentrated. Johannesburg is not a pretty city, nor a very safe one, but it was vibrant. I found the isolated, small-town atmosphere of Grahamstown alternately soothing and stifling.
As I spread the newspaper on the table I cast my eye over the headlines. One struck me immediately: ‘Sunday Times Everest Expedition. We take the South African flag to the top of the world’. Under it was a picture of three men standing on top of Table Mountain. Table Mountain is South Africa’s pride and joy, all of 1 000 metres high. It was going to be quite a leap from there to 8 848 metres, the summit of the world. I read on, most interested. I had been rock-climbing for nine years, ever since leaving school, and I was passionate about the sport. For six of those years, I had also been mountaineering, a sport more difficult to indulge in as a South African. The highest mountain at our end of the African continent is Thabana Ntlenyana, which, being all of 3 482 metres high, receives little more than a smattering of snow each year. I had travelled to the Ruwenzori in Central Africa, to the Bolivian Andes, to the Alps. However, the man I had done most of my mountaineering with had been killed in Peru 18 months previously, and I had done nothing since then.
The Sunday Times team was to attempt the classic south route up Everest in May of 1996. It would be the first ever attempt by South Africans. Before the fall of apartheid, we had not been able to get permits for the world’s biggest mountains. The expedition leader was Ian Woodall. I had never heard of him. I looked at his photograph – dark-blonde curly hair, small in stature, in his late thirties or early forties. It made little impression on me.

Then the third paragraph jumped out and almost grabbed me by the throat.

‘The other male members have been selected, but Woodall is still looking for a South African woman climber.’ Women who were interested were asked to send in a written motivation. A short-list of six would be drawn up, and they would accompany Ian on an expedition to Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain. One would then be invited to join the Everest team.

The climbing of Everest had never entered my mind before. It was not a childhood dream, not a life-long ambition. If I had ever thought of it, I had dismissed the idea instantly, as Everest was too big, too far away, too expensive. However, I certainly was desperate to visit the Himalaya. I had been looking around for ways of doing that for over a year.
My first thought was that the woman thing was a sham, a publicity stunt drummed up by the newspaper. I started phoning around until I found someone with a telephone number for Ian. I rang the number and got him on the other end. It was a confident, precise voice, giving nothing away. He assured me the selection was ‘for real’.

‘You are not going to have us in bikinis at Sun City, parading for the television cameras?’

He laughed. ‘That sounds like a good idea. But no, all I want is your application and motivation.’

He would tell me nothing more.

I put down the phone and began to walk distractedly through my flat. I could think of a thousand reasons not to apply. I wasn’t experienced enough. I wouldn’t be chosen, anyway. It was a publicity stunt. It was sexist to select the women and invite the men.

I could think of a thousand reasons to apply. I was one of the most experienced women climbers in South Africa. I might well be chosen. Who cared if it was sexist? It would be worth it just to get to the Himalaya. It would be worth it for a free trip to Kilimanjaro. The application required no more effort than writing a motivation, and posting it.

One reason prevailed over all others. If I did not apply, for the rest of my life I would wonder what would have happened if I had done so. Another woman would go and I would be thinking, could that have been me? What might have been?

This book is the story of what happened because I chose to apply. Within the next three-and-a-half years I was to become the first woman in the world to climb Everest from both its south and north sides. I was to encounter death on the mountain in its most traumatic forms. I was to become both famous and notorious in South Africa and beyond. I was to give up my planned career as an academic to go into expedition and adventure work full-time. I was to fall in love with the expedition leader. And it was all for the sake of one decision on 19 November 1995.

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Page 138… I moved slowly up yet another small rise and onto the top of it. And stopped short, aware of two figures and a sudden blaze of colour. Ian and Pemba were seated in the snow with something behind them that to my puzzled gaze looked rather like a ruined tent. After hours in an almost monochrome world of blue sky, white snow and black rock, the medley of red, yellow and green was disconcerting. Then Pemba turned and saw me. A huge grin spread across his face and I noticed his gold tooth glinting in the sunlight. He stood up and began to wave both arms and his ice-axe in the air.

That’s it, I thought. That is the summit of Everest.

For the second time that day I was filled with an incredible sense of excitement. At last I knew that not only was I capable of climbing Everest, but that I had actually done it. Only ten more metres. I had never imagined it would get to this.

The last slog up the final slope seemed interminable. I clambered slowly towards the dash of colour, which became a pile of prayer flags covering a metal tripod.

Ian spoke into the radio: ‘And then there were three.’

Philip’s voice came through in a chatter of excitement.

I sank down onto my knees beside Ian and hugged him, barely able to feel the man beneath the piles of clothing we were both wearing. I turned to hug Pemba, acutely conscious of the pleasure of being able to share the moment with friends. I was glad that I was not there alone.

Ian had reached the summit some twenty minutes earlier, followed shortly thereafter by Pemba. He had announced over the radio: ‘We have 9:52 and the Nepalese and South African flags are flying on the summit of Everest.’

The base camp crew had broken out into wild cheering. They had begun to pass round the tins of San Miguel beer that had been chilling on the ice of the glacier. Patrick had answered the phone to find it was the producer of the Radio 702 morning news programme.

‘Hold on,’ he had said. ‘There’s a broadcast coming through, they’re somewhere on the mountain.’ Then he had begun to shout. ‘They’re on the summit! They’re on the summit! Put me on the air! Put me on the air now!’

The news had gone out at six o’clock in the morning in South Africa, to friends and family who had been awake all night, to insomniacs and early birds, to depressed rugby fans who had just watched the All Blacks thrash the Springboks at rugby.

Now Ian thrust the radio at me. Pulling off my mask, I was aware of the immediate drop in oxygen supply. There was only a third as much air here as there was at sea level. I spoke into the little black box in my gloved hand.

‘Hello, base camp, can you hear me?’

Everyone offered me their congratulations.

I sat on the pile of snow, trying to order my thoughts, trying to let the enormity of it all sink in. I couldn’t believe that I, that we, had actually done it.

Then my mother’s voice came through faintly from the black box.
‘Hello, Cathy? Good morning, darling. You are the star for us.’
How strange it was to be so far away and yet so intimately connected, to stand on the summit of the world and speak to my mother in her living room in Johannesburg. It was a huge thrill to be able to share with her the very moment that I was on top. My parents had been so supportive through all the difficulty, never hinting to me what worries or fears they might have.

I tried to sort my thoughts coherently, to be able to say something meaningful over the radio. But the emotions that were swelling through me tossed my words into chaos.

Ian handed Pemba the camera and he and I clambered onto the summit itself, holding out Ian’s ice-axe with the Nepalese and South African flags hanging from it. After weeks of battling the most ferocious winds, the breeze was now not even strong enough to make the flags flutter.
I looked down at the multi-coloured blaze of the South African flag with a shiver of excitement. I remembered being a teenager in the ‘old’ South Africa, standing in the hall of my school in Johannesburg, mouthing the words of the national anthem ‘Die Stem’ and wondering what it would be like to live in a country where one was actually proud to be a citizen, where the anthem and the flag really meant something.

And now I knew.

I never expected to do something under the colours of my country, to make any kind of public contribution to the achievements of the nation. But now as I looked down at what was for a brief moment the highest flag in the world, I was proud to be South African, and proud to have forged a small place in the history of my country.

I looked at what actually marked the summit of the world. The large metal tripod left by the Americans in 1992 as part of a re-surveying of Everest’s height was almost covered in vividly coloured Buddhist prayer flags. Beneath them was a collection of tiny photographs in frames. Although I did not know it at the time, Jamling Tenzing Norgay, who was part of the IMAX team, had left them there. He was the son of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who had done the first ascent of Everest with Edmund Hillary 43 years earlier. I removed the South African flag badge that was pinned to my fleece jacket and placed it in the snow.
Part of me wanted to relax, to sit down and soak in the sense of really being on top of the world. But that was overwhelmed by the nagging worry of the long, long way we had to descend. Every one of those steps so laboriously taken on the way up still had to be taken again before we were safe again at camp. The summit was not a finish in any sense, but only a halfway point. I knew the risks of descent, the chances of making a mistake due to tiredness or simply lack of concentration. With the drive for the summit gone, all that remained to keep us moving was the survival instinct.

To spend only 15 minutes on top after months of effort to get there seemed less than logical. But in the end it had been about getting there, not about being there.

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Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives

"A remarkable anthology containing writings about and by a Who's Who of 120 international adventurer-explorers."
Including a contribution by Cathy.

In the pages of Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives, 120 outstanding individuals, representing a Who's Who of international exploration, relate those indelible moments in their youth when the dreams that launched their remarkable lives were born. As they recount the turning points on the way to fulfilling those dreams, which often meant confronting enormous physical, emotional or other obstacles, we learn how incredibly inspirational their lives are.

Included in the project are Meave and Louise Leakey, Buzz Aldrin, Robert Ballard, balloonists Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, 'Lucy' discoverer Don Johanson, Jack Horner, Sue Hendrickson, Jean-Michel Cousteau, the Ra's Capt. Norman Baker, George Bass, Eugenie Clark, Richard Fisher, Trieste's Don Walsh, and Nobel Laureate Charles H. Townes.

Collected and compiled by Jason Schoonover.
Forward by Meave Leaky.

To buy here. 

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Serpent Spires:

South African climbers profile the Drakensberg's finest peaks.

With an introduction by Cathy O'Dowd.
Edited by Duncan Souchon.

The author explores 17 top climbing peaks in the majestic Drakensberg. Each climb is discussed in detail and written about by experts who have experienced wonderful and terrifying moments on the various faces of this mountain range.

An ideal read for all those interested in rock-climbing, whether beginners or experienced summiteers, Serpent Spires offers stories of epic adventures, detailed route guides and useful tips. It will appeal to all rock climbers, adrenalin junkies and those who have a deep and abiding love of the mountains. For those "armchair adventurers" not wanting to take the risk involved in climbing sheer rock faces, it is a riveting read.

Available for purchase here.

Read the SuperClimb.co.za review here...

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