Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #424029 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-04
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Synopsis
The joys, the risks and the motivations of mountain climbing are at the heart of Malcolm Slesser's book. This autobiographical account spans 64 years of mountain exploration in every continent, during which both attitudes and technology have undergone vast changes. It is a story of the joy of discovery shared with friends in high places. Mountain climbing, like life itself, is not without risk. Unlike most sports, climbing is the solution to a very personal equation. The decision to go on or return lies with the climber and is influenced by his or her awareness of the risk. In that awareness lies safety and the ability to navigate the cliffs above and the chasms at your feet. Good judgement comes from experience. And experience comes from poor judgement. Most survive to a reasonable age; some brilliant climbers like Herman Buhl and Dougal Haston have perished through a momentary lapse of judgement. Too many die young, failing to appreciate that safety lies in the awareness of danger. The motivation for mountain climbing is not risk. It is the joy of exploration of the vertical, whether it be a virgin summit, a lonely precipice or simply a new line on an familiar rock face.

It is the delicious matching of skill to the difficulties presented by the mountain. It is to heighten the senses in lonely remote places. It is to remove all obstacles between the individual and nature. Malcolm Slesser is a survivor and has many tales to tell. In "With Friends in High Places", he explores situations such as the ill-fated Pamir expedition of 1962, and unusual environments, including the Arctic and the Tropics, that he has experienced throughout his decades of mountaineering and exploring around the globe.

From the Author
this book was short-listed for the Boardman-Tasaker prize for mountaineering literature 2004

About the Author
Malcolm Slesser:
Malcolm Slesser is an author, mountaineer and energy analyst who is widely known in the world of hillwalking and mountaineering. His climbing career has spanned some 66 years, during which he has climbed and explored on every continent.

Customer Reviews

An anatomy of those who take to the hills
I often wonder what impels people to climb mountains, taking extraordinary risks simply to get to the top a mound of rock and ice. This book seeks to provide an explanation. The sub-title states the author's purpose: 'An anatomy of those who take to the hills'. It certainly has no parallel in mountaineering literature.

Part anecdotal, part auto-biographical this is a compelling, and often humorous, discourse on the mania that grips some people and drives them to explore mountains. Malcolm Slesser draws on his extensive, and distinguished, climbing career to question why climbers choose to face such enormous risks - of hypothermia, altitude sickness and fatal falls. In charting his exploits from Ben Nevis to leading expeditions in far-flung countries with some of the world's most celebrated climbers, Slesser finds the answer in the companionship of the hills, in the sheer beauty of nature, and most of all, in the exhilaration of the unknown. But this is also a book for acolytes with tips such as how to cross icy melt water streams or prepare for expeditions. The book is rounded off with a penetrating analysis of eco-tourism and sustainability entitled the 'mountaineer's footprint'. This book will appeal to both the dedicated and arm-chair mountaineer.

Risk and Rewards
Those who go to the mountains or who relish exploration from an armchair will love this book.
The author has spent a lifetime in exploring wilderness and mountaineering in Scotland, the Alps, the Soviet Union and the Americas both on foot and on ski. He has been responsible for many first ascents predominantly in the Staunings Alps of Greenland. His tales are told with humour and candour and the foibles of his companions are not spared. His honesty, both about his exploits and those of others is refreshing and contributes to the veracity of his assessments of risk. To Slessor, the greater risk is that of the limiting of adventure through legislation and he makes an excellent case for mountaineering to be exempt from this modern disease.
The book is not all about nail biting desperate adventures. There is an extremely thoughtful and convincing chapter which deals with the dilemnas facing the environmentalist.
The photographs in the book are interesting and dramatic but more attention could have been paid to the quality of the Greenland maps.
This is an excellent read and the buyer will return to it many times.